Tornado Alley (PROG)

[blackhawks]

Rebuts nothing in my post.

Fair balance.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/heres-why-poor-people-are-poor-says-a-conservative-black-academic/2015/09/03/df8ff1fc-1ab4-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html


In fact, while “ghetto culture” may help to explain the stubborn persistence of a black underclass, there is ample evidence of the progress of black Americans since the 1960s in statistics on poverty rates, educational achievement and household incomes. Gains relative to whites have slowed, but there are still absolute gains. Nor can “ghetto culture” explain the growth in poverty, the decline in marriage, the slowdown in educational achievement or the widening income gap in white America.

As Sowell sees it, this “retrogression” took root because of a virulent multiculturalism, imposed by academics and the media, that now makes it socially and politically unacceptable to criticize any group’s culture. And it is reinforced by an overly generous welfare state that has lulled poor blacks into a permanent state of dependency and sloth — “non-judgmental subsidies of counterproductive behavior,” in his felicitous phrasing.

Sowell is certainly right in pointing out that when people talk about changes over time in the income of the top 1 percent or the bottom 20 percent, they are unaware that the households in each group are constantly changing. And the simple fact that earnings tend to increase with age means that most people’s incomes aren’t stagnant over their working lifetime, as many liberals often claim.

But to leap from those useful corrections to the sweeping conclusion that inequality is not rising — or, if it is, is not a problem — more than trifles with the truth. Even after accounting for the usual churn and life-cycle changes, the share of national income going to those at or near the top has grown dramatically, concentrating the benefits of economic growth in fewer and fewer hands. This is neither a statistical mirage nor a figment of our imagination.

Sowell is also right to point out that, contrary to the constant liberal refrain, economic mobility in America is not dead and that unequal incomes are not, by themselves, proof of unequal opportunity. But surely that is no reason to cavalierly dismiss a growing body of evidence of large and growing gaps between rich and poor children in terms of their physical, emotional and intellectual development and their later success later in life.

As Sowell sees it, life has always been unfair, and if poor children start out with life stacked against them, they have no one to blame but their parents and their culture.

“Some children today are raised in ways that make it easier for them to become doctors, scientists or engineers,” he blithely writes, while others “are raised in ways that make it more likely they will become welfare recipients or criminals.”

Moreover, by his reasoning, any attempts to equalize opportunity would be counterproductive because they would deny society the higher output of the well-bred. In making such a calculation, however, Sowell never stops to consider what the ill-bred might have contributed to society if they had had a similar chance to develop their natural talents and capabilities.

As an intellectual combatant, Sowell thrives on jousting with straw men whose existence he posits with little or no proof. In the world according to Sowell, liberals (including rich ones, apparently) are so filled with envy and resentment that they will deny billionaires the chance to create new jobs and new products if it means adding even a dollar to their incomes.

Black leaders want to keep their people in poverty because otherwise they would have no purpose. The media and government officials systematically ignore and cover up racially motivated black-on-white violence (he knows about these incidents, according to the footnotes, from major news outlets). These are more like the rants of a talk-radio host than the considered judgments of a respected academic.