Sowell: Opportunity Versus Outcomes

Creators Syndicate ^ | September 15, 2015 | Thomas Sowell

[jazusamo]

A hostile review of my new book — "Wealth, Poverty and Politics" — said, "there is apparently no level of inequality of income or opportunity that Thomas Sowell would consider unacceptable."

Ordinarily, reviewers who miss the whole point of a book they are reviewing can be ignored. But this particular confusion about what opportunity means is far too widespread, far beyond a particular reviewer of a particular book. That makes it a confusion worth clearing up, because it affects so many other discussions of very serious issues.

"Wealth, Poverty and Politics" does not accept inequality of opportunity. Instead, it reports such things as children raised in low-income families usually not being spoken to nearly as often as children raised in high-income families. The conclusion: "It is painful to contemplate what that means cumulatively over the years, as poor children are handicapped from their earliest childhood."

Even if all the doors of opportunity are wide open, children raised with great amounts of parental care and attention are far more likely to be able to walk through those doors than children who have received much less attention. Why else do conscientious parents invest so much time and effort in raising their children? This is so obvious that you would have to be an intellectual to able to misconstrue it. Yet many among the intelligentsia equate differences in outcomes with differences in opportunity. A personal example may help clarify the difference.

As a teenager, I tried briefly to play basketball. But I was lucky to hit the backboard, much less the basket. Yet I had just as much opportunity to play basketball as Michael Jordan had. But equal opportunity was not nearly enough to create equal outcomes.

[jazusamo]

*PING*
Thomas Sowell

[Paladin2]

To get equal outcomes, opportunities for some would have to be attenuated.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Haven’t you heard? This is now a high tariff website....people like Thomas Sowell are no longer welcome here.....

[jazusamo]

Yeah, I heard a murmur about that:)

[Hawthorn]

>> people like Thomas Sowell are no longer welcome here <<

Just because at least one thread today seems dedicated to the proposition that Dr. Sowell is an inside-the-beltway DC hack, owned and paid for by the GOPe? Surely thou doth jest.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

[fwdude]

“This is so obvious that you would have to be an intellectual to able to misconstrue it.”

Golden statement in its full acerbic glory.

[jazusamo]

Amen...That sentence jumped out at me.

[Liberty Valance]

bttt

[prof.h.mandingo]

What was the problem with THIS article. The only person I agree with all the time is myself and even then we don't always get along. Did you read the article or did you just decide to write a sarcastic remark?
If you didn't read it you can join the ranks of the FReeper clan that take great joy in commenting on something they know nothing about.
This article should be music to conservative ears. Jeffersonian egalitarianism: the idea that everyone deserves the chance to make something of themselves but we do not predetermine the outcome. That is left to the individual.

[C. Edmund Wright]

yeah I know...I did jump the gun.....:)

[marktwain]

Thomas Sowell is a national treasure.

[oldbrowser]

The conclusion: "It is painful to contemplate what that means cumulatively over the years, as poor children are handicapped from their earliest childhood."

I have often contemplated that same point. It takes generations to correct the downward spiral created by ignorance and poverty. Add in the racism pimps, the bigotry low expectations, racists telling people to ignore the "white man's law", the busybody government providing "charity", flooding the market with illiterate, illegals, and we are heading into a cataclysm .

[Hawthorn]

>> What was the problem with THIS article <<

Please excuse my sarcasm. No problem with this article. Not at all. I love it, just as I love everything else that comes from Sowell’s pen. I believe nobody is better at social commentary and economics, and he can more than hold his own when comes to the epistemology of knowledge.

In any event, you may not be aware of the anti-Sowell bile that’s been raging today on another FR thread, just because Sowell has had the temerity to criticize the emotional an unthinking support given Dear Leader DT by many putative GOP voters. The reaction of one FReeper after another has been nothing short of disgraceful.

[jazusamo]

Bump

[BwanaNdege]

Speaking of "intellectuals",

Googling for "social string theory definition" yielded this gem from the introduction to a paper by Robert L. Oprisko , evidently one of the "Social String Theory" heavy hitters:

Theoria and Praxis, Volume 2, issue 2 Strings: A Political Theory of Multi-Dimensional Reality

Abstract

An "unfaithful" interpretation of Michael Weinstein's oeuvre illuminates a complex, interpenetrative system of realities that reflects the lived experience of his vitalist ontology. By connecting Weinstein’s radical separation and agonic contradiction with Karen Barad’s radical entanglement, I show that reality is an ever-changing unique presentation of active relational engagements in perpetual tension. I propose that theoretical physics and socio-politics have a great deal in common: a unified field theory of being rooted in a multi-dimensional presentation of reality.

"Intellectuals"? Gimme a break!

[prof.h.mandingo]

Thanks for the clarification.