Another
must-read book from Thomas Sowell. This short (126 page) volume should be
required reading to run for office, any office, and for government policy
makers. Alas, those who need it most probably won’t read it. And, as Sowell
points out, humans have a great ability to ignore facts to preserve their
preferred visions. Sowell grew up in a poor black family in NC, was supporting himself
by the age of 17, and worked his way to a PhD in economics. Thus, he is unafraid
to research and write about racial issues that would get a white academics
drummed off campus and is unafraid to discuss uncomfortable facts. He has dozens
of books in print. His “Basic Economics” is used as a text book around the world,
having been translated into several languages. In this book, he destroys both
the hard left’s view that disparities in outcomes are always caused by
discrimination and the alt-right’s view that they are caused by a lack of capability
in minority populations. He reports, for example, that the same black students
who are failing in regular public schools are excelling in many charter
schools. His discussion of the “income gap” between the top 20% and the lowest
20% is particularly interesting. The media acts as if people stayed in the same
quintile all their lives. He reports that 95% of the people who were at one time
in the bottom group rise out of it, while a great many people are in the top
20% only a few years. I started out in the bottom, making $38 a week when I was
elected to the Massachusetts Senate, and $12k there the first year. For the
last ten years of my 31-year career as an association executive, I was in the
top 20%. But when I retired due to pulmonary fibrosis to have a lung
transplant, we fell out of it. I now make $24,000 a year working PT. If you
read only one book this year, this should be it.
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