Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The other day also we had economic news not good about the widening gap between the rich and the poor. We had the news that the smarter are getting wealthier and the stupider are getting poorer -- I mean, it wasn't good -- and that the wealth gap was wider, much wider today between the top 1% and everybody else than five years ago when Obama took office. We have more details on this, and one of the fundamental aspects of the story we had was the median income. We pointed out the median income in the...

A survey of American economists found that 90 percent of them regarded minimum wage laws as increasing the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers. Inexperience is often the problem. Only about 2 percent of Americans over the age of 24 earned the minimum wage. Advocates of minimum wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker "needs" in order to have "a living wage" — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker's skill level, experience or general productivity. So it is hardly surprising that minimum...

Political crusades for raising the minimum wage are back again. Advocates of minimum wage laws often give themselves credit for being more "compassionate" towards "the poor." But they seldom bother to check what are the actual consequences of such laws. One of the simplest and most fundamental economic principles is that people tend to buy more when the price is lower and less when the price is higher. Yet advocates of minimum wage laws seem to think that the government can raise the price of labor without reducing the amount of labor that will be hired. When you turn from...

I cannot see why even a single American, a single Israeli or a single Syrian civilian should be killed as a result of a token U.S. military action, undertaken simply to spare Barack Obama the embarrassment of doing nothing, after his ill-advised public ultimatum to the Syrian government to not use chemical weapons was ignored. Some people say that some military response is necessary, not to spare Obama a personal humiliation, but to spare the American presidency from losing all credibility — and therefore losing the ability to deter future threats to the United States without bloodshed. There is no...

Chickens are coming home to roost for Barack Obama, both at home and overseas. When he first entered the White house, to worldwide acclaim, and backed by huge majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, he could do whatever he wanted — and could do no wrong, in the eyes of the mainstream media. People believed whatever he said, whether about how he would cut the federal deficit in half during his first term or how people could keep their current insurance and their current doctor under ObamaCare, which would also insure millions more people and yet...

Why are we even talking about taking military action in Syria? What is that military action supposed to accomplish? And what is the probability that it will in fact accomplish whatever that unknown goal might be? What is painfully clear from President Obama's actions, inactions and delays is that he is more or less playing it by ear, as to what specifically he is going to do, and when. He is telling us more about what he is not going to do — that he will not put "boots on the ground," for example — than about what he will...

One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified buyers. The repercussions did not stop there. Many homeowners have discovered that when renters replace homeowners as their neighbors, the neighborhood as a whole can suffer. The physical upkeep of the neighborhood, on which everyone's home values depend, tends to decline. "Who's going to paint the outside of a rented house?" one resident was quoted as...

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, and of the Reverend Martin Luther King's memorable "I have a dream" speech, is a time for reflections — some inspiring, and some painful and ominous. At the core of Dr. King's speech was his dream of a world in which people would not be judged by the color of their skin, but by "the content of their character." Judging individuals by their individual character is at the opposite pole from judging how groups are statistically represented among employees, college students or political figures. Yet many — if not most — of...

Many years ago, I was a member of a committee that was recommending to whom grant money should be awarded. Since I knew one of the applicants, I asked if this meant that I should recuse myself from voting on his application. "No," the chairman said. "I know him too — and he is one of the truly great phonies of our time." The man was indeed a very talented phony. He could convince almost anybody of almost anything — provided that they were not already knowledgeable about the subject. He had once spoken to me very authoritatively about Marxian...

Nothing symbolizes the Utopianism of our times like both liberals and some conservatives calling for us to cut off aid to the Egyptian military, because of the widespread killings in what is becoming a civil war in Egypt. Such utter lack of realism from the left is not new, but hearing some conservatives saying the same things takes some getting used to. President Obama's call for the Egyptians to end the violence and form an "inclusive" government, with all factions represented, may sound good to many Americans. But there is not a snowball's chance in hell that it will happen....

Two recent events — one on the east coast and one on the west coast — raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children. One of these events was an announcement by Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., that it plans on August 19th to begin "an entire week of activities to celebrate the grand opening of our new $160 million state-of-the-art school building." The painful irony in all this is that the original Dunbar High School building, which opened in 1916, housed a school with a record...

The twentieth anniversary of the death of Eric Hoffer, in May 1983, passed with very little notice of one of the most incisive thinkers of his time -- a man whose writings continue to have great relevance to our times. How many people today even know of this remarkable man with no formal schooling, who spent his life in manual labor -- most of it as a longshoreman -- and who wrote some of the most insightful commentary on our society and trends in the world? You need only read one of his classics like The True Believer: Thoughts on...

It is hard to read a newspaper, or watch a television newscast, without encountering someone who has come up with a new "solution" to society's "problems." Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than there are problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions. San Francisco and New York are both plagued with large "homeless" populations today, largely as a result of previous housing "reforms" that made housing more expensive, and severely limited how much housing, and of what kind, could be built. The solution? Spend more of...

In the 20th century, Western intellectuals' two most dominant explanations of disparities in economic, educational and other achievements were innate racial differences in ability (in the early decades) and racial discrimination (in the later decades). In neither era were the intelligentsia receptive to other explanations. In each era, they were convinced that they had the answer — and dismissed and disparaged those who offered other answers. Differences in mental test scores among different racial and ethnic groups were taken as proof of genetic differences in innate mental ability during the Progressive era in the early 20th century. Progressives regarded the...

Random thoughts from wise thinkers: "We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish." (F.A. Hayek) "Many respectable writers agree that if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant he may stand his ground and that if he kills him he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this court." (Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Brown v. United States, 1921) "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the...

There are no winners in the trial of George Zimmerman. The only question is whether the damage that has been done has been transient or irreparable. Legally speaking, Zimmerman has won his freedom. But he can still be sued in a civil case, and he will probably never be safe to live his life in peace, as he could have before this case made him the focus of national attention and orchestrated hate. More important than the fate of George Zimmerman, however, is the fate of the American justice system and of the public's faith in that system and in...

“Intellectuals and Race“ by Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, 2013, 184 pages, $25.99. Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, is not a newcomer to the theme of intellectuals and race. In his 1985 Marxism: Philosophy and Economics he noted that Karl Marx referred to German socialist Ferdinand Lassalle as a “Jewish n–ger,” based on his “cranial formation” and hair growth. Marx also said that Lassalle’s paternal grandmother or mother was “crossed with a n–ger” and that “the fellow’s importunity is also n–ger-like.” Sowell’s The Economics and Politics of Race, along other writings from a conservative viewpoint, drew attacks from...

I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white. Apparently other Americans also recognize that the sources of racism are different today from what they were in the past. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist. The difference between these percentages is not great, but it is remarkable nevertheless. After all, generations of blacks fought the white racism from which they suffered for so long. If many blacks themselves now think...

The political left has long claimed the role of protector of “the poor.” It is one of their central moral claims to political power. But how valid is this claim? Leaders of the Left in many countries have promoted policies that enable the poor to be more comfortable in their poverty. But that raises a fundamental question: Just who are “the poor”? If you use a bureaucratic definition of poverty as including all individuals or families below some arbitrary income level set by the government, then it is easy to get the kinds of statistics about “the poor” that are...

At the heart of the left's vision of the world is the implicit assumption that high-minded third parties like themselves can make better decisions for other people than those people can make for themselves. That arbitrary and unsubstantiated assumption underlies a wide spectrum of laws and policies over the years, ranging from urban renewal to ObamaCare. One of the many international crusades by busybodies on the left is the drive to limit the hours of work by people in other countries — especially poorer countries — in businesses operated by multinational corporations. One international monitoring group has taken on the...