Re: Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell June 29, 2004 /10 Tamuz, 5764 Excerpt   "Just as an artificially high price for wheat set by the government leads to a chronic surplus of wheat, so an artificially high price for labor set by the government leads to a surplus of labor â better known as unemployment. "Since all workers are not the same, this unemployment is concentrated among the less skilled and less experienced workers. Many of them are simply priced out of a job. "In the United States, for example, the highest unemployment rates are almost invariably among black teenagers. But this was not always the case. "Although the federal minimum wage law was passed in 1938, wartime inflation during the Second World War meant that the minimum wage law had no major effect until a new round of increases in the minimum wage level began in 1950. Unemployment rates among black teenagers before then were a fraction of what they are today â and no higher than among white teenagers. The time is long overdue for schools of journalism to start teaching economics. It would eliminate much of the nonsense and hysteria in the media, and with it perhaps some of the demagoguery in politics. http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell1.asp Without question Mr. Sowell is a highly educated and talented man .. . and also an outstanding propagandist. Many simply disagree with his point of view and the implied economic concepts and frameworks his exposition are based upon. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a popular form of exposition that takes into account how the diverse people of America actually think things out. This art requires awareness of how people actually interact with one another and the real history of their ideas. I tend to steer clear of broad ideological categories called "left" and "right"  . . . liberal and conservative, because in my personal experience these are not categories that express how people think out social questions and the issues of the day. For instance, ones attitude concerning abortion does not necessarily dictate or correspond to a fixed and predicable political pattern concerning how one might respond to economic issues or losing ones pension for instance . . . or having the company renege on its pledge to pay ones medical benefits during retirement. Although, I generally and specifically disagree with Mr. Sowell's inner logic about America  - including gun control, and I am against gun control as the issue is currently framed in the public, what he does understand is the mood of the country and how people think things out. At any rate, he understands the mood of the audience he is writing to and for. Mr. Sowell is an outstanding leader . . . as is Colin Powell . . . and they carry the tag "black leaders" for reasons of our history. They exist and operate on a political continuum and I generally have nothing in common with these men. One can nevertheless learn an important lesson from Mr. Sowell's form of exposition, whose inner logic I radically disagree with. Melvin P.