The productive vs. the unproductive: Walter E. Williams

"The Greatest Century That Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years" is the appropriate title of a 1999 article authored by Stephen Moore and the late Julian L. Simon and published by the Washington-based Cato Institute. Let's highlight some of the phenomenal progress Americans made during the 20th century.

During that century, life expectancy rose from 47 to 77 years of age. Deaths from infectious diseases fell from 700 to 50 per 100,000 of the population. Major killer diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, typhoid fever and whooping cough were virtually eliminated. Infant mortality plummeted.

The 20th century saw unprecedented material gains as well. Controlling for inflation, household assets rose from $6 trillion to $41 trillion between 1945 and 1998. Today, more than 98 percent of American homes have a telephone, electricity and a flush toilet. More than 70 percent of Americans own a car, a VCR, a microwave, air conditioning, cable TV, and a washer and dryer. In 1900, no homes had the modern conveniences of today. Today's poor Americans have choices that yesterday's millionaires could have only dreamt of, such as cell phones, computers and color TV sets. Added to all this progress, most adults have twice as much leisure time as their turn-of-the-20th-century counterparts.

You say, "Williams, it would take an idiot to deny the human progress Americans made during the 20th century. What's your point?" The productive people who made this progress possible are often painted as villains. I'm talking about the innovators and the risk-takers, in a word – entrepreneurs. Today's heroes are often seen as the people who attack entrepreneurs – among them lawyers, politicians, media people, leftist organizations, college professors and others who often contribute little or nothing to human progress. My colleague, Thomas Sowell, calls the entrepreneurs, scientists and inventors the "doers" and their attackers the "talkers."

The talkers who attack the doers are glib and can turn clever phrases and thereby trick the gullible and uninformed, whether it's the general public through the mass media or judges and juries. For example, even if a particular drug has massive benefits, like saving tens of thousands of lives or reducing the suffering of tens of thousands of people, but a few people suffer or die, the talkers are ready to crucify the company. Their first charge is corporate greed.

The attack on the pharmaceutical industry is particularly vicious, led by lawyers looking to make a financial killing like their colleagues who sued the tobacco industry and Microsoft. One target of today's talkers is Merck drug company, the maker of Vioxx, because for some individuals it poses an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. But for other individuals, it is safe and effective for pain relief from arthritis. The operational question for any drug is whether its benefits exceed its costs – not whether some people are harmed. Moreover, some patients would willingly accept the risk of heart attack and stroke to obtain relief from painful, crippling arthritis. Why should the FDA or the plaintiff's bar prevent them from doing so?

If we developed the practice of removing products from the market because some people are harmed by them, we might starve to death. Anaphylaxis is a sudden, severe, potentially fatal reaction that some people have to foods such as milk, wheat, soy, peanuts, fish, shellfish and eggs. Each year, food-induced anaphylaxis sends about 30,000 people to hospital emergency rooms and about 200 of them die. Since many people are harmed by these food items, should they be removed from our supermarket shelves? If not, why not?

The next time we hear a talker attacking a doer, we just might ask: What have you done to further human progress?

I have to wonder if plastic, phones and computers-and in fact most of the stuff we have collect-actually make our lives that much happier. Take, for instance, TV: TV is great, and is probably the most pervasive piece of modern technology (other than cars) in modern life... but are people who own tvs necessarily that much happier than people who own books?

In general I think that the higher the production value the worse it tend to crowd out quality. Movies are worse than TV, which is worse than radio, which is worse than print.

The people who home school their children are the biggest self-loathers....NOT!

You're on to something here. A lot of people who say that Americans are ignorant because of bad education are overlooking something really important. It's that American education is better because so much education in the US is privately run. Our current president got a superior education from an American private university. To say that Harvard is a world class university would be an insult to Harvard.

At the moment my kids and in Panama with me but they're enrolled in a US run home schooling program. No other country in the world has anything that can begin to compare with American home schooling but the America bashers will never admit it.

Everyone -- you included-- knows that when we want say, a top notch Doctor to do brain surgery on a family member that we'd want one with a medical degree from John Hopkins and not one from Botswana U.

Yes. Botswana U. exists in a melieu with was not immersed in traditions of free inquiry. Harvard was formed in such a melieu. More's the pity that it seems to teach nihilism which treats the melieu which generated its own self as an object of loathing.

American education is better because so much education in the US is privately run. Our current president got a superior education from an American private university. To say that Harvard is a world class university would be an insult to Harvard.

At the moment my kids are in Panama with me but they're enrolled in a US run home schooling program. No other country in the world has anything that can begin to compare with American home schooling but the America bashers will never admit it.

But until recently, America did have homeschooling on any significant level at all compared to its present state. For that you have to credit our government education system for so signally failing to meet the expectations of parents who were themselves satisfied with their own government-school education - and found that the same educational quality was no longer on offer in the government schools available to their children.
When your children return to the U.S., will they be satisfied to return to government school regimentation or will they attempt to stay with the homeschool curriculum they have become accustomed to?

I collect old books. Reading reference books such as the Encyclopaedia Brittannica produced towards the beginning of the last century is eye-opening. I have a set of 1903 Brittannicas. I can assure you that the average college student will have difficulty comprehending most of it though it was aimed at approximately an 8th grade reading level in its day.

A solid century of public education has bought us nothing but a mostly illiterate mob in my opinion.

It's interesting that students at the highest terminal degree level of the most academically rigorous programs of top U.S. universities are disproportionately (and increasingly so) foreign.

"For years, most of the Ph.D.s awarded by American universities in mathematics and engineering have gone to foreigners. We have the finest graduate schools in the world -- so fine that our own American students have trouble getting admitted in fields that require highly trained minds." Thomas Sowell in Phony 'ethics'.

While the best U.S. graduate schools are being filled with foreigners, U.S. school kids fall behind. Fifteen-year-olds in the U.S. rank near the bottom of industrialized countries in math skills, ahead of only Portugal, Mexico and three other nations, according to a new international comparison that economists say is bad news for long-term economic growth.

Since when does pointing out massive domestic government failure constitute "bashing America?"

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