Posted tagged ‘Discrimination And Disparities’

Must Reads For The Week 12/8/18

December 9, 2018

 

Mazie Hirono: “We Democrats Know So Much” That We Tend to Alienate Voters, by Jessica Chasmar, at washingtontimes.com. Here is an excerpt from the article: “One of the things that we Democrats have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts instead of here”, Mrs Hirono pointed to her head, “We’re really good at shoving out all the information that touch people here [points to her brain] But not here [points to the heart].”

I hate to inform Mrs Hirono, but it is just the opposite. The only way Democrats win an issue is by playing to people’s emotions. Why? Because they could never win the issues with logic and reasoning.

Thomas Sowell Explains The Economics Of Discrimination, by David Weinberger, at the federalist.com. I am reading Dr. Sowell’s recent book Discrimination and Disparities. This is another great read that is full of information, and of course, Dr Sowell’s brilliant insight and reasoning.

Truth Is What We Hide, Self-Serving Cover Stories Are What We Sell, by Charles Hugh Smith, at oftwominds.com. This is a great article about what insiders in politics, the bureaucracy and the media cover up and what they spin as true.

Lena Dunham’s Return To ‘Believe All Women’ Does Women No Favors, by Daniella Davis, at thefederalist.com. Don’t ‘all women’ have to have some speck of evidence in order to be believed? There is an evidentiary standard in order to be believed when accusing someone of a crime. Why? Because it is a legal matter, even though the legal process of finding guilt in sexual assault cases is now being tried in the political arena. Here is a random thought. If men and women are equal, as we as a society have been told for all these decades, why don’t we here of more instances where women fight their attackers? If men and women are equal, shouldn’t 50% of these assault cases end with the perpetrator having been beaten up. Also, wouldn’t there be fewer assaults for the simple reason men would not be eager to attack someone who could beat them up.

In an unrelated article: Men Begin Avoiding Female Co-Workers In Age Of #MeToo, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. I shouldn’t say this but I am. After being told by a woman that all men are pigs, I informed her that it is a good thing that God made men’s sex drive so powerful, because if it wasn’t for that, there is no way men would want to hang around women.

In another unrelated article: Chart Of The Day: The Declining Female Share Of Computer Science Degrees From, 28% to 18%, by Mark J. Perry, at carpediemblog. Men and women are biologically different. and no amount of social engineering will change that reality.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Claims Stopping Climate Change Will End Racism , at zerohedge.com. I am not smart enough to understand how, “stopping climate change will end racism”. So my comment to Alexandria is this; the Democrat party doesn’t want to end racism. The Democrat party needs the issue of racism to maintain its power. The Democrat party also uses the global warming issue to maintain its power. So the Democrats also don’t want the issue of Global warming to go away. Since both issues are needed to maintain power, neither issue will go away. Since both issues can’t be proven as true, only asserted as true, it will be easy to hype both issues for decades to come.

The Elite Are Creating An Authoritarian ‘Beast System’, And Dissenters Could Lose Everything, at zerohedge.com. The internet is turning into a tool of surveillance by Big Brother.

DC Council Bills Taxpayers Half A Million To Avoid Enrolling In Obamacare, by Christopher Jacobs, at thefederalist.com. Do as I say not as I do. Here is an excerpt from the article: “In encouraging others to “get covered,” and promoting the D.C. Health Link Site, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser omitted one key detail: she does not buy the policies the DC Health Link sells. Bowser, like most of her DC council colleagues, received taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies to purchase their coverage through the District government, rather than through DC Health Link. Thus DC spent nearly half a million in taxpayer funds because the mayor ad council won’t be bothered o enroll in Obamacare.”

Why Have Seattle’s Police Become Enforcers For Antifa? at zerohedge.com. The police are not there to pick a side. They are there to enforce the law no matter who breaks it.

Nearly Two-Thirds Of Non-Citizen Households In America Are On Welfare, at zerohedge.com. Taxpayers are paying the cost of not enforcing the immigration laws that are on the books today.

Alberta Orders “Unprecedented” Oil Output Cut To Combat Crashing Prices, at zerohedge.com. American oil producers stop pumping oil if the price of oil can’t cover the cost of production (including a profit). The incremental increase and decrease of the price of oil regulates supply of oil at any particular price. My question is; does the Government of Canada make the decision on how much oil is extracted from the ground or do prices decide what is pumped out of the ground? This seems like a Government created ‘problem’. Oil gluts and oil shortages wouldn’t be as wide ranging if market prices were allowed to incrementally adjust supply and demand instead of letting it be decided by central planners.

French Protestors Fume Over Climate Taxes And A Rising Cost Of living, by Ryan McMaken, at mises.org. Global warming policies are just another way for governments to grow power and fleece their citizens.

The Edict Of Diocletian: A Case Study Of Price Controls And Inflation, by Murray N. Rothbard, at mises.org. The average person in Roman times understood more about what caused inflation than we do today. Today we think that inflation is prices rising. In Roman times they understood (through their actions) that Inflation is the increase in the money supply. Governments clip coins and decreases the amount of gold in each coin they mint in order to finance government spending. Regular people understood this and reacted by paying their taxes with the coins that had less gold in them, and keeping the higher quality coins to use in market exchange. But inflation still reared its ugly head. To combat inflation caused by the Government devaluation of the coins, Emperor Diocletian decided setting price ceilings was the answer. Even this all-powerful Emperor couldn’t stop the shortages that were brought about by his price controls. Nothing was offered for sale and everything was in short supply. Diocletian repealed his price ceiling edict and prices finally stabilized after the Government stopped devaluing the money supply.

I don’t think our Federal Reserve is smart enough to realize they have caused our bubble economy through their money printing. Even if they did realize it, they have no incentive to stop printing money because we the people are ignorant about what money really is. Why? Because we have grown up under a paper money system, not under a commodity (gold or silver) money system. If you want to understand the concept of money read: “What Has Government Done To Our Money” By Murray Rothbard. It is a hand size paperback of 110 pages.

DiMartino Booth: The Fraying Of The Fed’s Fragile Narrative, at zerohedge.com. Danielle DiMartino Booth is a former official of the Dallas Fed. She has keen insight about the workings of this disruptive organization. The Interview is worth watching.

Even The NY Times Thinks Its ‘Curtains For The Clintons’, at zerohedge.com. The small crowds at Clinton speaking tour stops shows the Clintons have out lived their usefulness to the Democrat Party.

“I Know Where All The Bodies Are Buried”: Clinton Foundation CFO Spills Beans To Investigators, at zerohedge.com. I an unrelated story. The Clinton Foundation was nothing more than a money laundering scheme. Mafia money launderers could learn a few things from the Clintons.

 

SATIRICAL HEADLINES

Macron Criticizes Climate Change Tax Protesters For Not Using Carbon-Neutral Rioting Methods, at babylonbee.com

Trump Releases Findings Of Own Independent Investigation: ‘Most Innocent President Ever’, at babylonbee.com.

Report: Mueller To Release Results Of Investigation Day Before 2020 Election, at babylonbee.com.

Frightening Rise In Anti-Semitism Blamed On The Jews, at babylonbee.com.

Should The NFL Prohibit Players From Appearing In Hotel Security Footage? at theonion.com.

 

CARTOONS

Political Cartoons by Steve Kelley

Political Cartoons by Mike Lester

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

 

 

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Thomas Sowell: Discrimination and Disparities

May 31, 2018

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is my favorite author. It was my great fortune to have stumbled upon his books in the mid 90’s. Dr Sowell has the ability to make complex concepts understandable to regular people like you and me. He digs into statistics from various studies and figures out what they reveal and what they do not reveal. He is an economist by trade. This background allows him to see discernible patterns that are hidden to most of us.

His writings have equipped me with a series of questions that I ask myself when confronted with any issue or anyone speaking about an issue. Here are the questions.

– Compared to what?

– At what cost?

-Is what is being compared, comparable?

– And then what?

– Numbers? In what context?

– Can someone be ethical while being political and can someone be unbiased while being an advocate?

– What is important is not what decision should be made? The real question is who is to make the decision? Through what process? Under what incentives and constraints? With what feedback mechanism?

If you remember these questions the chances of being fooled decreases exponentially.

DISCRIMINATION AND DISPARITIES

Although Dr. Sowell does not write his weekly column anymore, fortunately for us he is still writing books.

Dr. Sowell has written a new book titled “Discrimination and Disparities“. Dr. Sowell is being interviewed by Peter Robinson in this interview on Uncommon Knowledge. It will be a great investment of your time to listen to Dr. Sowell in this interview.

Here are some excerpts from the video:

“The fact that economic and other outcomes often differ greatly among individuals, groups, institutions and nations poses questions to which many people give very different answers. At one end of the spectrum…..The belief that those who have been less fortunate…..are genetically less capable. At the other end….. the belief that those less fortunate are victims of other people…..”

“Disparities can also reflect the plain fact that success in many kinds of endeavors depends on prerequisites peculiar to each endeavor and a relatively small differences in meeting those prerequisites can mean a very large difference in outcomes.”

“Professor Turman of Stanford did an empirical study where he picked something like 1500 people who had IQ’s in the top one percent. And he followed them for 50 years to see how they turned out…..The disparaties within that narrow range……the top third had more than ten times as many post grad degrees as the bottom third among people who were all in the top one percent. So there is obviously many other things that had to come together…..The other thing was that two people who failed to make the 140 IQ cut off ended up getting Nobel Prizes in physics, and nobody among the 1500 ever did. So obviously there has to be a lot of things that come together…..”

“The biggest differentiating factor in this study was family backgrounds. The ones who were in the top third came from families who were more educated. The ones who were in the bottom third had a parent who had dropped out of school before the eighth grade. So it doesn’t matter how much brain power you may have, if you are not raised in a home where people are thinking, where they’re doing intellectual things, you are not in the same position as someone with the same IQ who is in a family that has that kind of background. This blows the genetic argument is ruled out-of-bounds in terms of smarts. But so is the argument that anybody victimized them. The principle factors that accounted for success as opposed to failure was family background. That’s not really victimization, that’s a question of almost cosmic luck…. Too many observers….reason as if Intentions automatically translate directly into outcomes.”

The only times over which we have any degree of influence at all are the present and the future. Both of which can be made worse by attempts at symbolic restitution among the living for what happened among the dead who are far beyond our power to help or punish or avenge. Any serious consideration of the world as it is around us today must tell us that maintaining any common decency, much less peace and harmony among living contemporaries, is a major challenge both among nations and within nations. To admit that we can do nothing about what happened among the dead is not to give up the struggle for a better world, but to concentrate our efforts where they have at least some hope of making things better for the living.

 

Related Posts

Thomas Sowell: Wealth, Poverty and Politics, at austianaddict.com.

Thomas Sowell: “Economic Problems Don’t Have Political Solutions”, at austrianaddict.com.

Thomas Sowell: Vision Of The Anointed, at austrianaddict.com.

Thomas Sowell: The Economics And Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.

Michelle Obama vs. Thomas Sowell On The Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.

The ‘Disparate Impact’ Racket By Thomas Sowell, at austrianaddict.com.

Thomas Sowell: Human Capital More Important Than Physical Capital, at austrianaddict.com.

If you type Thomas Sowell in the search box you, will be treated to more of his writings.