OTHER BOOKS BY THOMAS SOWELL:

Basic Economics

Wealth, Poverty and Politics

Intellectuals and Society

Charter Schools and Their Enemies

A Conflict of Visions
 Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Sowell
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 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023941574

ISBNs: 9781541603929 (hardcover), 9781541603936 (ebook)

E3-20230726-JV-NF-ORI
“You’re entitled to your own opinion, but
you’re not entitled to your own facts.”
Daniel Patrick Moynihan1
 CONTENTS

Cover
Other Books by Thomas Sowell
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph

Chapter 1: “EQUAL CHANCES” FALLACIES

Chapter 2: RACIAL FALLACIES
Chapter 3: CHESS PIECES FALLACIES
Chapter 4 : KNOWLEDGE FALLACIES
Chapter 5: WORDS, DEEDS AND DANGERS

Endnotes
Index
Chapter 1

“EQUAL CHANCES” FALLACIES

B ack in the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed the

essence of the social justice vision when he wrote of “the equality which
nature established among men and the inequality which they have instituted
among themselves.”1 In the kind of world envisioned by Rousseau, all
classes, races and other subdivisions of the human species would have
equal chances in all endeavors— other things being equal. But the more
other things there are, influencing outcomes, the lower the chances of all
those other things being equal.
In the real world, there is seldom anything resembling the equal
outcomes that might be expected if all factors affecting outcomes were the
same for everyone. Even in a society with equal opportunity— in the sense
of judging each individual by the same standards— people from different
backgrounds do not necessarily even want to do the same things, much less
invest their time and energies into developing the same kinds of skills and
talents.
In American sports, for example, blacks are very over-represented in
professional basketball, whites in professional tennis, and Hispanics in
Major League Baseball. In professional hockey, where there are more teams
in the United States than in Canada, there are more Canadian players than
American players— even though the population of the United States is
more than eight times the population of Canada. There are also more
hockey players from Sweden— nearly 4,000 miles away— in the NHL than
there are hockey players from California, even though the population of
California is nearly four times the population of Sweden.2
Different climates are among the many other things that are not equal.
Colder climates, with waterways frozen for months at a time, offer more
opportunities for more people to grow up developing the ice-skating skills
essential for hockey. Such climates are far more common in Canada and
Sweden than in the United States in general or California in particular.
Climate differences are among numerous other differences that can
facilitate the development of some capabilities in particular peoples and
impede the development of other capabilities.
At the heart of the social justice vision is the assumption that, because
economic and other disparities among human beings greatly exceed any
differences in their innate capacities, these disparities are evidence or proof
of the effects of such human vices as exploitation and discrimination.
These vices are in fact among the many influences that prevent different
groups of people— whether classes, races or nations— from having equal,
or even comparable, outcomes in economic terms or other terms. But
human vices have no monopoly as causes of economic and other disparities.
It is especially difficult to make the case that inequalities of outcomes
can be automatically assumed to have been caused by discrimination by
dominant majorities against subordinate minorities, when in fact many
subordinate minorities have economically outperformed dominant
majorities in many countries around the world and in many periods of
history.
A study of the Ottoman Empire, for example, found that none of the 40
private bankers listed in Istanbul in 1912 was a Turk, even though Turks
ruled the empire. Nor was any of the 34 stockbrokers in Istanbul a Turk. Of
the capital assets of 284 industrial firms in the Ottoman Empire, employing
five or more workers, 50 percent of these firms were owned by Greeks and
another 20 percent were owned by Armenians.3
The Ottoman Empire was by no means unique. Racial or ethnic
minorities who have owned or operated more than half of whole industries
in particular nations have included the Chinese in Malaysia,4 Germans in
Brazil,5 Lebanese in West Africa,6 Jews in Poland,7 Italians in Argentina,8
Indians in East Africa,9 Scots in Britain,10 Ibos in Nigeria,11 and Marwaris
in India.12
By contrast, we can read reams of social justice literature without
encountering a single example of the proportional representation of
different groups in endeavors open to competition— in any country in the
world today, or at any time over thousands of years of recorded history.
 Among the many factors that can prevent equal human potentialities
from producing equally developed capabilities are factors over which
humans have very little control— such as geography13— and other factors
over which humans have no control at all, such as the past. There are
innumerable things that can create unequal chances, some of which are
worth examining in some detail.
To begin with a very mundane example of a demonstrable inequality of
capabilities, most of the leading brands of beer in the United States were
created by people of German ancestry.14 China’s Tsingtao beer was also
created by people of German ancestry.15 Germans have also been prominent
among beer producers in Argentina,16 Brazil17 and Australia.18 In Europe,
Germany has long been the leading producer of beer.19
It so happens that Germans were producing beer back in the days of the
Roman Empire.20 When a particular people has been doing a particular
thing for more than a thousand years, is it surprising if they tend to be more
successful in that particular endeavor than others who have had no such
history?
Here we are not discussing innate potential for achievements in general,
but developed capabilities for doing very specific things. Whatever the
combination of circumstances that may have led Germans to begin brewing
beer in ancient times, the skills they developed over the many centuries
since then are a fact of life today. The same is true of other groups that have
developed particular skills in other particular endeavors in the past. One of
many things that no individual, no institution and no society has any control
over is the past. The past is irrevocable. And, as a noted historian said: “We
do not live in the past, but the past in us.”21
Germans are by no means unique in having particular things that they do
better than many other peoples. Conversely, there are some things that other
peoples do better than Germans. It is common, for example, to hear people
speak of “French cuisine” or “Italian cuisine.” But seldom— if ever— do
people speak of “German cuisine” or “English cuisine.” Yet these are all
peoples in countries clustered together in Europe. Rome and Berlin are
about the same distance from each other as New York and Chicago, while
London and Paris are closer to each other than Los Angeles and San
Francisco.
 The point here is that, in what might seem like very similar
circumstances, there can be very different histories, cultures and outcomes
in particular endeavors. Particular groups having particular skills in
particular kinds of endeavors have been a common fact of life over the
centuries and in countries around the world.22 Even if two groups happen to
live in identical tangible surroundings today, how likely would they be to
have had the same environmental influences throughout all the scores of
millennia of human existence?
Scots have long been internationally renowned for the quality of the
whisky they produce, as the French have been for their wines. But the Scots
cannot match the French in producing wine, because the grapes that grow in
France do not thrive in Scotland’s colder climate. There is no reason
whatever why the Scots should be expected to be equal to the French in
producing wine— or either of them equal to the Germans in producing beer.
Neither race nor racism, nor any other form of discrimination, is
necessary to account for such reciprocal inequalities. Nor have those who
automatically invoke discriminatory biases, as explanations for unequal
outcomes, been able to cite any country, anywhere in the world, that has
had the proportional demographic representation which they have made a
criterion.

RECIPROCAL INEQUALITIES
While group equalities in the same endeavors are by no means common,
what is common are reciprocal inequalities among groups in different
endeavors. The equality among different groups of human beings—
presupposed by those who regard disparities in outcomes as evidence or
proof of discriminatory bias— might well be true as regards innate
potentialities. But people are not hired or paid for their innate potentialities.
They are hired, paid, admitted to colleges or accepted into other desired
positions on the basis of their developed capabilities relevant to the
particular endeavor. In these terms, reciprocal inequalities might suggest
equal potentialities, without providing any basis for expecting equal
outcomes.
Even groups lagging in many kinds of achievement tend nevertheless to
have some particular endeavors where they do not merely hold their own
but excel. Groups lacking in their educational backgrounds, for example,
may lag in many other endeavors, for which such a background is essential
— and yet such generally lagging groups have often excelled in some other
endeavors, where personal talent and dedication are key factors. Sports and
entertainment have long been among such endeavors with high
achievements for such American groups rising out of poverty as the Irish,
blacks and Southern whites.23
While group equality— in either incomes or capabilities— is hard to
find, it is also hard to find any ethnic or other large social group that has no
endeavor in which it is above average.
Reciprocal inequalities abound— even when equality does not. As we
have seen, different ethnic groups dominate different American sports. One
consequence of this is that the degree of inequality of group representation
in American sports as a whole is not as severe as in each individual sport. A
similar principle applies, for similar reasons, in other endeavors, because of
reciprocal inequalities.
If one looks at wealthy, historic individuals in commerce and industry,
for example, one could find Jews far more widely represented among
historic leaders in retailing, finance and garment production and sales than
in the steel industry, automobile production or coal mining. In the
professions as well, groups that have similar representation in the
professions as a whole can have very different representations in particular
professions, such as engineering, medicine or the law. Asian American
professionals are not necessarily concentrated in the same professions as
Irish American professionals.
Because of reciprocal inequalities, the more narrowly defined the
endeavor, the less likely are different groups to be comparably represented.
Yet crusaders for social justice often decry uneven representation of groups
in an individual company, as evidence or proof of employer discrimination
in that particular company.
When different peoples evolve differently in very different settings and
conditions, they can develop different talents that create reciprocal
inequalities of achievements in a wide range of endeavors, without
necessarily creating equality, or even comparability, in any of those
endeavors. Such reciprocal inequalities lend no support to theories of either
genetic determinism or discriminatory biases as automatic explanations of
inequalities.
Many assumptions and phrases in the social justice literature are
repeated endlessly, without any empirical test. When women are
statistically “under-represented” in Silicon Valley, for example, some
people automatically assume that to be due to sex discrimination by Silicon
Valley employers. It so happens that the work done in Silicon Valley is
based on an application of engineering skills, including computer software
engineering— and American women receive less than 30 percent of the
degrees in engineering, whether at the college level or the postgraduate
level.24
When American men receive less than 20 percent of the undergraduate
degrees in education, and only 22 percent and 32 percent of master’s
degrees and doctoral degrees, respectively, in the same subject,25 is it
surprising that men are under-represented among school teachers and
women are under-represented in engineering occupations?
Comparing the statistical representation of women and men in either of
these occupations is like comparing apples and oranges, when their
educational specializations are so different. These educational specialization
decisions were usually made individually, years before either the women or
the men reached an employer to begin a professional career.
A more general question arises when the incomes of women as a whole
are compared to the incomes of men as a whole. This leaves out many
specific differences in the life patterns of women and men.26 One of the
most basic of these differences is that women are full-time, year-round
workers significantly less often than men. U.S. Census Bureau data show
that, in 2019, there were 15 million more male, full-time, year-round
workers than female, full-time, year-round workers.27 The work patterns of
women include more part-time work, and some whole years when many
women are out of the labor force entirely, often due to staying home to take
care of young children.28
When these and other differences in work patterns are taken into
account, male-female differences in income shrink drastically, and in some
cases reverse.29 As far back as 1971, single women in their thirties who had
worked continuously since leaving school were earning slightly more than
men of the same description.30
When there are statistical differences in the representation of various
ethnic groups, different patterns within these groups themselves are
likewise often overlooked. A typical example of equating differences in
demographic representation with employer discrimination was a headline in
a San Francisco newspaper:31

Why are Black and Latino people

still kept out of tech industry?

Are Asians “kept out” of professional basketball or Californians “kept

out” of the National Hockey League? Is equal demographic representation
so widespread or so automatic in other endeavors that its absence in a
particular endeavor can only be due to someone keeping particular people
out?
As in the case of sex differences in demographic representation in an
engineering endeavor, ethnic differences in educational qualifications for an
engineering career are blatant. Asian Americans have more college degrees
in engineering than either blacks or Hispanics,32 each of whom outnumbers
Asian Americans in the U.S. population. At the Ph.D. level, Asian
Americans’ engineering degrees outnumber the engineering Ph.D.s of
blacks and Hispanics put together.33
Such ethnic disparities in engineering degrees are by no means peculiar
to the United States. In Malaysia during the 1960s, members of the Chinese
minority received 408 engineering degrees, while members of the Malay
majority received just 4.34
When comparing different ethnic groups in a given endeavor, we are
again comparing apples and oranges in terms of specialized education or
other specialized preparations. In these circumstances, equal opportunity—
in the sense of applying the same standards to everyone— does not produce
equal outcomes, even if no one is “kept out.” There is no way that the
Chinese in Malaysia could “keep out” Malay students in universities run by
Malays, and subject to the authority of the Malaysian government, also run
by Malays.
 The “disparate impact” standard, used by courts of law for determining
employer discrimination, implicitly assumes something that no one can
seem to find anywhere— equal demographic representation of different
groups. Any number of scholarly international studies have found gross
disparities common in countries around the world.35 One of these studies
concluded: “In no society have all regions and all parts of the population
developed equally.”36
Nevertheless, some Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have accepted
“disparate impact” statistics as evidence or proof of employer
discrimination, even though the Supreme Court itself has had statistical
disparities more extreme than the disparities used to charge employers with
discrimination. For eight consecutive years— from 2010 to 2017— all
Supreme Court Justices were either Catholic or Jewish,37 in a country
where Protestants outnumber Catholics and Jews combined.38 Yet one of
the most obvious reasons for doubting any negative intention or conspiracy
is that these Justices were appointed by Presidents of both political parties,
and all those Presidents were Protestants.
None of this denies that employer biases are a factor that can be, and has
been, responsible for some disparities in employment outcomes. But human
biases have no monopoly among the many things that prevent “equal
chances.”

ORIGINS OF INEQUALITIES
The question whether different social groups have equal or unequal
capabilities in various endeavors is very different from the question whether
racial or sexual differences create inherently different mental potential
determined by genes. The genetic determinism assumption that reigned
supreme among American intellectuals of the Progressive era in the early
twentieth century is an irrelevant issue in this context, though it will be
dealt with in Chapter 2, and has been dealt with more extensively
elsewhere.39
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that every social group— or
even every individual— has equal mental potential at the moment of
conception, that would still not be enough to guarantee even equal “native
intelligence” at birth, much less equally developed capabilities after
growing up in unequal circumstances and/or being culturally oriented
toward different goals in different fields.

Inequalities Among Individuals

Unequal circumstances begin in the womb. Research has shown
nutritional differences among pregnant women reflected later in IQ
differences among their children, when these children were old enough to
be tested.40 Mothers’ intakes of various substances can have positive or
negative effects on a child’s IQ and general well-being.41
Even where we might reasonably expect to find the greatest equality of
developed capabilities— among children born to the same parents and
raised in the same home— research going back as far as the nineteenth
century, and including countries on both sides of the Atlantic, has shown
that children who are the first-born in their family have, as a group, higher
average IQs,42 a higher rate of college completion,43 and are over-
represented among high achievers in a variety of endeavors.44
In the United States, for example, a study found that more than half the
National Merit Scholarship finalists were a first-born child, even in five-
child families, as well as in two-child, three-child and four-child families.45
In other words, in five-child families, the first-born was the finalist more
often than the other four siblings combined. Other measures of educational
success or career success have likewise shown the first-born— and an only
child— to be over-represented among the top performers in various
endeavors, whether in the United States or among top performers in other
countries surveyed.46
The first-born, or an only child, can have the undivided attention of both
parents during a child’s crucial earliest development. This is something
which later siblings obviously cannot have. Conversely, children raised
where there is only one parent present have been found in a number of
studies to have a higher incidence of many social problems— again, both in
the United States and on the other side of the Atlantic.47 Studies of boys
raised without a father present have found them very much over-represented
among people with pathologies ranging from truancy to murder.48
As one study put it, these pathologies were more highly correlated with
fatherlessness than with any other factor, “surpassing even race and
poverty.”49 Fatherless boys had a higher than average rate of incarceration,
whether they were black or white, though the incidence of fatherless boys
has been higher among blacks.50 Not all differences between races are due
to race— either in the sense of genetics or in the sense of racial
discrimination.
Clearly, there were no “equal chances” for these boys, whether they
were treated fairly or unfairly by people they encountered in institutions
ranging from schools to police departments. Girls were also affected
negatively, as reflected in such things as higher rates of teenage pregnancy,
when raised by one parent.51 Very similar patterns of pathology were found
in England, where the ethnic makeup of the underclass population is very
different from that in the United States.52 In England, the underclass is
predominantly white, but it shows many social patterns very similar to the
social patterns of low-income blacks in the United States,53 even though the
English underclass has no “legacy of slavery” to be used as an automatic
explanation.
When American children are raised in different social classes, with
different child-rearing practices, the chances of these children growing up
with equal capabilities in adulthood can be seriously reduced. Research has
shown that children raised by parents with professional occupations hear
more than three times as many words per hour as children raised in families
on welfare. Moreover, these are far more often positive and encouraging
words when the parents are professionals, and more often negative and
discouraging words when the family is on welfare.54
Can anyone seriously believe that children spending their formative
years growing up in homes this different are likely to be the same as others
in school, on a job or elsewhere?
In putting assumptions to the test of facts, a clear distinction must be
maintained between equal potentialities at the beginning of life and equally
developed capabilities later on. Some social justice advocates may
implicitly assume that various groups have similar developed capabilities,
so that different outcomes appear puzzling. But, when it comes to actual
performance capabilities, a man is not even equal to himself— either
physically or mentally— at different stages of his life, much less equal to all
other people in their varying stages of life.
Inequalities Among Groups
The seemingly invincible fallacy at the heart of the social justice vision
is that large categories of people— classes, races, nations— would tend to
be either equal, or at least comparable, in their outcomes in various
endeavors, if it were not for some discriminatory bias that has intervened to
produce the large disparities we see around us.
Yet different groups, with different median ages— varying by a decade
or two— are unlikely to be equal in endeavors requiring either the physical
vitality of youth or the experience that comes with age. When Japanese
Americans have a median age of 52 and Mexican Americans have a median
age of 28,55 their different representation in different occupations and at
different income levels is hardly surprising. If these two groups were
identical in every other respect, age differences alone would still be enough
to make them differ in incomes, since middle-aged Americans have higher
median incomes than Americans in their twenties.56
With nations— as with classes, races or ethnic groups— age differences
alone are enough to make equal economic or other outcomes very unlikely.
There are whole nations whose populations have a median age over 40
(Germany, Italy, Japan), and other nations whose median ages are under 20
(Nigeria, Afghanistan, Angola).57 Why should anyone expect a nation
where half the population are infants, young children and teenagers to have
the same work experience and education— the same human capital— as a
nation where half the population is 40 years old or older?
Different nations are also located in different geographic, climatic and
other settings, with different advantages and disadvantages. Even if their
populations had identical potential, they could hardly be expected to have
equally developed capabilities, after centuries of being confronted with the
task of surviving and evolving in very different settings around the world.
Whole continents differ greatly from one another. Although Africa is
more than twice the size of Europe, the European coastline is thousands of
kilometers longer than the African coastline.58 This might seem to be
almost impossible. But the European coastline has innumerable twists and
turns, creating harbors where ships can dock safely, sheltered from the
rough waters of the open seas. These harbors are an even bigger advantage
than the longer coastline as such.
 The European coastline is also increased by the many islands and
peninsulas that make up more than one-third of that continent’s total land
area.59 By contrast, the African coastline is smooth, with far fewer harbors
and far fewer islands and peninsulas— which make up only 2 percent of
Africa’s land area.60
Is it surprising that Europeans have long had the benefit of far more
maritime trade than Africans? Adam Smith noted this geographic difference
back in the eighteenth century,61 and he also rejected claims that Africans
were racially inferior.62 Other scholars have likewise described the
numerous and severe geographic handicaps of sub-Saharan Africa
especially.63 Distinguished French historian Fernand Braudel concluded:
“In understanding Black Africa, geography is more important than
history.”64
Harbors are just one of the various kinds of navigable waterways with
major implications for the economic and social development of human
beings. That is because of the enormous difference in costs between water
transportation and land transportation. In the ancient world, for example,
the cost of transporting a cargo across the length of the Mediterranean Sea
—more than 2,000 miles— was less than the cost of transporting that same
cargo just 75 miles inland.65 This meant that people living on the coast had
a vastly larger range of economic and social interactions with other coastal
people and places than people living inland had with other people living
inland or with their coastal compatriots.
A geographic treatise noted that, in ancient times, Europe’s
Mediterranean hinterland was “lingering in a backward civilization as
compared with the Mediterranean coastland.”66 Nor was this peculiar to the
Mediterranean region. It has been common in various parts of the world that
“the coasts of a country are the first part of it to develop, not an indigenous
or local civilization, but a cosmopolitan culture, which later spreads inland
from the seaboard.”67 There have been special exceptions, but this has been
a general pattern.68
This pattern reflected the great difference between the cost of water
transportation and land transportation, which in turn affects economic
prospects in many ways. Most of the large cities around the world are
located on navigable waterways, because transporting the huge volume of
food required to keep people fed in those cities would be enormously more
expensive if all food had to be transported solely over land— especially
before the modern invention of railroads and trucks during the past two
centuries. Even today, places with access to navigable rivers have great
economic advantages, especially if these are navigable rivers that connect to
coastal areas.69
Climate is another aspect of nature that can influence the economic and
social development of human beings. Fertile soils are found more often in
the temperate zones than in the tropics.70 This obviously affects the
productivity of agriculture. But its effects do not end there. Urbanization
depends on food supplied from outside urban communities, with agriculture
usually being the primary source. Over the centuries, a wholly
disproportionate share of advances in science, technology and other
endeavors have originated in urban communities.71
An empirical study at Harvard’s Center for International Development
found that places in the temperate zone, with fertile soil and located within
100 kilometers of the sea, were 8 percent of the world’s inhabited land area.
But such places had 23 percent of the world’s population and produced 53
percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.72 This is reflected in
worldwide differences in income per person between such places and the
rest of the world.73
This is just one of many differences among the world’s geographic
regions. When Europeans arrived in the Western Hemisphere, the
indigenous peoples had no horses, oxen, camels or elephants, nor any other
heavy-duty draft animals or beasts of burden to provide transportation for
people and cargoes, such as animals provided in much of the Eastern
Hemisphere. Llamas existed in the Inca empire in part of South America,
where they were used as beasts of burden. But even in that fraction of South
America where llamas existed, they were not large enough to be
comparable to the animals used in the other half of the world.
The dearth of draft animals and beasts of burden in the Western
Hemisphere had wider economic implications. By making land
transportation even more costly than usual, the lack of animals limited the
distances where it was economically feasible to transport cargoes. This in
turn also limited the size of vessels for water transportation. Canoes were
common in the Western Hemisphere. But vessels of the size of European
ships, or the even larger ships in China during Europe’s Middle Ages, were
not economically viable without animals to transport the vast cargoes, from
miles around, required to fill such ships.
Nor were wheeled vehicles used in the Western Hemisphere before
Europeans arrived. The wheel has sometimes been considered an epoch-
making invention for economic development. But wheeled vehicles,
without animals to pull them, had no such potential. The Mayans invented
wheels, but they were used on children’s toys.74 Had the Mayans been in
communication with the Incas and their llamas, conceivably wheeled
vehicles, pulled by animals, might have become an economic asset in the
Western Hemisphere. But geographic limitations on the size of a cultural
universe in the Western Hemisphere at that time prevented the creation of
such a development.
When the British confronted the Iroquois in North America, these were
peoples drawing upon very different-sized cultural universes. Although the
Iroquois were a confederation of tribes living in a large area, the animals
present on the vast Eurasian landmass— and absent in the Western
Hemisphere— gave the British access to the inventions, discoveries and
knowledge from far wider regions of the world. The British were able to
navigate across the ocean by using the compass, invented in China, steering
with rudders invented in China, doing calculations with mathematical
concepts from Egypt, using a numbering system invented in India, and
writing on paper invented in China, using letters created by the Romans.
The Iroquois had no comparable access to the cultural achievements of
the Incas or the Mayans.75 Nor did they have as wide an exposure to the
many diseases that spread across the vast Eurasian landmass— spanning
more than 10,000 kilometers— creating devastating epidemics in centuries
past, but leaving the surviving populations in Europe with biological
resistance to many diseases, whose germs they took with them to the
Western Hemisphere. There those diseases devastated many indigenous
populations, who lacked biological resistance to those diseases. Death rates,
sometimes exceeding 50 percent or more, among the indigenous peoples
facilitated the European conquest of North and South America.
 Neither with geographic factors nor other aspects of nature can we
automatically assume either equal or random outcomes among human
beings. There are too many factors at work to expect them all to be equal, or
to have remained equal over the thousands of years in which human beings
have developed economically and socially.
Nature— as exemplified by such things as differences in geography,
climate, diseases and animals— has not been egalitarian, despite
Rousseau’s claim that nature produced equality. As distinguished economic
historian David S. Landes put it, “nature like life is unfair”76 and “The
world has never been a level playing field.”77
Numerous geographic influences, varying from place to place, do not
imply geographic determinism. These and other factors interact with human
knowledge and human errors, as these have developed in different eras.
Famines have occurred in places where there was very fertile land that
produced food surpluses for export, both before the famine and after the
famine.78 The supply of natural resources is not fixed, because what is a
natural resource depends on what human beings know how to use, and that
changes with changes in human knowledge from one era to the next.
Western Europe and Northern Europe have long had more of the natural
resources used in an industrial revolution— iron ore and coal, for example
— than did Eastern Europe or Southern Europe. But none of that mattered
during the many thousands of years before human beings’ knowledge
developed to the point where they were capable of creating an industrial
revolution. Which part of Europe was more advantaged or disadvantaged
varied with particular eras, and the human knowledge available in those
eras.
Nature has been no more fair between the sexes than in its treatment of
other social groups, societies or nations. Human double standards of sexual
behavior for women and men have been a pale reflection of nature’s more
fundamental double standards. No matter how reckless, selfish, stupid or
irresponsible a man may be, he will never become pregnant. The plain and
simple fact that women have babies has meant that they may not have equal
chances in many other aspects of life, even when some human societies
offer equal opportunity for people with the same developed capabilities.79
 The seemingly invincible fallacy that only human bias can explain
different economic and social outcomes among peoples is belied repeatedly
by hard facts in societies around the world. Whatever the condition of
human beings at the beginning of the species, scores of millennia had
already come and gone before anyone coined the phrase “social justice.”
During those almost unimaginably vast expanses of time, different
peoples evolved differently in very different settings around the world—
developing different talents that created reciprocal inequalities of
achievements in different endeavors, without necessarily creating equality,
or even comparability, in any of those endeavors.

Environment and Human Capital

Environment cannot be defined as simply the current tangible
surroundings. Nor can human capital be defined as simply education or
skills. Qualities such as honesty are not only moral virtues for individuals,
but human capital for communities, their cultures and their economies.
Where a geographic setting offers only limited and isolated patches of
marginally fertile land that can sustain only small communities living close
to the margins of subsistence, there is little to gain from deception and
everything to lose if the people in that environment do not stick together
and be honest with one another, for the sake of the mutual trust and
cooperation required for their survival, in circumstances where survival is
by no means secure.
People living for centuries in small, poor and isolated communities, with
neither police forces nor fire departments, know that any emergency can
become a catastrophe, unless they all stick together and come to each
other’s rescue. Such circumstances— obvious to those who live in these
circumstances— can promote honesty and cooperation more than any
preaching or laws. Other people in very different and more favorable
circumstances may or may not develop a comparable sense of honesty and
cooperation.
In short, honesty is one of many factors that cannot be assumed to be
equally present in all places or among all peoples. Nor does empirical
evidence suggest an equality in this factor, any more than in many other
factors. Among the simple tests used to assess the honesty in various
peoples and places have been projects that deliberately left wallets
containing both money and personal identification in public places in
various cities around the world.
When one such project in 2013 left a dozen wallets in public places, in
various cities, the number of wallets returned with the money still in them
varied from eleven out of twelve in Helsinki (Finland) to one out of twelve
in Lisbon (Portugal). Moreover, the one wallet that was returned in Lisbon
was returned by a couple visiting from the Netherlands; no Portuguese
returned any.80 An earlier test found 100 percent of the wallets returned in
Norway, 67 percent in the United States, 30 percent returned in China and
21 percent returned in Mexico.81
A different test of honesty was a five-year study of which United
Nations diplomats paid their parking tickets in New York City, where
diplomatic immunity shielded them from prosecution. Egypt, with 24 U.N.
diplomats, had thousands of unpaid parking tickets during that five-year
period. Meanwhile, Canada— with the same number of U.N. diplomats as
Egypt— had no unpaid parking tickets at all during that same five-year
period. Nor did Britain, with 31 U.N. diplomats or Japan with 47 U.N.
diplomats.82
John Stuart Mill pointed out in the nineteenth century that the level of
honesty or dishonesty in a society was a major factor in the development of
its economy. Using the high level of corruption in Russia as an example,
Mill concluded that it must be “an immense drag on the capabilities of
economical improvement.”83 Since then— whether under the czars, the
communists or in post-communist Russia— corruption has been
pervasive.84 At one time, some individuals were described by fellow
Russians as being “as honest as a German”85— a tacit admission that such
qualities were not nearly as common among Russians.
Conversely, the industrial revolution in England was aided by
investments from foreign countries, whose investors were able to rely on
the reputation of British law for honesty and impartiality.
There is no more reason to expect all individuals, groups or nations to be
equally honest than there is to expect them to have the same skills, the same
wealth or the same IQs.
 Even in countries with widespread corruption, where what has been
called “the radius of trust” seldom extends beyond the nuclear family, there
can be particular groups who have sufficient trust among themselves that
they can conduct business on the basis of verbal agreements, without
recourse to unreliable legal systems. Marwaris in India and various sub-
groups among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia have even been able
to engage in international trade with members of their own groups in other
countries, on the basis of verbal understandings.86
This can be an enormous competitive economic advantage in countries
with unreliable legal and political institutions, when indigenous rivals have
to be far more cautious about economic transactions. But, even in a country
with more reliable institutions, there are advantages in being able, as
Hasidic Jews in New York are, to give each other consignments of jewels to
sell, and share the profits on the basis of verbal agreements.87
Whatever the level of honesty in a given society, there is no reason to
expect existing disparities in these respects to remain the same forever,
when so many other things have changed over the centuries. But, at any
given time, honesty is one of many factors that vary, making equal chances
for all very unlikely.

Episodic Factors
In addition to on-going differences among peoples, there have also been
unpredictable episodic events— such as wars, famines, and epidemics—
that can disrupt the development path of particular peoples. The outcomes
of military conflicts can be a matter of chances that are incalculable— and
yet able to determine the fate of whole societies or nations for subsequent
generations or centuries.
Had Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, instead of his enemy the
Duke of Wellington, the history of peoples and nations across the continent
of Europe could have been very different. Wellington himself said
afterwards that the outcome of that battle was “the nearest run thing you
ever saw in your life.”88 It could have gone either way. Had the earlier
battle against invading Islamic forces at Tours in 732 or at the siege of
Vienna in 1529 gone the other way, Europe would be culturally a very
different place today.
 As things turned out, Europe has been far from being a culturally,
economically or otherwise homogeneous civilization, with its peoples
having the same quantity and kind of human capital across the continent.
Instead, the languages of Western Europe acquired written versions
centuries before the languages of Eastern Europe.89 This had major
implications for the education of the peoples in these two regions, who had
little chance to be equal in endeavors requiring the kinds of knowledge and
skills taught from books in schools and colleges.
This was not simply an inequality confined to the past, for the evolution
to the present began from very different pasts in different places and times.
Eastern Europe has been poorer and less industrially developed than
Western Europe for centuries,90 and the homicide rate in Eastern Europe
has been some multiple of the homicide rate in Western Europe for
centuries.91
Nor was this east-west divide the only source of national inequalities
within Europe. At the beginning of the twentieth century, “when only 3
percent of the population of Great Britain was illiterate, the figure for Italy
was 48 percent, for Spain 56 percent, for Portugal 78 percent.”92 There
were similar disparities in 1900 within the Habsburg Empire, where the rate
of illiteracy ranged from 3 percent in Bohemia to 73 percent in Dalmatia.93
Massive scholarly studies have found great differences in both
technological development and in the number of leading figures in the arts
and sciences in different parts of Europe.94
It was much the same story in Africa, where in 1957 only 11 percent of
the children attending secondary school in Nigeria were from the northern
part of the country, where a majority of the population lived.95 Someone
born in northern Nigeria had nowhere near the same chances as someone
born in southern Nigeria— a fact reflected in the different economic
success of tribes from these different regions of the country.96
Both in Europe and in Nigeria, different circumstances led different
groups to different levels of literacy and different school attendance. In
Europe— in centuries past, when people were far poorer— some groups
working in agriculture had little need for literacy, but often had great need
for the work of children, in order to keep families adequately fed. In such
circumstances, children’s education was often sacrificed, depriving them of
even second-hand knowledge of a wider world.
In other parts of the world as well, innumerable factors influenced the
development of innumerable peoples. It would be an incredible coincidence
if all these factors affected all these peoples the same way during the many
thousands of years in the past. What is also very unlikely, over vast
expanses of time, is that the very same peoples would have been the highest
achievers throughout many thousands of years. Just within a fraction of
those millennia for which there has been recorded history, the peoples who
have been in the forefront of human achievements have changed
dramatically.
For centuries, China was far more technologically advanced than any
European nation— having cast iron a thousand years before the
Europeans.97 The Chinese also had mechanical printing on paper, during
centuries when Europeans were still writing by hand on costlier materials.98
Educating most Europeans with costly individual manuscripts, rather than
mass-produced books, was not an economically viable prospect. Only after
Europeans developed mechanical printing themselves was it feasible for
them to educate more than a small fraction of their populations. And only
after all the languages of different European peoples developed written
versions was an equal education, and the development of equal human
capital, even theoretically possible.
Differences in human capital— including honesty and languages, as well
as occupational skills and industrial and commercial talents— have been
common between nations and within nations. There was no way that people
on the short end of these circumstantial disparities had “equal chances” of
developing their capabilities, even in a society with equal opportunity, in
the sense of open competition for all, and equal standards applied to all.
We might agree that “equal chances for all” would be desirable. But that
in no way guarantees that we have either the knowledge or the power
required to make that goal attainable, without ruinous sacrifices of other
desirable goals, ranging from freedom to survival.
Do we want the mixture of students who are going to be trained to do
advanced medical research to be representative of the demographic make-
up of the population as a whole— or do we want whatever students, from
whatever background, who have track records demonstrating a mastery of
medical science that gives them the highest probability of finding cures for
cancer, Alzheimer’s and other devastating diseases? Endeavors have
purposes. Is indulging ideological visions more important than ending
cancer and Alzheimer’s?
Do you want airlines to have pilots chosen for demographic
representation of various groups, or would you prefer to fly on planes
whose pilots were chosen for their mastery of all the complex things that
increase your chances of arriving safely at your destination? Once we
recognize the many factors that can create different developed capabilities,
“equal chances for all” becomes very different in its consequences from
“equal opportunity.” And consequences matter— or should matter— more
so than some attractive or fashionable theory.
More fundamentally, do we want a society in which some babies are
born into the world as heirs of pre-packaged grievances against other babies
born the same day— blighting both their lives— or do we want to at least
leave them the option to work things out better in their lives than we have in
ours?
Chapter 2

RACIAL FALLACIES

R acial and ethnic issues have often produced vehement assertions in

various times and places around the world. These assertions have ranged
from the genetic determinism of early twentieth-century America— which
proclaimed that “race is everything”1 as an explanation of group differences
in economic and social outcomes— to the opposite view at the end of that
century that racism was the primary explanation of such group differences.
That different people have different beliefs is hardly unusual in the
history of human beings. What is unusual— and dangerous— is (1) the
extent to which such beliefs prevail without being subjected to tests of
either facts or logic, and (2) the extent to which people who present
empirical evidence counter to prevailing beliefs are met with ad hominem
denunciations and with efforts to suppress their evidence, by means ranging
from censorship to violence, especially on academic campuses.
These are not simply dangers to particular individuals or particular
viewpoints. These are dangers to the basic functioning of a free society of
fallible human beings, whose differing beliefs must be put to some test.
Otherwise, a free society can either destroy freedom or destroy itself in
internal conflict. Both have happened all too often, in all too many places,
over the centuries.

ASSERTIONS VERSUS EVIDENCE

The fundamental issue is not whether employer discrimination— or
societal discrimination in general— can be a cause of different economic
and social outcomes among racial or ethnic groups. It can be, it has been,
and there is no reason whatever to preclude it from the possibilities in our
own times. But there is also no reason to preclude any of the many other
factors that have also produced outcome disparities among all sorts of
groups, around the world and throughout recorded history.
Since the most often discussed disparities in the United States have been
disparities between black and white Americans, this is as good a place to
begin as any. The question is whether differences between black and white
Americans are unusual, or are of an unusually larger magnitude than
differences among other groups in the United States or elsewhere. The
question is also whether there are any other discernible reasons for those
differences besides race— that is, genetics— or racism.
Median black American family income has been lower than median
white American family income for generations. As regards the magnitude
of the difference, official government data going back as far as 1947 show
that the disparity has not been as large as 2:1 in any of those years.2 How
does that particular disparity compare to disparities among other groups in
the United States, or among groups in other countries?
Within the United States, the median per capita income of such Asian
ethnic groups as those of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Korean ancestry is
more than twice as high as the median per capita income of Mexican
Americans.3 These Asian groups also have higher median per capita
incomes than the median per capita income of white Americans.4 Asian
Indians have nearly three times the median per capita incomes of Mexican
Americans, and a median per capita income more than $15,000 a year
higher than the median per capita income of white Americans.5 Among full-
time, year-round male workers, Asian Indian males earned over $39,000 a
year more than white male full-time, year-round workers.6
Is this the “white supremacy” we are so often warned about in some
quarters? Even among low-income, non-white groups, there is considerable
overlap with the incomes of white Americans. For example, 2020 census
data show more than 9 million black Americans with higher incomes than
the median incomes of white Americans.7 There are also thousands of black
millionaire families,8 and even several black billionaires, including Tiger
Woods and Oprah Winfrey.9
However much this situation differs from the image of blacks in political
rhetoric, and in much of the media and academia— an image that often
seems more like what existed a century ago— the current situation is no
reason for complacency. On the contrary, it is a reason for a younger
generation of blacks to educate themselves for opportunities that are clearly
available, and to advance themselves even more than previous generations
of black people have.
Nevertheless, economic differences between different groups are a
special concern when discussing different rates of poverty. For example, the
poverty rate among black American families as a whole has long been
higher than the poverty rate among white American families as a whole.10
But, over a span of more than a quarter of a century since 1994, in no year
has the annual poverty rate of black married-couple families been as high
as 10 percent. And in no year in more than half a century since 1959 has the
national poverty rate of Americans as a whole been as low as 10 percent.11
If black family poverty is caused by “systemic racism,” do racists make
an exception for blacks who are married? Do racists either know or care
whether blacks are married?
By contrast, single-parent families have much higher poverty rates than
married-couple families— whether they are black or white. White, female-
headed, single-parent families have had a poverty rate more than double
the poverty rate of black married-couple families in every year from 1994
to 2020, the latest year for which data are currently available.12 If “white
supremacists” were so powerful, how could this happen?
Male-headed, single-parent families are rarer than female-headed,
single-parent families, among both blacks and whites. White, male-headed,
single-parent families have had a lower rate of poverty than white, female-
headed, single-parent families. Nevertheless, white, male-headed, single-
parent families have also had a higher poverty rate than black married-
couple families, in every year from 2003 to 2020.13
Statistical differences between races are not automatically due to race—
either in the sense of being caused by genetics or being a result of racial
discrimination. Differences in the proportion of single-parent families
among various racial groups are other differences that affect differences in
income. So are differences in median age, and in education— among other
factors.
Just as income disparities are by no means unique among American
racial or ethnic groups, neither are disparities within such groups
necessarily any less than disparities between these groups.
In New York City, for example, in school year 2017–2018 there were
dozens of places in low-income minority neighborhoods where public
charter schools and traditional public schools, serving the same local
community, were housed in the same buildings. When black and Hispanic
students in both kinds of schools took the same statewide test in
mathematics, the charter school students achieved the official “proficient”
level in mathematics more than 6 times as often as children of the same
ethnicities in traditional public schools housed in the very same buildings.14
These are huge disparities within the same groups, so that neither race nor
racism can account for these huge differences.15 Nor can culturally biased
tests.
Similarly, a 1930s study of the black community in Chicago found that
the delinquency rate within that community ranged from more than 40
percent in some black neighborhoods to less than 2 percent in some other
black neighborhoods.16 Again, these were disparities within the same racial
group in the same city at the same time.
Within the white population as well, there have long been internal
disparities as great as the disparities between blacks and whites. In 1851,
for example, when the white population of the South was about half as large
as the white population in other regions, only 8 percent of the patents issued
in the United States went to residents of the Southern states.17 Southern
whites also long lagged behind other whites in various work skills. For
example, although the South in 1860 had 40 percent of the nation’s dairy
cows, they produced just 20 percent of the nation’s butter and only 1
percent of the nation’s cheese.18 Southerners’ lags in the dairy industry
continued on into the twentieth century.19
In addition to such quantifiable differences as a higher rate of illiteracy
among Southern whites in the antebellum South than among their Northern
white contemporaries,20 many observers commented on a visibly lower
work effort among Southern whites. These observers included Alexis de
Tocqueville, in his classic Democracy in America21 and Frederick Law
Olmsted in his widely read account of his travels in the antebellum South,
The Cotton Kingdom.22 Among white Southerners themselves, similar
observations were made by General Robert E. Lee,23 antebellum Southern
writer Hinton Helper24 and twentieth-century Southern historians U.B.
Phillips25 and Rupert B. Vance.26
Even today, in the twenty-first century, there are counties in the
Appalachian regions of Kentucky— Clay County and Owsley County—
that are more than 90 percent white, where the median household income is
not only less than half the median household income of white Americans in
the country as a whole, but also thousands of dollars less than the median
household income of black Americans in the country as a whole.27 A
Census Bureau study found Owsley County to be the lowest-income county
in any American state in 2014, and its population was 99 percent white.28
These were not just isolated flukes in a particular year. These very same
counties had the very same income pattern in five different surveys, made
over more than half a century, during the years from 1969 to 2020.29
In 2014, an article in the New York Times Magazine rated American
counties in economic terms— and six of the bottom ten counties were in
eastern Kentucky.30 Although that article did not mention the race of the
people in those counties, Census data show that each of these six counties
had populations that were more than 90 percent white.31
Here too, this was not just a fluke in a particular year. Data for these
same six counties, surveyed over the same years from 1969 to 2020, show a
very similar pattern of median household incomes consistently far below
the median household income of whites nationwide, as well as median
household incomes consistently below the median household incomes of
blacks nationwide.32
In a sense, such patterns go back even further. More than a hundred
years ago, a scholarly treatise on geography pointed out how people of the
same race, living in different geographic settings, can have radically
different economic and social outcomes— using Kentucky communities
among the examples. This treatise referred to the “hill country of the
Cumberland Plateau,” with its “one-room cabins” and “a backward
population sprung from the same pure English stock as the Bluegrass
people.”33 Nor was this pattern peculiar to the United States.
According to the author, distinguished geographer Ellen Churchill
Semple, such “influences of environment” appear “in every part of the
world, in every race and every age.”34 Her own voluminous research, and
that of other scholars since then, show that people living in mountains and
foothills— “hillbillies” in American terminology— have usually lagged
both economically and in terms of social development.35 High levels of
high-school dropouts and low levels of college graduates among American
hillbillies are obvious examples of neglected social development.
What we learn from persistent and severe poverty in hillbilly
communities can be helpful in sorting out factors involved in the poverty
and lagging progress of other peoples, including racial minorities. If, by
some miracle, we could get to zero racism, it is by no means certain how
much effect that would have. People in low-income American hillbilly
counties already face zero racism, because these people are virtually all
white. Yet they have lower incomes than blacks.
Conversely, in a world where nobody believes that all racism has been
eliminated, black married couples have consistently had a lower poverty
rate than the national average, and less than half the poverty rate among
white, female-headed, single-parent families. In other words, some
behavior patterns seem to pay off, more so than an absence of racism.
Some emphasis on racism can even be counterproductive. President
Barack Obama related an experience he had when talking with a black
young man who wanted to become a pilot. This young man at first thought
of joining the U.S. Air Force, in order to get trained to be a pilot. But then
he said he realized that the Air Force “would never let a black man fly a
plane.”36 This was said decades after there was a whole squadron of black
American fighter pilots during World War II— and, in later years, two
black pilots went on to become generals in the U.S. Air Force.37 Whoever
indoctrinated this young man did him more harm than a racist could have,
by keeping him from even trying to become a pilot.
There are many reasons why different people are in poverty, and these
reasons are not limited to just the ones that happen to be currently in vogue,
such as discrimination by race or sex. None of this automatically tells us
how much effect discrimination, or any other factor, has on a given group’s
economic or other advancement, which can vary at different times or under
different conditions. But the facts of history can at least save us from
jumping to automatic conclusions, on the basis of rhetoric and repetition of
such catchwords as “legacy of slavery,” “white supremacy,” and “blaming
the victim.”
Alexis de Tocqueville set an unfortunate precedent, in the early
nineteenth century, when he attributed differences between Southern whites
and Northern whites to the existence of slavery in the South38— a view
echoed by both Frederick Law Olmsted39 and Hinton Helper.40 In reality,
however, the very same range of differences existed between the ancestors
of white Southerners and the ancestors of white Northerners when they
lived in different parts of Britain, before either of them had ever seen a
slave.41 The very same unsubstantiated assumption would be used again in
the twentieth century, and on into our own times, to try to explain
behavioral differences between blacks and whites by “a legacy of slavery.”
The higher incidence of children being born to unmarried women among
black Americans is among many other things attributed to a “legacy of
slavery.” But, for more than a hundred years after the end of slavery, most
black children were born to women who were married, and the children
were raised in two-parent homes. Daniel Patrick Moynihan became
alarmed, back in the 1960s, because 23.6 percent of black children were
born to single mothers in 1963— and that was up from 16.8 percent in
1940.42
Although these rates for black Americans were much higher than for
white Americans, the rate of births to unmarried women among whites also
rose suddenly and sharply in the 1960s, after having been— for decades—
only a small fraction of what it became after 1960.43 For neither blacks nor
whites does this pattern suggest a “legacy of slavery,” when this upturn in
births to unmarried women began for both races with the huge expansion of
the welfare state in the 1960s. This new pattern has now persisted for more
than half a century. In 2008, births to unmarried women among white
Americans reached almost 30 percent.44 This exceeded the 1963 levels
among black Americans that had alarmed Daniel Patrick Moynihan.45
The proportion of births to unmarried black mothers at the end of the
twentieth century (68.7 percent)46 still greatly exceeded the proportion
among unmarried white mothers as a whole. But, among white mothers
with less than 12 years of education, the rate of non-marital births in the
early years of the twenty-first century was not far behind at just over 60
percent.47
As with other disparities, differences between races are not necessarily
racial differences, either in the sense of being caused by genes or being
caused by racial discrimination. Some behavioral patterns produce similar
outcomes in groups that differ by race, so that these disparities in outcomes
can reflect disparities in behavior— for whatever reasons— without
implying either genetic determinism or societal discrimination.
Internationally, in the twenty-first century, there are a number of European
nations where at least 40 percent of the births are to unmarried women48—
and these nations have no “legacy of slavery.” But they have expanded
welfare states.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, more than a century ago, that
catchwords can “delay further analysis for fifty years.”49 Too many
catchwords have already delayed analysis longer than that— and are still
doing so.

GENETIC DETERMINISM
In the early decades of the twentieth century, when Progressivism was a
major new force among American intellectuals and in politics, one of
Progressivism’s central tenets was genetic determinism— the belief that
less successful races were genetically inferior.
Later, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, Progressives with
similar views on such other issues as the role of government, environmental
protection and legal philosophy, now took an opposite view on racial issues.
Less successful races were now seen as being automatically victims of
racism, as they had once been considered automatically inferior. The
conclusions were different, but the way evidence was used and the way
contrary views and contrary evidence were disregarded, was very similar.
Both sets of Progressives expressed utter certainty in their conclusions—
on this and other subjects— and dismissed critics as uninformed at best, and
confused or dishonest at worst.50
While Progressivism was an American movement, similar views and
attitudes existed under other names on the other side of the Atlantic. There
too, the prevailing views on race were opposite at the beginning of the
twentieth century from what they became at the end of that century, and on
into our own times.

Early Progressivism
Genetic determinism did not begin with the Progressives. In earlier
times, many people considered themselves born inherently superior to other
people, without requiring either the reality or the pretense of scientific
evidence.
Some considered themselves superior as a class or a race, or because of
royal blood, or whatever. In Britain, Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) wrote
a book titled Hereditary Genius, based on the fact that many outstanding
achievements were concentrated in particular families. This conclusion
might have had more weight as evidence if other families had comparable
opportunities, but such a requirement could hardly have been met then, and
it is not certain how often it can be met now.
A major piece of empirical evidence became available when soldiers in
the U.S. Army were given mental tests during the First World War. Mental
test scores from a sample of more than 100,000 of these tests showed that
black soldiers as a whole scored lower than white soldiers as a whole on
those tests. That was treated as irrefutable evidence that genetic
determinism was a proven fact.51 But an internal breakdown of the mental
test score data showed that black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois, New York
and Pennsylvania scored higher on the Army mental tests than white
soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi.52
If the reason for the over-all test score differences between the races
were genetic, people’s genes do not change when they cross a state line. But
some states do have better schools than others.
Even a moderately well-informed person in that era could hardly avoid
knowing that other things were not equal between the races in the South, as
Southern politicians of that era loudly proclaimed their determination to
keep things unequal. This went beyond an unwillingness to spend equally
on black and white schools. As far back as the end of the Civil War, when
thousands of white volunteers from the North went into the South to teach
the children of newly freed slaves, these teachers— mostly young women—
were not only ostracized by Southern whites, but were even harassed and
threatened.53
This was an era when many Southern whites did not want blacks to be
educated, and the education policies of Southern state governments
reflected that.54 When wealthy white philanthropists such as John D.
Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Julius Rosenwald sent money to help
create schools for black children in the South,55 the state of Georgia passed
a law, taxing donations to schools by people of a different race from the
race of the students in those schools.56
The most fundamental problem with the conclusions reached by the
genetic determinists of that era— and the opposite conclusions reached by
Progressives of a later era— was in the way they used empirical evidence.
Progressives in each era began with a preconception, and ended their
examination of evidence when they found data which seemed to fit their
preconception. Such a procedure may be enough to supply talking points.
But, if the goal is to find the truth, the search must continue, in order to see
if there are other data that conflict with the initial belief.
People with opposing views are often eager to supply opposing
evidence, so the difficulty is not in finding such evidence. The difficulty is
in whether such evidence will be examined. For example, were there other
groups of whites— besides soldiers from certain states during the First
World War— who scored as low on mental tests as blacks, or lower than
blacks, in the twentieth century? It turns out that there were. These would
include whites living in some American mountain and foothill
communities.57
There have also been white people living in the Hebrides islands off
Scotland,58 and white people living in canal boat communities in Britain,
with IQ test scores similar to those of black Americans.59 What these
particular whites have all had in common was isolation, whether
geographic isolation or social isolation. Such social isolation from the larger
society has also long been common among black Americans.
Although blacks in the U.S. Army during the First World War scored
marginally lower than various members of recently-arrived European
immigrant groups, other blacks— living in Northern communities— often
scored either equally or marginally higher on mental tests than these same
immigrant groups. These immigrants included Italian American children in
a 1923 survey of IQs.60 Similar results were found in a 1926 survey of IQ
results for Slovaks, Greeks, Spaniards and Portuguese in the United
States.61 During this era, most European immigrants settled outside the
South, and blacks outside the South had higher average IQs than blacks
living in the South.62
Whites living in isolated mountain and foothill communities are an
especially striking group, as regards poverty and isolation from both the
outside world and from similar communities in the same mountains and
foothills. We have seen how strikingly lower the incomes of such people
have been in Appalachian counties in the twenty-first century.63 Back in
1929, the IQs of children in Blue Ridge Mountain areas were studied, and
can be compared to the IQs of blacks, which averaged 85 nationally. The
average IQs of these white children in Blue Ridge Mountain communities
ranged from a high of 83.9 to a low of 61.2, varying with which particular
IQ test was used.64
White children in East Tennessee mountain schools in 1930 had an
average IQ of 82.4. As with black children with similar IQs, these white
mountain children had higher IQs when young— 94.68 at age six, declining
to 73.50 at age sixteen.65 A decade later, in 1940, after many improvements
in both the local environment and in the schools, children in the same
communities— and apparently from many of the same families66— had an
average IQ of 92.22. Now their average IQ at age six was 102.56, and this
declined to 80.00 at age sixteen.67
Clearly, these lower than average IQs were not due to race, but— before
1940— they were at least as far below the national average IQ of 100 as
were the IQs of black children. These results seem consistent with what
geographer Ellen Churchill Semple said, back in 1911, that human
advancement “slackens its pace” in the foothills and “comes to a halt” in the
mountains.68 Other studies of life in isolated mountain and foothill
communities around the world show similar patterns of both poverty and
lagging human development.69
Later years would bring additional evidence incompatible with genetic
determinism. A 1976 study showed that black orphans raised by white
families had significantly higher average IQs than other black children, and
IQs slightly above the national average.70 It so happens that one of the first
notable black scientists— George Washington Carver, in the early twentieth
century— was an orphan raised by a white family.71
Genetic determinism in the early twentieth century was by no means
simply an issue about black and white Americans. The belief that blacks
were genetically inferior was already so widely accepted that most of the
genetic determinism literature of that era focused on arguing that people
from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe were genetically inferior to
people from Western Europe and Northern Europe. This was a major issue
in that era, because large-scale emigration from Europe had changed in its
origins from predominantly Western Europe and Northern Europe in earlier
times to predominantly Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, beginning in
the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
Among the massive new wave of immigrants were Eastern European
Jews. A leading mental test authority in that era, Carl Brigham— creator of
the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)— said that the Army mental test results
tended to “disprove the popular belief that the Jew is highly intelligent.”72
Another mental test authority, H.H. Goddard, who tested children of these
Eastern European and Southern European immigrants at the Ellis Island
immigrant receiving facility, declared that “These people cannot deal with
abstractions.”73
Prominent economist of that era Francis A. Walker described
immigrants from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe as “beaten men from
beaten races”74— a “foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe,”
originating in places where “no breath of intellectual life has stirred for
ages.”75
Professor Edward A. Ross, an official of the American Economic
Association and President of the American Sociological Association, coined
the term “race suicide” to describe the prospect of a demographic
replacement over time of the Western Europeans and Northern Europeans
as the majority of the American population by Eastern Europeans and
Southern Europeans, because both these latter groups had a higher
birthrate.76 He called these new immigrants “oxlike men,” and descendants
of backward peoples, whose very physical appearance “proclaims
inferiority of type.”77
 Professor Ross lamented an “unanticipated result” of widespread access
to medical advances— namely, “the brightening of the survival prospect of
the ignorant, the stupid, the careless and the very poor.”78
Ross was the author of more than two dozen books, with large sales.79
The introduction to one of his books included a letter of fulsome praise
from Theodore Roosevelt.80 Among Professor Ross’ academic colleagues
was Roscoe Pound, who later became dean of the Harvard law school.
Professor Pound credited Professor Ross with setting him “in the path the
world is moving in.”81 This sense of mission, and a history-is-on-our-side
assumption, marked Roscoe Pound’s influential writings over a long career,
as he promoted judicial activism to free government from Constitutional
restrictions, leaving judges with a more expansive role to play in promoting
Progressive social policies.82
The people who led the crusade for genetic determinism in the early
twentieth century were not ill-educated, lower-class people. They included
some of the most intellectually prominent people of that era, on both sides
of the Atlantic.
These included the founders of such scholarly organizations as the
American Economic Association83 and the American Sociological
Association,84 a president of Stanford University and a president of MIT,85
as well as renowned professors at leading universities across the United
States.86 In England, John Maynard Keynes was one of the founders of the
eugenics society at Cambridge University.87 Most of these intellectuals
were on the political left in both countries.88 But there were also some
conservatives, including Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain.89
There were hundreds of courses on eugenics in colleges and universities
across the United States,90 just as there are similarly ideological courses on
college and university campuses across the country today, promoting very
different ideologies as regards race, but with a very similar sense of
mission, and a very similar intolerance toward those who do not share their
ideology or their mission.
“Eugenics” was a term coined by Sir Francis Galton, to describe an
agenda to reduce or prevent the survival of people considered genetically
inferior. He said, “there exists a sentiment, for the most part quite
unreasonable, against the gradual extinction of an inferior race.”91 Professor
Richard T. Ely, one of the founders of the American Economic Association,
said of the people he considered genetically inferior: “We must give to the
most hopeless classes left behind in our social progress custodial care with
the highest possible development and with segregation of sexes and
confinement to prevent reproduction.”92
Other contemporary academics of great distinction expressed very
similar views. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale, the leading American
monetary economist of his day, advocated the prevention of the “breeding
of the worst” by “isolation in public institutions and in some cases by
surgical operation.”93 Professor Henry Rogers Seager, of Columbia
University, likewise said that “we must courageously cut off lines of
heredity that have been proved to be undesirable,” even if that requires
“isolation or sterilization.”94
Prominent Harvard professor of economics Frank Taussig said of a
variety of people he considered inferior, that if it were not feasible to
“chloroform them once and for all,” then “at least they can be segregated,
shut up in refuges and asylums, and prevented from propagating their
kind.”95
The casual ease with which leading scholars of their time could advocate
imprisoning people for life, who had committed no crime, and depriving
them of a normal life, is a painfully sobering reminder of what can happen
when an idea or a vision becomes a heady dogma that overwhelms all other
considerations. A widely read book of that era, The Passing of the Great
Race by Madison Grant, declared that “race lies at the base of all the
manifestation of modern society”96 and deplored “a sentimental belief in
the sanctity of human life,” when that is used “to prevent both the
elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are
themselves of no value to the community.”97
This book was translated into other languages, including German, and
Hitler called it his “Bible.”98
The early twentieth-century Progressives were by no means Nazis. They
took pride in advocating a wide range of policies for social betterment, very
similar to the kinds of policies that would be advocated by other
Progressives in the later years of the twentieth century, and on into our own
times.
 Prominent economist Richard T. Ely, for example, rejected free-market
economics because he saw government power as something to be applied
“to the amelioration of the conditions under which people live or work.” Far
from seeing government power as a threat to freedom, he said, “regulation
by the power of the state of these industrial and other social relations
existing among men is a condition of freedom.”99 He favored “public
ownership” of municipal utilities, highways and railroads— and declared
that “labor unions should be legally encouraged in their efforts for shorter
hours and higher wages” and that “inheritance and income taxes should be
generally extended.”100 Eugenics was to him just another social benefit he
wanted provided by government.
Professor Ely was clearly a man of the left, and has been called “the
father of institutional economics”101— a branch of economics long noted
for its opposition to free-market economics. One of Ely’s students— John
R. Commons— became a leading institutional economist at the University
of Wisconsin. Professor Commons rejected free-market competition
because “competition has no respect for the superior races,” so that “the
race with lowest necessities displaces others.”102
Among Ely’s other students was the iconic Progressive President of the
United States, Woodrow Wilson.103 President Wilson too saw some races as
inferior. He approved of the annexation of Puerto Rico by President
William McKinley before him, saying of those annexed, “they are children
and we are men in these deep matters of government and justice.”104
Wilson’s own administration segregated black employees of federal
agencies in Washington,105 and he showed the movie, “Birth of A
Nation”— glorifying the Ku Klux Klan— in the White House to invited
guests.106
Like other Progressives of his time and later times, Woodrow Wilson
saw no dangers to freedom in an expansion of government power—
whether through the creation of new federal agencies like the Federal Trade
Commission and the Federal Reserve System during his own
administration,107 or through the appointment of federal judges who would
“interpret” the Constitution so as to loosen what President Wilson regarded
as excessive restriction on the powers of government.108
 In his book The New Freedom, Woodrow Wilson arbitrarily defined
government benefits as a new form of freedom,109 thereby verbally
finessing aside concerns about expanding powers of government being a
threat to people’s freedom. This redefinition of freedom has persisted
among various later advocates of expanding welfare state powers, on into
the twenty-first century.110
Among other prominent scholars of the early Progressive era who were
clearly on the political left, along with advocating eugenics, was the already
mentioned Professor Edward A. Ross, who was regarded as one of the
founders of the profession of sociology in the United States. Professor Ross
referred to “us liberals” as people who speak up “for public interests against
powerful selfish private interests,” and denounced those who disagreed with
his views as unworthy “kept” spokesmen for special interests, a “mercenary
corps” as contrasted with “us champions of the social welfare.”111
In their own minds, at least, these early twentieth-century Progressives
were advocating social justice— and Roscoe Pound used that specific
phrase.112 There is no need to question Ross’ sincerity, as he questioned
others’ sincerity. People can be very sincere when presupposing their own
superiority.
Madison Grant, whose book Hitler called his “Bible,” was likewise a
staunch Progressive of the early twentieth century. While not an academic
scholar, neither was he an ignorant redneck. He was from a wealthy family
in New York, and he was educated at Yale and the Columbia University law
school. He was an activist in Progressive causes, such as conservation,
preserving endangered species, municipal reform and the creation of
national parks.113 He was welcomed into an exclusive social club
established by Theodore Roosevelt,114 and during the 1920s he exchanged
friendly letters with Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing him in these letters
as “My dear Frank,” while FDR reciprocated by addressing him as “My
dear Madison.”115
In short, the Progressives of the early twentieth century shared more
than a name with Progressives of a later era, extending on into our own
times. While these different generations of Progressives reached opposite
conclusions on the reasons for racial differences in economic and social
outcomes, they shared very similar views on the role of government in
general and judges in particular. They also had similar practices in dealing
with empirical evidence. Both remained largely impervious to evidence or
conclusions contrary to their own beliefs.
In addressing one of the central issues in early twentieth-century
America— the massive increase in immigration from Eastern Europe and
Southern Europe that began in the 1880s— the Progressives went beyond
claiming that the current generation of immigrants was less productive or
less advanced than the previous generations from Western Europe and
Northern Europe. The Progressives’ claim was that Eastern Europeans and
Southern Europeans were inherently, genetically— and therefore
permanently— inferior, whether in the past or the future.
Ironically, the Western civilization that all these Europeans shared
originated, thousands of years earlier, in Southern Europe— specifically in
ancient Greece, located in the eastern Mediterranean. The very words that
genetic determinists wrote were written in letters created in Southern
Europe by the Romans. In those ancient times, it was the Southern
Europeans who were more advanced. In the ancient days of the Roman
Empire, Cicero warned his fellow Romans not to buy British slaves,
because they were so hard to teach.116 It is difficult to see how it could have
been otherwise, when someone from an illiterate tribal people in ancient
Britain was brought in bondage to a highly complex and sophisticated
civilization like that in ancient Rome.
As for the claim that Southern European and Eastern European
immigrant children tested at Ellis Island “cannot deal with abstractions,”117
that can hardly be taken as proof of a genetic inability of people from these
regions to deal with abstractions. The ancient Greeks did not simply learn
mathematics. They were among the creators of mathematics— Euclid in
geometry and Pythagoras in trigonometry.
Nor need we believe that there was some biological superiority of the
ancient Greeks in southeastern Europe. A series of geographic treatises on
the history of Europe’s socioeconomic development by Professor N.J.G.
Pounds offered a very different explanation of why the earliest
developments of Western civilization began where they did:
 Most of the significant advances in man’s material culture, like
agriculture and the smelting of metals, had been made in the Middle
East and had entered Europe through the Balkan peninsula. From
here they had been diffused northwestward to central Europe and
then to western.118

World leadership in various fundamental advances of human beings has

changed hands repeatedly over the thousands of years of recorded history.
That Western Europe and Northern Europe were more advanced in some
respects than Eastern Europe and Southern Europe in the early twentieth
century was no mandate for genetic determinists to eternalize that
relationship to the past and the future.
Among peoples of various races, in countries around the world, those
groups that score low on mental tests typically score lowest on abstract
questions.119 This hardly seems surprising, since abstractions do not play
major roles in all people’s lives— especially not among low-income,
working-class people, who predominated among the immigrants from
Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, who were tested at Ellis Island.
The story was very different among the ancient Greek elites, whose
achievements included not only mathematics but also philosophy, literature
and architecture. The ancient Greeks created magnificent buildings in the
Acropolis that have served as models for iconic buildings in many other
countries, thousands of years later. The Capitol building in the United
States, and the Supreme Court building across the street from the Capitol,
are examples. Anyone who has seen both the Lincoln Memorial in
Washington and the Parthenon built in ancient Athens can hardly fail to
notice the resemblance. The ancient Greeks also created exquisite statues
and busts of human beings that people still marvel at and admire in
museums in various countries today.
By contrast, the primitive structures and crude attempts at representing
human likenesses, by those ancient Britons who were contemporaries of the
ancient Greeks, inspire no such admiration or imitation. Names of ancient
Greek thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid and Pythagoras still
resonate today. But there is not a single Briton from those same ancient
times whose name can be found in the pages of history.120
 Nevertheless, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries A.D., Britons
led the world into the industrial revolution. Moreover, the scientific
breakthroughs of Britons in the centuries preceding the industrial revolution
— including the scientific achievements of Sir Isaac Newton, who was also
one of the creators of calculus— dwarf anything produced among Britain’s
nineteenth-century Greek contemporaries. The British Empire of the
nineteenth century included one-fourth of the land area of the Earth and
one-fourth of all the human beings on the planet. A twentieth-century
Italian author raised the question: “How, in the first place, did a peripheral
island rise from primitive squalor to world domination?”121
These undisputed facts of history argue against genetic determinism,
when peoples in different parts of Europe were clearly more advanced in
different centuries. Such radical changes over millennia suggest reciprocal
inequalities on a grand scale, from very different historical epochs.
Some people with a non-judgmental philosophy today might refuse to
say that the capabilities of either Greeks or Britons were superior. But that
is just a verbal evasion of the plain reality that each had superior
capabilities to the other in different epochs. What such reversals of relative
capabilities from one epoch to another calls into question is whether these
different capabilities were genetic.
To honestly admit the reality of vast differences in specific capabilities
of different peoples, at different times and in different places, is no
capitulation to genetic determinism. Nor are comparisons between different
groups of Europeans the only evidence against a genetic explanation. A
thousand years ago, the Chinese were more advanced than Europeans in
many endeavors.122 But, several centuries later, their positions were
reversed— and there is no evidence that the genetic makeup of either the
Chinese or the Europeans had changed.
Moreover, there have been similarly large disparities within different
segments of the same race. In 1994, for example, the millions of overseas
Chinese produced as much wealth as the billion people in China.123 Here
the race was the same, but the production of wealth per capita was radically
different. A similar pattern can also be found in the United States today,
when several of the very poorest counties in the country have
overwhelmingly white populations, with median household incomes lower
than the median household incomes of black Americans.124 No one has
gone into those counties and exploited those people. They have simply not
produced as much.
The genetic determinists of the early Progressive era took a remarkably
narrow sample of the evidence available to them. The history of ancient
Greece and Rome was already well-known as the origins of Western
civilization, and places far in advance of the rest of Europe in ancient times.
Whatever the relative positions of different regions of Europe during the
Progressive era, to see their positions at that time as genetically determined
implied that these positions were permanent, for both the future and the
past. But readily available evidence about the past said otherwise.
Even the purely contemporary evidence used during the early
Progressive era was by no means unambiguous. Answering questions in one
section of the Army mental tests required knowing such information as the
color of sapphires, the location of Cornell University, the profession of
Alfred Noyes and the city in which the Pierce Arrow automobile was
manufactured.125 Why black Americans, or recent immigrants to the United
States, would be expected to have such information is a puzzle. Why such
information would be considered a measure of anyone’s innate intelligence
is a bigger puzzle.
Not all the questions on the Army mental tests were as dubious as these.
But, for someone who was not quite up to par in answering more valid
questions, to have his imprisonment or his freedom depend on whether he
had such miscellaneous information seems grotesque.
Mental test pioneer Carl Brigham asserted in 1923 that the Army mental
tests provided an “inventory” of “mental capacity” with “a scientific
basis.”126 This was neither the first nor the last time when the word
“scientific” was invoked, without either the procedures or the precision of
science. Brigham was, however, one of the few who later recanted. Writing
in 1930, he belatedly pointed out that many of the immigrant men tested by
the Army were raised in homes where the language spoken was not English.
He candidly declared that his previous conclusions were— in his own
words— “without foundation.”127
How many of today’s totally convinced people, with opposite
convictions, will be able to later follow in Carl Brigham’s footsteps, only
the future can tell.
With the passing years, more and more evidence accumulated that
undermined the conclusions of Progressive-era genetic determinists. For
example, Jews who had scored low on the 1917 Army mental tests began to
score above the national average on various IQ tests and college admissions
tests,128 as they became a more English-speaking group. This and other
evidence, such as the IQs of black orphans raised by white families,129
undermined the central premise of genetic determinism— its rationale for
urging drastic steps to prevent some races from reproducing, on the
assumption that such races’ higher birthrates would lead to a decline in the
nation’s IQ over time.
A decisive blow was dealt to that argument by the later research of
Professor James R. Flynn, an American expatriate in New Zealand. His
research showed that, in more than a dozen countries around the world, the
average performance on IQ tests rose substantially— by a standard
deviation or more— in a generation or two.130
This trend had been going on for years, before Professor Flynn’s
research brought it to light. The reason it was not obvious to others before
him was that IQ test results were repeatedly renormed, in order to maintain
the average number of questions answered correctly at its definitional level
of 100.131 As more people answered more IQ test questions correctly over
the years, an IQ of 100 now represented correctly answering more questions
than before. Because Professor Flynn went back to the original raw scores
on IQ test questions answered correctly, these rising performances on IQ
tests were brought to light.132
Although the black IQ average, for example, remained more or less
constant at about 85 for years, this constancy concealed the fact that blacks,
like others, were answering more IQ test questions correctly than in the
past. The number of questions that blacks answered correctly on IQ tests in
2002 would have given them an average IQ of 104 by the norms used in
1947–1948. This was slightly higher than the average performance of
Americans in general during the earlier period.133
In short, the performances of blacks on IQ tests had risen significantly
over time, just as the performances of other people in the United States and
in other countries had risen, even though the renorming of IQ tests
concealed these changes. Later data published by Charles Murray in 2021
showed that the mean black IQ was now 91,134 up from the usual 85 in
earlier times. This meant that black improvement on IQ tests had not simply
kept pace with other people’s improvement but had improved somewhat
more.
The devastating effect of Professor Flynn’s research was that it
destroyed the central rationale for the conclusions of early twentieth-
century, Progressive-era genetic determinists, who had proclaimed an
urgent necessity to prevent people with lower IQs from reproducing, on the
assumption that such people were genetically incapable of reaching the
same average intellectual level that was then current. Therefore, on that
assumption, the intelligence of the nation as a whole would decline over
time. But, even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that IQ test results
are a perfect measure of intelligence, the factual evidence is that people in
multiple countries were correctly answering more IQ test questions in later
years, not fewer.
Something else was implicit in the genetic determinism of early
twentieth-century Progressivism— namely, that there was a genetically
determined ceiling on the intelligence of some groups, making it imperative
that they be prevented from reproducing. As late as 1944, Gunnar Myrdal
reported, in his path-breaking book An American Dilemma, that belief in a
low ceiling on black intelligence was common among white Americans at
that time.135
Nevertheless, just one generation later, even the leading academic
scholar researching the effect of genes on IQ— Professor Arthur R. Jensen,
of the University of California at Berkeley— repudiated the IQ ceiling
conclusion, and asked “why should anyone be surprised to find that there
are Negro children having IQs of 115 or higher, or that they should be
concentrated in the affluent integrated neighborhood in Los Angeles?”136
With the implicit assumption of a low IQ ceiling by the early
Progressive-era genetic determinists now gone, and the falling IQ test
performances expected now contradicted by widespread rises in
performances on IQ tests in later generations, as discovered by Professor
Flynn’s research,137 that era is a chapter in human history now mercifully
closed— though not before it provided a rationale for genocide. Its
enduring significance for our era is as a painfully urgent warning against
intolerant ideological stampedes, even when these stampedes are led by
leading scholars and intellectuals, and spread by a wide range of
institutions.

Later Progressivism
In the later decades of the twentieth century, and on into the twenty-first
century, latter-day Progressives substituted racial discrimination for genes
as the automatic explanation of group differences in economic and social
outcomes. Mental tests— once exalted as an embodiment of “science,”
supposedly proving genetic determinism— were now automatically
dismissed as biased, when SAT and ACT college admissions tests produced
results that conflicted with the new social justice agenda of imposed
demographic representation of various social groups in various institutions
and endeavors.
In this new Progressive era, statistical disparities between blacks and
whites, in any endeavor, have usually been sufficient to produce a
conclusion that racial discrimination was the reason. Often there are also
statistical data on Asian Americans in these same endeavors. But these
Asian American data are almost invariably omitted, not only by the media,
but even by academic scholars in elite universities. Such data would often
present a serious challenge to the conclusions reached by latter-day
Progressives.
In the job market, for example, it has often been said that blacks are “the
last hired and the first fired,” when there are downturns in the economy.
Black employees may in fact be terminated during an economic downturn,
sooner or to a greater extent than white employees. But data also show that
white employees are often let go before Asian American employees.138 Can
this be attributed to racial discrimination against whites, by employers who
were usually white themselves? Are we to accept statistical data as evidence
when these data fit existing preconceptions, but not accept such data when
they go counter to those same preconceptions?
Or are we to be spared such problems by those who simply omit facts
that go against their vision or agenda?
 One of the major factors in the housing boom and bust, which produced
an economic crisis in the United States, early in the twenty-first century,
was a widespread belief that there was rampant racial discrimination by
banks and other lending institutions against blacks applying for mortgage
loans. Various statistics from a number of sources showed that, although
most black and white applicants for conventional mortgage loans were
approved, black applicants were turned down at a higher rate than white
applicants for the same loans. What was almost universally omitted were
statistical data showing that whites were turned down for those same loans
more often than Asian Americans.139
Nor was there any great mystery as to why this was so. The average
credit rating of whites was higher than the average credit rating of blacks—
and the average credit rating of Asian Americans was higher than the
average credit rating of whites.140 Nor was this the only economically
relevant difference.141
Nevertheless, there were outraged demands in the media, in academia
and in politics that the government should “do something” about racial
discrimination by banks and other mortgage lenders. The government
responded by doing many things. The net result was that it forced mortgage
lenders to lower their lending standards.142 This made mortgage loans so
risky that many people, including the author of this book, warned that the
housing market could “collapse like a house of cards.”143 When it did, the
whole economy collapsed.144 Low-income blacks were among those who
suffered.
The same question can be raised about mortgage approval patterns as the
question about hiring and firing in the job market. Were predominantly
white mortgage lenders discriminating against white applicants? If that
seems highly unlikely, it is also unlikely that black-owned banks were
discriminating against black mortgage loan applicants. Yet black applicants
for mortgage loans were turned down at an even higher rate by a black-
owned bank.145
It has been much the same story with student discipline in the public
schools. Statistics show that black males have been disciplined for
misbehavior more often than white males. Because of the prevailing
preconception that the behavior of different groups themselves cannot be
different, this automatically became another example of racial
discrimination— and literally a federal issue. A joint declaration from the
U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice warned
public school officials that they wanted what they characterized as a racially
discriminatory pattern ended.146
Statistical data from a landmark study of American education— No
Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning by Abigail Thernstrom and
Stephan Thernstrom— showed that black students were disciplined two-
and-a-half times as often as white students, who were disciplined twice as
often as Asian students.147 Were the predominantly white teachers biased
against white students? Nor was the disciplining of black students
correlated with whether the teachers involved were black or white.148
Although we may analyze all these statistics by race, that does not
necessarily mean that the employers, lenders or teachers made their
decisions on the basis of race. If black, white and Asian employees had
different distributions of jobs, or were distributed differently at different
levels in the same occupations, then decisions as to which kinds of jobs—
or job performances— were expendable during an economic downturn
could result in the racial disparities seen.
Banking officials who decided whose mortgage applications to accept or
reject are unlikely to have actually seen the applicants themselves. These
applicants would more likely be interviewed by lower-level bank
employees. These employees would then pass the income and other data—
including individual credit ratings— on to higher officials, who would then
either approve or disapprove the applications. In the public schools,
teachers would obviously see the students whose misbehavior they
reported, but the fact that black and white teachers made similar reports,
suggests that race was not likely to be the key factor in this case either.
Perhaps the point in American history when there was the widest
consensus on racial issues, across racial lines, was the occasion of the
historic speech by Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
That was when he said that his dream was of a world where people “will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character.”149 His message was equal opportunity for individuals, regardless
of race. But that agenda, and the wide consensus it had, began eroding in
the years that followed. The goal changed from equal opportunity for
individuals, regardless of race, to equal outcomes for groups, whether these
groups were defined by race, sex or otherwise.
What now rose to dominance was the social justice agenda, which
included equalized outcomes in the present and reparations for the past.
This new agenda drew on history, or on myths presented as history, as well
as assertions presented as facts— the latter in a spirit reminiscent of the
certitude and heedlessness of evidence in the genetic determinism era.
Chapter 3

CHESS PIECES FALLACIES

I n much of the social justice literature, including Professor John Rawls’

classic A Theory of Justice, various policies have been recommended, on
grounds of their desirability from a moral standpoint— but often with little
or no attention to the practical question of whether those policies could in
fact be carried out and produce the end results desired. In a number of
places, for example, Rawls referred to things that “society” should
“arrange”1— but without specifying either the instrumentalities or the
feasibilities of those arrangements.
It is hard to imagine what institution could take on such a gigantic task,
other than government. That in turn raises questions about the dangers of
putting more power in the hands of politicians who run the government.
The innocent-sounding word “arrange” cannot be allowed to obscure those
dangers. Interior decorators arrange. Governments compel. It is not a subtle
distinction.
Governments must compel some things, ranging from traffic laws to
laws against murder. But that does not mean that there are no dangers to be
considered when expanding government compulsion for whatever seems
desirable. That would mean destroying everyone’s freedom for the sake of
whatever crusade has caught the fancy of some influential segment of the
population.
Rawls’ approach has by no means been unique to Rawls, or even to
modern times. Back in the eighteenth century, there were people with
similar ideas. Adam Smith expressed his opposition to such people, and to
the very presumption of some doctrinaire theorist— a “man of system,” as
he put it— who “seems to imagine that he can arrange the different
members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the
different pieces upon a chess-board.”2
 The exaltation of desirability and neglect of feasibility, which Adam
Smith criticized, is today still a major ingredient in the fundamental
fallacies of the social justice vision. Its implications extend to a wide
variety of issues, ranging from the redistribution of wealth to the
interpretation of income statistics.
The confiscation and redistribution of wealth— whether on a moderate
or a comprehensive scale— is at the heart of the social justice agenda.
While social justice advocates stress what they see as the desirability of
such policies, the feasibility of those policies tends to receive far less
attention, and the consequences of trying and failing often receive virtually
no attention.
There is no question that governments, or even local looters, can
redistribute wealth to some extent. But the larger issue is whether the actual
effects of attempting more comprehensive and enduring confiscation and
redistribution policies are likely to be successful or counterproductive.
Leaving moral issues aside for the moment, these are ultimately factual
questions, for which we must seek answers in the realm of empirical
evidence, rather than in theories or rhetoric.

REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
Politically attractive as confiscation and redistribution of the wealth of
“the rich” might seem, the extent to which it can actually be carried out in
practice depends on the extent to which “the rich” are conceived as being
like inert pieces on a chessboard. To the extent that “the rich” can foresee
and react to redistributive policies, the actual consequences can be very
different from what was intended.
In an absolute monarchy or a totalitarian dictatorship, a mass
confiscation of wealth can be suddenly imposed without warning on the
“millionaires and billionaires” so often cited as targets of confiscation. But,
in a country with a democratically elected government, confiscatory
taxation or other forms of confiscation must first be publicly proposed, and
then develop sufficient political support over time among the voters, before
being actually imposed by law. If “millionaires and billionaires” are not
oblivious to all this, there is little chance that they will not know about the
impending confiscation and redistribution before it happens. Nor can we
assume that they will simply wait passively to be sheared like sheep.
Among the more obvious options available to “the rich”— when they
are forewarned of large-scale confiscations of their wealth— include (1)
investing their wealth in tax-exempt securities, (2) sending their wealth
beyond the taxing jurisdiction, or (3) moving themselves personally beyond
the taxing jurisdiction.
In the United States, the taxing jurisdiction can be a city, a state or the
federal government. The various ways of sheltering wealth from taxation
may have some costs to “the rich” and, where their wealth is embodied in
immovable assets such as steel mills or chains of stores, there may be little
they can do to escape confiscation of these particular forms of wealth. But,
for liquid assets in today’s globalized economies around the world, vast
sums of money can be transferred electronically from country to country,
with the click of a computer mouse.
This means that the actual consequences of raising tax rates on “the
rich” in a given jurisdiction is a factual question. The outcome is not
necessarily predictable, and the potential consequences may or may not
make the planned confiscation feasible. Raising the tax rate X percent does
not guarantee that the tax revenue will also rise X percent— or will even
rise at all. When we turn from theories and rhetoric to the facts of history,
we can put both the explicit and the implicit assumptions of the social
justice vision to the test.

History
Back in the eighteenth century, Britain’s imposition of a new tax on its
American colonies played a major role in setting off a chain of events that
led ultimately to those colonies declaring their independence, and becoming
the United States of America. Edmund Burke pointed out at the time, in the
British Parliament: “Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but
discontent, disorder, disobedience…”3
Americans were not just inert pieces on the great chessboard of the
British Empire. American independence deprived Britain not only of
revenue from the new taxes they imposed, but also deprived the British of
revenue from the other taxes they had already been collecting from the
American colonies. This was by no means the only time when an increase
in the official rate of taxation led to a reduction in the tax revenues actually
collected.

Tax Rates versus Tax Revenues

Centuries later, similar withdrawals from taxing jurisdictions took place
within the United States. The state of Maryland, for example, anticipated
collecting more than $100 million in additional tax revenues, by increasing
the tax rate on people whose incomes were a million dollars a year or more.
But, by the time the new tax rate took effect in 2008, the number of such
people living in Maryland had declined from nearly 8,000 to fewer than
6,000. The tax revenues, which had been anticipated to rise by more than
$100 million, actually fell instead by more than $200 million.4
Likewise, when Oregon raised its income tax rate in 2009 on people
earning $250,000 a year or more, its income tax revenues also fell instead
of rising.5 Americans were still not inert chess pieces.
None of this has been peculiar to Americans, however. Similar things
have happened when other countries raised— or even threatened to raise—
tax rates substantially on high incomes, in the expectation that this would
automatically bring in more tax revenue, which it may or may not do. When
such plans were advanced in Britain, for example, the Wall Street Journal
reported:

A stream of hedge-fund managers and other financial-services

professionals are quitting the U.K., following plans to raise top
personal tax rates to 51%.… Lawyers estimate hedge funds
managing close to $15 billion have moved to Switzerland in the past
year, with more possibly to come.6

Conversely, a reduction in tax rates does not automatically result in a

reduction in tax revenues. People are not inert chess pieces in either case.
Just as higher tax rates can repel people, businesses and investments, lower
tax rates can attract them. In Iceland, as the corporate tax rate was gradually
reduced from 45 percent to 18 percent between 1991 and 2001, tax
revenues tripled.7
 In the United States, tax-exempt securities provide an obvious way for
high-income people to avoid paying high tax rates. As the federal income
tax rate rose sharply during the Woodrow Wilson administration, the
number of people reporting taxable incomes of $300,000 or more declined
from well over a thousand in 1916 to less than three hundred in 1921. The
federal income tax rate on the highest incomes in 1920 was 73 percent.8 By
1928, the highest income tax rate had been reduced to 25 percent. Between
those two years, the total amount of income tax revenue collected
increased, and the proportion of all income taxes collected from people
earning a million dollars or more per year also increased, from less than 5
percent in 1920 to 15.9 percent in 1928.9
In advocating these tax rate reductions in the 1920s, Secretary of the
Treasury Andrew Mellon pointed out that the rich had vast sums of money
invested in tax-exempt securities.10 These securities paid a lower rate of
return than other securities that were subject to taxation. Investing in tax-
exempt securities, despite their lower rate of return, made sense when the
top tax rate was 73 percent. But, at a top tax rate of 25 percent, it made
sense for many high-income people to shift their investments to other
securities that paid a higher rate of return, even though that return was
subject to taxation.
High-income people, not being inert chess pieces, figured this out. So
the federal government collected more tax revenue from them at the lower
tax rate, because 25 percent of something is larger than 73 percent of
nothing.
Both Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon and President Calvin
Coolidge said beforehand that a reduction of the tax rate would increase the
tax revenue,11 as it did, and bring in more tax revenue from high-income
people. Secretary Mellon had also complained that tax-exempt securities
had created a situation that was “repugnant” in a democracy— namely, that
there was, in effect, “a class in the community which cannot be reached for
tax purposes.”12 Failing to get Congress to take steps to end tax-exempt
securities,13 Mellon was at least able to get higher income people to pay a
larger share of the income taxes by other means.
Nevertheless, Mellon’s arguments for reducing the top tax rate were
denounced as “tax cuts for the rich,” as similar plans for similar reasons
have been denounced ever since.14
For some— including distinguished professors at elite universities— the
implicit assumption that tax revenues automatically move in the same
direction as tax rates seems impervious to factual evidence. But such
evidence is readily available on the Internet from the official records of the
Internal Revenue Service.15 Nevertheless, the chess pieces fallacy remains
largely unchallenged, so social justice advocates can continue to advocate
higher tax rates on the rich, on the basis of its desirability from their
perspective, without regard to questions as to its feasibility as a revenue-
collection mechanism.
In politics, highly expensive proposals to have the government provide
various benefits “free” to everyone can be very appealing to some voters,
when the additional costs to the government are said to be paid for by
collecting higher tax revenues from “millionaires and billionaires,” whether
or not this actually turns out to be true. Such an outcome might seem
desirable to some voters, from a social justice perspective, but desirability
does not preclude questions of feasibility.
In politics, the goal is not truth but votes. If most voters believe what is
said, that rhetoric is a success, as far as politicians are concerned. But, from
the standpoint of the public, the claim that the cost of government
giveaways will be paid for by taxes collected from “millionaires and
billionaires” is a proposition that very much requires empirical
examination, since “millionaires and billionaires” are not always
cooperative.
People who imagine that the benefits they receive “free” from
government will be paid for by others may discover that they themselves
end up paying for those benefits, as a result of inflation.

The Inflation “Tax”

Just as tax rates on paper are not necessarily collected, so things that are
not taxes can have the same effect as taxes. Inflation is one of those things.
When tax revenues to pay for “free” benefits given to various groups fail
to cover the expenses of those benefits, the government can get additional
money needed to cover the deficit by issuing more government bonds and
selling them. To the extent that these bonds are purchased in the market, the
cost is passed on, with interest added, to taxpayers in the future. But, if not
enough of these bonds are bought in the market to cover the remaining
deficit, these bonds can be purchased by the Federal Reserve System, a
federal government agency legally authorized to create money. Then, as this
additional money goes into circulation, the result is inflation.
The net result of inflationary price increases is that everyone’s money—
regardless of their income— loses some of its value. It is the same as if a
tax had been imposed on everybody, from the poorest to the richest, and
with everyone paying the same tax rate on their money as “millionaires and
billionaires” pay. But a tax on money is not a tax on tangible assets, such as
factories or real estate— which increase in market value during an inflation.
The net result of all this is that an inflation “tax” can take a higher
percentage of the assets of the poorest people, whose money is likely to be a
higher percentage of their total assets, because they are less likely to own
factories, real estate and other tangible assets that rise in market value
during an inflation.
In short, an inflation “tax” is likely to be a regressive tax, paid whenever
buying groceries, gasoline or other consumer goods at higher prices. The
illusion of getting “free” benefits from the government may be maintained,
so long as the recipients do not see the connection between the higher prices
they end up paying for what they buy, after the government gives them
“free” things.
The biggest beneficiaries of this situation are likely to be politicians,
who can attract voters by offering them “free” benefits— “as a right, not a
privilege”— which the voters end up paying for in a roundabout way,
through inflationary price increases on the things they buy.
Politicians cover their tracks by calling the key mechanism— the
Federal Reserve’s creation of money to buy government bonds— by the
obscure insider phrase, “quantitative easing,” instead of saying in plain
English that the government is producing more of its own money, in order
to pay for the things it is giving away “free.” Sometimes a technical-
sounding term— “QE2”— is used, to designate a second round of creating
money. That sounds so much more impressive than simply saying
“producing more money for politicians to spend.”
 CHESS PIECES AND PRICE CONTROLS
Just as people’s behavior changes when governments change tax rates,
so their behavior changes when governments change the terms of other
transactions. This is one of the most basic principles of economics. It has
been known for centuries by economists, and even by others before there
was any such occupation as an economist.16 But what has been known by
some has not been known by all, so governments have been setting prices
on various goods and services by law, for thousands of years— going back
to Roman times, and even to ancient Babylon before that.17

Reactions to Price Controls

The people subject to price-setting laws have seldom remained passive,
as if they were inert chess pieces. How many governments understood this
before they passed such laws is unknown. But what is known is that a
President of the United States— Richard Nixon— who was fully aware of
the adverse economic consequences of price controls, imposed those
controls anyway. His response to criticism of that decision by economist
Milton Friedman was: “I don’t give a good goddamn what Milton Friedman
says. He’s not running for re-election.”18 President Nixon was in fact re-
elected, by a larger majority than that which first put him in the White
House.
As for the economic consequences of the price controls, they were what
such consequences have been in other places and times, going back for
centuries. At prices set by government below the level set by supply and
demand, the amount demanded by consumers went up— because of the
artificially lower prices— and the amount produced by producers went
down, also because of those same artificially lower prices. Neither
consumers nor producers were inert chess pieces. The net result was that
there were widespread shortages of food, gasoline and numerous other
things. But these consequences became widely apparent only after the
election.19
None of this was peculiar to the United States. When the government of
the African nation of Zimbabwe decreed drastic cutbacks in prices to deal
with runaway inflation in 2007, the New York Times reported that citizens
of Zimbabwe “greeted the price cuts with a euphoric— and short-lived—
shopping spree.” But, as in the United States, this increase in the amount
consumers demanded was accompanied by a decrease in the amount that
producers supplied:

Bread, sugar and cornmeal, staples of every Zimbabwean’s diet,

have vanished… Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for members of
the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market…
Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies.20

The people in Africa were not inert chess pieces, any more than people
in Europe or America.
Many studies of many forms of price controls, in countries around the
world, have revealed very similar patterns.21 This has led some people to
ask: “Why don’t politicians learn from their mistakes?” Politicians do learn.
They learn what is politically effective, and what they do is not a mistake
politically, despite how disastrous such policies may turn out to be for the
country. What can be a mistake politically is to assume that particular ideals
— including social justice— can be something that society can just
“arrange,” through government, without considering the particular patterns
of incentives and constraints inherent in the institution of government.

Minimum Wage Laws

Not all price control laws force prices down. Some price control laws
force prices up. In these latter cases, producers produce more, because of
the higher prices, but consumers buy less. Again, people are not inert chess
pieces in either case. While price control laws that force prices down tend
to create shortages, price control laws that force prices up tend to create
unsalable surpluses.
Rent control laws are examples of the former, and such laws have
created housing shortages in cities around the world.22 Agricultural price
support programs in the United States are an example of the latter, and they
lead to farmers growing larger crops than the consumers will buy, at the
artificially higher prices. The unsalable surpluses have led to expensive
government programs to buy this surplus output— and store it, while
figuring out how to dispose of it and limit future production. These costs
run into many billions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money.
A special form of price control to force prices up are minimum wage
laws, often supported by people with a social justice vision.
Minimum wage laws are among the many government policies widely
believed to benefit the poor, by preventing them from making decisions for
themselves that surrogate decision-makers regard as being not as good as
what the surrogates can impose through the power of government.
Traditional basic economics, however, says that people tend to purchase
less at a higher price. If so, then employers— not being inert chess pieces—
tend to hire less labor at a higher price, imposed by minimum wage laws,
than they would hire at a lower price, based on supply and demand. Here
the unsalable surplus is called unemployment.
Although minimum wage rates are usually set by law at a level lower
than what the average worker makes, these laws nevertheless tend to set
wage rates higher than what an unskilled beginner would earn by supply
and demand in a freely competitive market. Therefore the impact of a
minimum wage law tends to be greater on young beginners— especially
teenage workers— whose unemployment rates are especially relevant as
tests of the economic principles which suggest that minimum wage laws
create higher rates of unemployment.
With all the official statistics available, it might seem as if differences of
opinion on this subject would have been resolved long ago. But, over the
years, vast amounts of ingenuity have been deployed, seeking to evade the
obvious, as regards the effects of minimum wage laws. Rather than
elaborate and examine those arguments here, which have been elaborated
and examined elsewhere,23 a few plain facts may be sufficient.
In 1948, the unemployment rate in the United States for black 16-year-
old males and black 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For their white
counterparts, the unemployment rate was 10.2 percent. For black 18-year-
old males and black 19-year-old males, their unemployment rate was 10.5
percent, and for their white counterparts the unemployment rate was 9.4
percent.24 In short, there were no significant racial differences in
unemployment rates among teenage males in 1948.
 While an unemployment rate of around 10 percent for young,
inexperienced workers is higher than the usual unemployment rate among
workers in the population at large, it was lower than usual for teenagers.
More important, for examining the effects of minimum wage laws on
unemployment, these unemployment rates for teenage males were only a
fraction of what unemployment rates for teenage males of both races would
be from the 1970s onward, extending on into the early twenty-first
century.25
Was there no minimum wage law in 1948? Was there no racism?
Actually, there were both. But the federal minimum wage law— the Fair
Labor Standards Act of 1938— was a decade old in 1948, and the
intervening years had such high rates of inflation that the minimum wage
specified in 1938 was well below what even an unskilled teenage male
beginner (such as myself in 1948) was paid in the devalued dollars of 1948.
For all practical purposes, there was no effective minimum wage law. As
Professor George J. Stigler, a leading economist of that era, said in 1946:
“The minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards act of 1938
have been repealed by inflation.”26
In 1950, however, there began a series of increases in the minimum
wage rate over the years, in order to keep up with inflation. The 1950s were
the last decade in the twentieth century in which black 16-year-old and 17-
year-old males had annual unemployment rates below 10 percent in any
years. In later decades of that century, the annual unemployment rate of
black teenage males never fell below 20 percent. In some of those years, it
ranged above 40 percent. Moreover, there was now usually a substantially
higher unemployment rate among black teenage males than among white
teenage males. In some years, the difference exceeded two-to-one.27
Anyone who lived through those early years knows that there was more
racism then than today. As late as 1950, public schools in Washington were
explicitly segregated by race, and the General Accounting Office and some
other federal agencies also had racially segregated employees, though not
officially.28 Why then was there no significant difference in unemployment
rates between black and white teenage males in 1948? A short, one-word
answer is economics.
 Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman denounced minimum
wage laws as “one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute
books.”29 One of his students, Gary S. Becker, went on to win a Nobel
Prize in economics for his landmark work that included an in-depth analysis
of the economics of discrimination.30 The basic argument can be readily
understood, without the technical vocabulary of economists.
Racism is an attitude inside people’s heads, and may cost racists
nothing. But discrimination is an overt act, out in the real world, that can
cost the discriminator either little or much, depending on economic
circumstances.31 In a free competitive market, with prices determined by
supply and demand, discrimination can have serious costs to the
discriminator.
Minimum wage laws reduce the cost of discrimination to the
discriminator. A wage rate set by government— at a level higher than it
would be set by supply and demand in a competitive market— causes
reactions by both workers and employers, as with other sellers and buyers
who are not inert chess pieces.
Higher wage rates attract more job applicants. But these higher costs of
labor tend to reduce the amount of labor employers hire. The net result is a
chronic surplus of job applicants for low-wage jobs affected by minimum
wage laws. In these circumstances, employers who turn away qualified
minority applicants can often readily replace them with other qualified
people from the chronic surplus of job applicants. Discrimination under
these circumstances may cost the employer nothing.
When there is no minimum wage law, or no effective minimum wage
law, as in 1948, there is unlikely to be a chronic surplus of job applicants.
Under these conditions, employers who turn away qualified minority
applicants would have to either pay more to attract additional other
qualified applicants to replace them, or else work existing employees
overtime, at higher overtime rates of pay— costing the employer money in
either case.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that there was no significant
difference in unemployment rates between black and white male teenagers
in 1948, even though there was more racism then than in later years. Nor is
it surprising that, after a series of minimum wage rate increases over the
years, to offset inflation and make the minimum wage law effective again, a
substantial racial gap in teenage male unemployment rates became
common. So did much higher unemployment rates for teenage males of
both races, than what their unemployment rates had been in 1948, when
wage rates were largely determined by supply and demand.
In general, the cost of discrimination to the discriminator can vary
considerably from one kind of economic activity to another— being higher
for businesses in competitive markets, where the employer’s own money is
at risk, than among non-profit organizations, regulated public utilities and
government agencies. History shows that these last three kinds of
institutions have long been among the most discriminatory kinds of
employers.32
It costs government discriminators nothing to discriminate, because the
costs are paid by the taxpayers. Similarly for discriminators in non-profit
institutions, where employers are likewise spending other people’s money.
The situation in government-regulated public utilities is somewhat more
complicated, but the net result is that these public utilities’ costs of
discrimination can be passed on to their customers, who have no choice but
to pay, when dealing with a government-regulated monopoly.33
Each of these three kinds of institutions has had a long history of
especially discriminatory policies against minority workers, as compared to
policies in institutions operating in competitive markets, with employers’
own money being at risk.34 Prior to World War II, for example, black
professors were virtually non-existent in white, non-profit colleges and
universities. But there were hundreds of black chemists employed in profit-
based businesses in competitive industries during that same era.35 Such
patterns were not confined to the United States or to blacks.
The pattern of most discrimination where it costs the discriminators
least, and least discrimination where it costs the discriminators most, is a
pattern found in many countries. In Poland between the two World Wars,
for example, Jews were 9.8 percent of the population in 1931,36 and just
over half of all private physicians in Poland were Jewish. But Jewish
physicians were seldom hired by Poland’s government hospitals.37 Other
people, spending their own money, and concerned about their own health,
obviously acted differently, or so many Jewish physicians would not have
been able to make a living.
During even the worst days of racially discriminatory laws in South
Africa under officially declared white supremacy policies, there were some
whole occupations set aside by law exclusively for whites. But,
nevertheless, there were some competitive industries where a majority of
the employees in those occupations were in fact black.38 A government
crackdown fined hundreds of companies in the construction industry alone
for having more black employees than they were allowed to have under the
apartheid laws, and in occupations where they were forbidden to hire any
blacks.39
How the severity of racial discrimination in South Africa during that era
varied with the kind of industry, and the degree of government control, was
revealed in South Africa’s War Against Capitalism by black American
economist Walter E. Williams, who did his research in South Africa during
the era of apartheid.
Neither social justice advocates nor anyone else can safely proceed on
the assumption that the particular laws and policies they prefer will
automatically have the results they expect, without taking into account how
the people on whom these laws and policies are imposed will react. Both
history and economics show that people are not just inert chess pieces,
carrying out someone else’s grand design.

CHESS PIECES AND INCOME STATISTICS

In controversies revolving around social justice issues, some of the most
serious distortions of reality are based on statistics showing income
distribution trends over time. The statistics may be perfectly accurate, but
the distortions come from discussing people as if they were like inert chess
pieces, and remained fixed in the same income brackets over time.

Trends Over Time

The New York Times, for example, has said that “the gap between rich
and poor has widened in America.”40 This has long been a theme common
in such other media outlets as the Washington Post and many television
programs, as well as among politicians and academics.
 As a Washington Post columnist put it: “The rich have seen far greater
income gains than have the poor.”41 Another Washington Post columnist
described “the wealthy” as “people who have made almost all the income
gains in recent years.”42 President Barack Obama said, “The top 10 percent
no longer takes in one-third of our income, it now takes half.”43 Professor
Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University declared that “The upper 1
percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s
income every year.”44 According to Professor Stiglitz, “society’s wealth
distribution” has become “lopsided.”45 By contrast, the other “99 percent of
Americans” are said to be together “in the same stagnating boat.”46
If these were the same people in the same income brackets over the
years, the conclusions reached would be valid. But these are not the same
people in the same brackets over the years. According to the U.S.
Department of the Treasury, using income data from its Internal Revenue
Service: “More than 50 percent of taxpayers in the bottom quintile moved
to a higher quintile within ten years.”47 Other empirical studies show a
similar pattern.48 One study indicated that more than half of all American
adults are in the top 10 percent of income recipients at some point in their
lives,49 usually in their later years. Whether at high income levels or low
income levels, most Americans do not stay fixed in the same income
bracket, as if they were inert chess pieces.
Other empirical studies that followed the incomes of specific individuals
over a span of years also showed a pattern directly the opposite of the
pattern in widely cited studies which implicitly assume that the same people
remain in the same income brackets over the years. But a built-in
assumption of stagnation is not stagnation, when there is turnover of most
individuals in these brackets from one decade to the next.
An early study at the University of Michigan followed specific
individuals— working Americans— from 1975 to 1991. The pattern it
found was that individuals who were initially in the bottom 20 percent in
income in 1975 had their incomes rise over the years— not only at a higher
rate than the incomes of individuals in the higher brackets, but also in a
several times larger total amount.50 By 1991, 29 percent of those who were
in the lowest quintile in 1975 had risen all the way to the top quintile, and
only 5 percent of those initially in the bottom quintile remained where they
had all been in 1975. The rest were distributed in other quintiles in
between.51
These are not fictional Horatio Alger stories about rare individuals rising
from rags to riches. These are mundane realities about people usually
having higher incomes in their thirties than they had in their twenties, and
continuing to have increases in pay as they acquire more experience, skills
and maturity.
Meanwhile, individuals who were initially in the top quintile in 1975
had the smallest increase in real income by 1991— smallest in both
percentage terms and in absolute amounts. The amount by which the
average income of people initially in the top quintile in 1975 rose was less
than half that in any of the other quintiles.52 The pattern of these results—
radically different from conclusions in studies which implicitly assume that
it is the same people in the same income brackets over the years— was
repeated in the later study by the U.S. Treasury Department, already cited.
This later study, based on Internal Revenue Service data, followed specific
individuals— those who filed income tax returns over the course of a
decade, from 1996 through 2005.
Those individuals whose incomes were initially in the bottom quintile of
this group had their incomes rise by 91 percent during that decade. That is,
their incomes nearly doubled in a decade, which is hardly “stagnating,”
Professor Stiglitz to the contrary notwithstanding. Those individuals whose
incomes were initially in the much-discussed “top 1 percent” saw their
incomes actually fall by 26 percent during that same decade.53 Again, we
see the opposite of what has been said repeatedly, loudly and angrily by
income distribution alarmists in politics, in the media and in academia.
A still later statistical study, in Canada— covering the years from 1990
to 2009— showed a very similar pattern. During those two decades, 87
percent of the people initially in the bottom quintile rose into a higher
quintile. The incomes of those initially in the bottom quintile rose at both a
higher rate and a larger absolute amount than the incomes of those who
were initially in the top quintile.54
It might seem as if these three studies, so similar in their outcomes,
could not be true if the other and more widely cited studies— from the U.S.
Bureau of the Census and other sources— were also true. But the two sets
of studies measured very different things.
The University of Michigan study, the Treasury Department study and
the Canadian study were all studies that followed the same individuals over
a span of years. The more widely cited studies, from the U.S. Bureau of the
Census and other sources using an approach similar to that of the Bureau of
the Census, have been fundamentally different in at least two ways.
Published data from the 2020 census or the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
for example, are data on statistical categories containing multiple
individuals each, such as families, households or “consumer units.” But,
just as different families contain different numbers of individuals, so do
these other statistical categories. When these categories of income
recipients are divided into income quintiles, these quintiles can contain
equal numbers of such categories, but not equal numbers of people— nor
even approximately equal numbers of people.

Different Numbers of People

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 42,187,200
people in the bottom quintile of income recipients in 2019. That same year,
the B.L.S. statistics showed that the top quintile contained 84,915,200
people— just barely more than twice as many people as the bottom
quintile.55 Comparisons of the incomes received by people in the top and
bottom quintiles therefore have a built-in exaggeration of income disparities
between individuals, since twice as many individuals would have twice as
much income, even if every individual in both categories had the same
income.
When single-parent families are more common among low-income
people than among high-income people, it is hardly surprising that there are
fewer people in the bottom quintile than in the top quintile. Not only are
fewer people likely to receive less income, that is especially so when
discussing how much money they earn— as distinguished from money
received from such sources as welfare or unemployment compensation.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that there were 5 times as many
people earning income in the top quintile as in the bottom quintile.56
 How surprising— or unfair— is it when 5 times as many people who are
earning incomes receive a larger total amount of income?
People who draw alarming inferences from Census and similar other
data reason as if they are discussing what was happening to a given set of
human beings, when in fact they are discussing the fate of “the top
quintile,” “the top ten percent,” “the top 1 percent” or some other statistical
category. These are categories containing different numbers of individuals
in different quintiles, as well as an ever-changing mix of individuals in
each of these quintiles from one decade to the next.
What are the implications of all this?
If, for example, there were a complete redistribution of income, so that
every income recipient recorded in the 2020 census now received exactly
the same income as other recipients in a subsequent year, that would mean a
zero disparity in individual incomes. But, if the new income data were
organized and displayed in the same separate categories as before,
comparing the same sets of individuals who had previously been in the
various quintiles in the 2020 census, the data would show those people who
had formerly been in the top quintile would now appear to have just over
twice the incomes of those people who had formerly been in the bottom
quintile.
In other words, a zero income disparity in fact would now appear
statistically as an income disparity larger than today’s income disparity
between women and men or between black and white Americans!

“Stagnating” Income Growth

There is also a long history of alarmist claims about supposedly
“stagnating” income growth among Americans as a whole. For example,
the average real income— that is, money income adjusted for inflation— of
American households rose by only 6 percent over a period of more than a
quarter of a century, from 1969 to 1996. But the average real income per
person in the United States rose by 51 percent over that very same period.57
How can both these statistics be true? Because the average number of
people per household was declining during those years. The Bureau of the
Census stated, as far back as 1966, that the average number of persons per
household was declining.58
 Income alarmists have their choice of statistics to use. A New York
Times writer said: “The incomes of most American households have failed
to gain ground on inflation since 1973.”59 A Washington Post writer said:
“the incomes of most American households have remained stubbornly flat
over the past three decades.”60 An official of a Washington think tank was
quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying: “The economy is
growing without raising average living standards.”61
Sometimes such conclusions may arise from statistical naivete. But
sometimes the inconsistency of the patterns in which data are cited might
suggest bias. Long-time New York Times columnist Tom Wicker, for
example, used per capita income statistics when he depicted success for the
Lyndon Johnson administration’s economic policies, but he used family
income statistics when he depicted failure for the policies of Ronald Reagan
and George H.W. Bush.62
There is no intrinsic reason why the income distribution of individuals
cannot be presented and analyzed, especially when incomes are in fact
usually paid to individuals, rather than to families, households or
“consumer units.” But income distribution alarmists seldom, if ever, cite
income statistics that compare the same individuals over time. As we have
seen, such statistics show radically different results than the conclusions of
income distribution alarmists.

Turnover in Income Brackets

The turnover rate of individuals is especially high in the highest income
brackets. What Professor Paul Krugman of the City University of New York
has referred to as “the charmed circle of the 1 percent”63 must have a
somewhat fleeting charm, because most of the people in that circle in 1996
were no longer there in 2005.64 Neither high-income people nor low-
income people are like inert chess pieces.
The turnover rate is even more extreme among the “top 400” highest
income recipients than among the “top 1 percent.” The Internal Revenue
Service’s income tax data showed that, during the years from 1992 to 2014,
there were 4,584 people in the so-called “top 400” income recipients. Of
these, 3,262 were in that bracket just one year during those 23 years65—
which is within one generation.
 When incomes received by thousands of people over the years are
presented statistically as if these were incomes received by hundreds of
people, that is a tenfold exaggeration of income disparities. If, as sometimes
claimed, “the rich” have “rigged the system,” it seems strange that they
would rig it so that 71 percent of them would not repeat their one year in
that high income bracket during the 23 years covered by the Internal
Revenue Service data.

The “Rich” and The “Poor”

The loose use of words in many discussions of income differences
includes calling people in the top quintile of income recipients “rich” and
those in the bottom quintile “poor.” But, in the 2020 census data, the top
quintile begins with a household income of $141,111.66 That is a very nice
income for an individual, and perhaps somewhat less impressive for a
couple making just under $75,000 a year each— especially if these people
have risen to that income level from more modest income levels, over the
years. But in neither case would such people be considered “rich,” or able
to afford the lifestyle of genuinely rich people with their own mansions,
yachts or private planes.
The “poor” are often as misleadingly labeled as “the rich.” In the
University of Michigan study, where 95 percent of the people initially in the
bottom quintile rose out of that quintile during the years covered, that left
just 5 percent behind during those years. Since 5 percent of the 20 percent
initially in the bottom quintile was just 1 percent of the population sampled,
only this 1 percent, who were in the bottom quintile for the duration of that
study, were therefore eligible to be called “poor” during all those years.
Contrary to Professor Stiglitz’s claim that the incomes of the 99 percent
were “stagnating,”67 it is the incomes of this low-income 1 percent that was
stagnating.
How poor are “the poor”? Compared to what? We may each conceive of
poverty in different ways, perhaps thinking of times and places where
poverty has meant hunger, cramped housing, ragged clothing and other such
afflictions. But poverty statistics are defined by the government statisticians
who collect and publish official data. In these data, official “poverty” means
whatever these statisticians say it means. No more and no less.
 By 2001, three-quarters of officially “poor” Americans had air-
conditioning, which only a third of all Americans had, just a generation
earlier, in 1971. Ninety-seven percent of people in official poverty in 2001
had color television, which less than half of all Americans had in 1971.
Seventy-three percent owned a microwave oven, which fewer than 1
percent of Americans owned in 1971, and 98 percent of “the poor” in 2001
had either a videocassette recorder or a DVD player, which no one had in
1971.68
As for living in cramped quarters, the average American in officially
defined poverty had more space per person than the average European—
not the average European in poverty, but the average European, period.69
None of this suggests that Americans living in poverty have no
problems. They often have more serious and even urgent problems today as
victims of crime and violence than in the past, when their material standard
of living was not as high. But that is a major problem deserving long-
overdue attention on its own, more so than a supposedly “stagnating”
income problem.
The terms “rich” and “poor” are misleading in another and more
fundamental sense. These terms apply to people’s stock of wealth, not their
flows of income. Income taxes do not tax wealth. Even taxing 100 percent
of a billionaire’s income would not stop that billionaire from remaining a
billionaire, though it can stop others from becoming billionaires. Praise for
some billionaires who publicly recommend higher income taxes may be
somewhat excessive.

Implications for “Social Justice”

Attempts to verbally convert people currently in different income
brackets into different social classes ignore turnover— especially in high-
income brackets, where many people are transients with a one-year spike in
income. Presumably it is flesh-and-blood human beings whose well-being
we are concerned about, not disparities between statistical categories
containing very different numbers of people and ever-changing mixes of
people.
What is the significance of the fact that the share of income going to
people in the top quintile has been growing? To the income
redistributionists, it suggested that a given set of people was receiving— or
“taking”— a larger share of society’s total income. But, while this might
have been a valid conclusion, if the people in the different income brackets
had been continuous residents in those brackets, that was not the case when
they were transients.
With more than half of all American adults reaching the top quintile
(and even the top decile) in household income at some point in their lives,70
the increased reward awaiting those who reach that level over the years has
meant that there was now a higher pay-off for rising to the top. Such an
outcome is consistent with the fact that the age of peak earnings has risen
over time from the 35–44-year-olds to people 45–54 years old.71 This in
turn is consistent with the fact that technological development has made
knowledge more valuable, relative to the physical vitality of youth. Since
everyone ages, such an outcome does not automatically concentrate high
incomes in particular social classes.
Statistics can be enormously valuable, for testing our beliefs against
empirical evidence. But that requires careful attention to specific data, and
to the words which accompany those data. As economist Alan Reynolds, a
Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, put it:

Measuring the growth of incomes or the inequality of incomes is

a little like Olympic figure skating— full of dangerous leaps and
twirls and not nearly as easy as it looks. Yet the growth and
inequality of incomes are topics that seem to inspire many people to
form very strong opinions about very weak statistics.72
Chapter 4

KNOWLEDGE FALLACIES

F or many social issues, the most important decision is who makes the
decision. Both social justice advocates and their critics might agree that
many consequential social decisions are best made by those who have the
most relevant knowledge. But they have radically different assumptions as
to who in fact has the most knowledge.
That is partly because they have radically different conceptions of what
is defined as knowledge. Such differences of opinion as to what constitutes
knowledge go back for centuries.1

CONFLICTING VISIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

Intellectuals’ view of knowledge was satirized in a verse about
nineteenth-century British scholar Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol
College at Oxford University:

My name is Benjamin Jowett.

If it’s knowledge, I know it.
I am the master of this college.
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.

Many people do not regard all information as deserving to be called

knowledge, or would not regard the possessors of some kinds of
information as being as knowledgeable as possessors of some other kinds of
information. A carpenter may know how to build a fence, and a physicist
may know that E=MC2. But, even if neither of them knows what the other
knows, many people would consider the physicist more knowledgeable,
whether because his knowledge required more study or an intellect capable
of mastering more complex information.
Knowledge, however, does not exist in a simple hierarchy, with the kind
of special knowledge taught in schools and colleges at the top, and more
mundane knowledge at the bottom. Some knowledge— in either category—
is more consequential than other knowledge, and that varies with specific
circumstances and the kinds of decisions to be made, rather than varying
with the complexity or elegance of the knowledge itself.

Consequential Knowledge
As an example of consequential knowledge— knowledge affecting
decisions with meaningful consequences in people’s lives— the officers in
charge of the Titanic no doubt had much complex knowledge about the
intricacies of ships and navigation on the seas. But the most consequential
knowledge on a particular night was the mundane knowledge of the
location of particular icebergs, because collision with an iceberg is what
damaged and sank the Titanic.
Although mundane information and special kinds of information have
both been called knowledge by some, they are not commensurable, but are
very distinct. Moreover, the presumably higher knowledge does not
automatically encompass the more mundane knowledge. Each can be
consequential in particular circumstances. This means that the distribution
of consequential knowledge in a given society can be very different,
depending on what kind of knowledge is involved.
As another example of the role of mundane but consequential
knowledge, when people migrate from one country to another, they seldom
migrate randomly from all parts of the country they leave or settle randomly
in all parts of the country they go to. Various kinds of mundane knowledge
— information of a sort not taught in schools or colleges— can play major
roles in the migration decisions of millions of human beings.
Two provinces in mid-nineteenth-century Spain, containing just 6
percent of the Spanish population, supplied 67 percent of the Spanish
immigrants to Argentina. Moreover, when these immigrants arrived in
Argentina, they lived clustered together in particular neighborhoods in
Buenos Aires.2 Similarly, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
nearly 90 percent of the Italian immigrants to Australia came from an area
in Italy containing just 10 percent of that country’s population.3 Yet
immigration to Australia remained substantial, over the years, from the
same isolated places in Italy where most of these emigrants originated. By
1939, there were more people from some Italian villages living in Australia
than remained behind in those same villages back in Italy.4
Immigrants in general tend to go to some very specific place in the
destination country, where people from their home country— people known
to them personally, and trusted— have already settled before. Such people
can provide newcomers with very specific information about the particular
places where these earlier immigrants live. This has been highly valuable
knowledge about such basic things as where to get a job, find an affordable
place to live, and numerous other mundane but consequential things in a
new country with unknown people and many unknown things about the
way of life in a society that is new to the immigrants.
Where this kind of knowledge happened to be available to people in
particular places in Spain or Italy, people from those particular places had
high rates of immigration, while many other places in these same countries
that lacked such personal connections could have very few people
emigrating. Contrary to implicit assumptions of random behavior by some
social theorists, people did not emigrate randomly from Spain in general
to Argentina in general, or from Italy in general to Australia in general.
It was much the same story with Germans immigrating to the United
States. One study found some villages “practically transplanted from
Germany to rural Missouri.”5 There was a similar pattern among German
immigrants to urban places in America. Frankfort, Kentucky, was founded
by people from Frankfurt, Germany, and Grand Island, Nebraska, was
founded by Schleswig-Holsteiners.6 Of all the people who emigrated from
China to the United States in more than half a century prior to World War I,
60 percent came from Toishan, just one of 98 counties in one province in
southern China.7
Such patterns have been the rule, not the exception, among other
immigrants to other countries, including the Lebanese settling in Colombia8
and Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settling in particular parts of
New York’s Lower East Side slum neighborhood.9
 These patterns of very specific ties to very specific places— based on
very specific mundane but consequential knowledge of particular people in
those places— extended into the social life of immigrants after their arrival
and settlement. Most of the marriages that took place in nineteenth-century
New York’s Irish neighborhoods were marriages between people from the
same county in Ireland.10 It was much the same story in the Australian city
of Griffith. In the years from 1920 to 1933, 90 percent of the Italian men
who had emigrated from Venice, and gotten married in Australia, married
Italian women who had also emigrated from Venice.11 People sort
themselves out, based on very specific information.
Such patterns have been so widely observed that they have been given a
name— “chain migration”— for the chain of personal connections
involved. This is consequential knowledge, valued for its practical
applications, rather than because of its intellectual challenge or elegance. It
is a highly specific kind of knowledge, about highly specific people and
places. This kind of knowledge is unlikely to be known by surrogate
decision-makers, such as economic central planners or policy experts, who
may have far more of the kinds of knowledge taught in schools and
colleges. But, no matter how much of this latter kind of knowledge may be
regarded as higher knowledge, it does not necessarily encompass— much
less supersede— what is regarded as lower knowledge.
How much knowledge there is in a given society, and how it is
distributed, depends crucially on how knowledge is conceived and defined.
When a social justice advocate like Professor John Rawls of Harvard
referred to how “society” should “arrange” certain outcomes,12 he was
clearly referring to collective decisions of a kind that a government makes,
using knowledge available to surrogate decision-makers, more so than the
kind of knowledge known and used by individuals in the population at
large, when making their own decisions about their own lives. As an old
saying expressed it: “A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can
do it for him.”13
Whatever the desirability of the goals sought by social justice advocates,
the feasibility of achieving those goals through surrogate decision-makers
depends on the distribution of relevant and consequential knowledge.
 It also depends on the nature, purpose and reliability of the political
process through which governments act. The history of many twentieth-
century fervent crusades for idealistic goals is a painful record of how often
the granting of great powers to governments, in pursuit of those goals, led
instead to totalitarian dictatorships. The bitter theme of “the Revolution
betrayed” goes back at least as far as the French Revolution in the
eighteenth century.
At the opposite pole from the position attributed to Benjamin Jowett,
twentieth-century Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek’s conception
of knowledge would encompass both the carpenter’s information and the
physicist’s information— and extend far beyond both. This put him in
direct opposition to various systems of surrogate decision-making in the
twentieth century, including the social justice vision.
To Hayek, consequential knowledge included not only articulated
information, but also unarticulated information, embodied in behavioral
responses to known realities. Examples might include something as simple
— and consequential— as putting warm clothing on children before taking
them out in cold weather, or moving your car over to the side of a road,
when you hear the siren of an emergency vehicle wanting to pass. As Hayek
put it:

Not all knowledge in this sense is part of our intellect, nor is our
intellect the whole of our knowledge. Our habits and skills, our
emotional attitudes, our tools, and our institutions— all are in this
sense adaptations to past experience which have grown up by
selective elimination of less suitable conduct. They are as much an
indispensable foundation of successful action as is our conscious
knowledge.14

This sweeping definition of knowledge radically changes how the

distribution of knowledge is seen. Consequential knowledge, as conceived
by Hayek, is far more widely spread among the population at large— often
in individually unimpressive fragments that will have to be coordinated by
people’s individual interactions with each other, in order to achieve mutual
accommodations, as in economic market transactions, for example.
 Another economist, Leonard Read, pointed out that no individual
possesses all the knowledge required to produce all the components of a
simple, inexpensive lead pencil. Market transactions bring together— from
different parts of the world— the graphite used for writing, the rubber for
the eraser, the wood in which these things are embedded and the metal band
that holds the eraser on.
No given individual is likely to know how to produce all these very
different things, often originating in very different places, and using very
different technologies. Inexpensive pencils are produced through chains of
information and cooperation, in market transactions based on condensed but
consequential knowledge, conveyed in the form of prices, which in turn are
based on competition between a variety of producers of each component. A
manufacturer brings all these components of the pencil together, at a cost
that consumers are willing to pay.
The implications of all this for the social justice vision depend not only
on the desirability of the goals of that vision, but also on the feasibility of
using particular kinds of institutions through which such goals might be
pursued. It is not enough to say, as Professor Rawls said, that “society”
should “arrange” to produce certain outcomes15— somehow. The choices
of institutional mechanisms matter, not only from the standpoint of
economic efficiency, but even more so for the sake of preserving the
freedom of millions of people to make their own decisions about their own
lives as they see fit, rather than have surrogate decision-makers preempt
their decisions, in the name of noble-sounding words, such as “social
justice.”
The convenient vagueness of referring to “society” as the decision-
maker to “arrange” outcomes— as in Rawls’ vision of social justice16—
was preceded by Progressive-era philosopher John Dewey’s similarly vague
references to “social control” to replace “chaotic” and narrowly
“individualistic” decisions in market economies.17 Before that, back in the
eighteenth century, there was Rousseau’s vague “general will” for making
decisions for the sake of “the common good.”18
Very different conceptions of decision-making processes reflect very
different beliefs about the distribution of consequential knowledge. It is
understandable that people with very different conceptions of knowledge
and its distribution reach very different conclusions as to which kinds of
institutions produce better or worse outcomes for human beings.

Opposite Visions
Although F.A. Hayek was a landmark figure in the development of an
understanding of the crucial role of the distribution of knowledge in
determining which kinds of policies and institutions were likely to produce
what kinds of results, there were others before him whose analyses had
similar implications, and others after him— notably Milton Friedman—
who applied Hayek’s analysis in their own work.
An opposite vision of knowledge and its distribution has likewise had a
very long pedigree behind its opposite conclusions— namely, that
consequential knowledge is concentrated in intellectually more advanced
people. The question of what constitutes knowledge was among the things
addressed in a two-volume 1793 treatise titled Enquiry Concerning
Political Justice by William Godwin.19
Godwin’s conception of knowledge was very much like that prevalent in
today’s writings on social justice. Indeed, the word “political” in the title of
his book was used in a sense common at that time, referring to the polity or
governmental structure of a society. The word was used in a similar sense at
that time in the expression “political economy”— meaning what we call
“economics” today— the economic analysis of a society or polity, as
distinguished from economic analysis of decisions in a home, business or
other individual institution within a society or polity.
To Godwin, explicitly articulated reason was the source of knowledge
and understanding. In this way, “just views of society” in the minds of “the
liberally educated and reflecting members” of society will enable them to
be “to the people guides and instructors.”20 Here the assumption of superior
knowledge and understanding did not lead to casting an intellectual elite in
the role of surrogate decision-makers as part of a government, but as
influencers of the public, who in turn were expected to influence the
government.
A similar role for the intellectual elite appeared later in the nineteenth-
century writings of John Stuart Mill. Although Mill saw the population at
large as having more knowledge than the government,21 he also saw the
population as needing the guidance of elite intellectuals. As he said in On
Liberty, democracy can rise above mediocrity, only where “the sovereign
Many have let themselves be guided (which in their best times they always
have done) by the counsels and influence of a more highly gifted and
instructed One or Few.”22
Mill depicted these intellectual elites— “the best and wisest,”23 the
“thinking minds,”24 “the most cultivated intellects in the country,”25 “those
who have been in advance of society in thought and feeling”26— as “the
salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant
pool.”27 He called on the universities to “send forth into society a
succession of minds, not the creatures of their age, but capable of being its
improvers and regenerators.”28
Ironically, this presumed indispensability of intellectuals for human
progress was asserted at a time and in a place— nineteenth-century Britain
— where an industrial revolution was taking place in Mill’s own lifetime
that would change whole patterns of life in many nations around the world.
Moreover, this industrial revolution was led by men with practical
experience in industry, rather than intellectual or scientific education.
Among Americans as well, even revolutionary industrial giants like
Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had very little formal schooling,29 and the
first airplane to lift off the ground with a human being on board was
invented by two bicycle mechanics— the Wright brothers— who never
finished high school.30
Nevertheless, John Stuart Mill’s vision of the indispensable role of
intellectuals in human progress has been one shared by many intellectuals
over the centuries. These have included intellectuals leading crusades for
more economic equality, based ironically on assumptions of their own
superiority. Rousseau said in the eighteenth century that he considered it
“the best and most natural arrangement for the wisest to govern the
multitude.”31 Variations on this theme have marked such movements
against economic inequality as Marxism, Fabian socialism, Progressivism
and social justice activism.
Rousseau, despite his emphasis on society being guided by “the general
will,” left the interpretation of that will to elites. He likened the masses of
the people to “a stupid, pusillanimous invalid.”32 Others on the eighteenth-
century left, such as William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet,
expressed similar contempt for the masses.33 In the nineteenth century, Karl
Marx said, “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.”34 In other
words, millions of fellow human beings mattered only if they carried out
the Marxian vision.
Fabian socialist pioneer George Bernard Shaw regarded the working
class as being among the “detestable” people who “have no right to live.”
He added: “I should despair if I did not know that they will all die presently,
and that there is no need on earth why they should be replaced by people
like themselves.”35
In our own times, prominent legal scholar Professor Ronald Dworkin of
Oxford University declared that “a more equal society is a better society
even if its citizens prefer inequality.”36 French feminist pioneer Simone de
Beauvoir likewise said, “No woman should be authorized to stay at home to
raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not
have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many
women will make that one.”37 In a similar vein, consumer activist Ralph
Nader said that “the consumer must be protected at times from his own
indiscretion and vanity.”38
We have already seen how similar attitudes led genetic determinists in
the early twentieth century to casually advocate imprisoning people who
had committed no crime, and denying them a normal life, on the basis of
unsubstantiated beliefs that were then in vogue in intellectual circles.
Given the conception of knowledge prevalent among many elite
intellectuals, and the distribution of such knowledge implied by that
conception, it is hardly surprising that they reach the kinds of conclusions
that they do. Indeed, to make the opposite assumption— that one’s own
great achievements and competence are confined to a narrow band, out of
the vast spectrum of human concerns— could be a major impediment to
promoting social crusades that preempt the decisions of others, who are
supposedly to be the beneficiaries of such crusades as the quest for social
justice.
F.A. Hayek regarded the assumptions of crusading intellectuals as The
Fatal Conceit— the title of his book on the subject. Although he was a
landmark figure in opposition to the presumed superiority of intellectuals as
guides or surrogate decision-makers for other people, he was not alone in
his opposition to the idea of a presumed concentration of consequential
knowledge in intellectual elites.
Professor Milton Friedman, another Nobel Prize economist, noted how
that honor can lead to assumptions of omnicompetence, by both the public
and the recipient:

It is a tribute to the worldwide repute of the Nobel awards that the

announcement of an award converts its recipient into an instant
expert on all and sundry… Needless to say the attention is flattering,
but also corrupting.39

Yet another Nobel laureate, Professor George J. Stigler, likewise

observed: “A full collection of public statements signed by laureates whose
work gave them not even professional acquaintance with the problem
addressed by the statement would be a very large and somewhat depressing
collection.”40 He referred to “Nobel laureates who issue stern ultimata to
the public on almost a monthly basis, and sometimes on no other basis.”41
Such presumptions of omnicompetence have by no means been confined
to Nobel laureates. Professor Friedman found such beliefs common among
prominent individuals and institutions promoting social crusades currently
in vogue:

I talked to and argued with groups from academia, from the

media, from the financial community, from the foundation world,
from you name it. I was appalled at what I found. There was an
unbelievable degree of intellectual homogeneity, of acceptance of a
standard set of views complete with cliché answers to every
objection, of smug self-satisfaction at belonging to an in-group.42

It is unusual for what critics say about some people to be so similar to

what those people say about themselves— in this case, how intellectual
elites feel so superior to other people. This pattern goes back at least as far
as the eighteenth century, and is consistent with what John Maynard Keynes
said in the twentieth century about the intellectual circle to which he had
belonged:

We entirely repudiated a personal liability on us to obey general

rules. We claimed the right to judge every individual case on its
merits, and the wisdom, experience and self-control to do so
successfully…Before heaven we claimed to be our own judge in our
own case.43

Although, in his later years, Keynes recognized some of the problems

with that approach, he nevertheless said: “Yet so far as I am concerned, it is
too late to change.”44 A biographer of Keynes, a fellow economist who was
his contemporary, pointed out another aspect of Keynes’ character that has
long been characteristic of some other intellectual elites:

He held forth on a great range of topics, on some of which he was

thoroughly expert, but on others of which he may have derived his
views from the few pages of a book at which he had happened to
glance. The air of authority was the same in both cases.45

Differences in assumptions about the distribution of consequential

knowledge are more than incidental social curiosities. People seeking
similar goals can reach radically different conclusions about the way to
achieve those goals, when they have radically different beliefs about the
nature and distribution of the consequential knowledge required. In some
cases, the goals themselves can seem possible or impossible, depending on
what kind of knowledge distribution would be required to reach those goals.

FACTS AND MYTHS

Policies based on the social justice vision tend to assume not only a
concentration of consequential knowledge in intellectual elites, but also a
concentration of the causes of socioeconomic disparities in such other
people as heads of business, educational and other institutions. Accordingly,
the social justice agenda tends to focus its attention on correcting
institutional and societal defects by having government empower surrogate
decision-makers to rescue victims of various forms of mistreatment by
taking many decisions out of other people’s hands. This has included taking
some decisions out of the hands of the supposed victims themselves, and
transferring those decisions to elite surrogates, whose supposedly greater
knowledge could better protect their interests.
These preemptions of other people’s decisions for their own good has
ranged from decisions about employment and personal finance to decisions
about housing and the values to be taught to their children.
Advocacy of such preemptions was a prominent feature of the
Progressive era in early twentieth-century America, and has continued on
into the present.

Employment Issues
One of the prominent early Progressives to call for elite preemptions of
other people’s decisions was Walter E. Weyl, who graduated from college at
age 19, went on to earn a Ph.D., and had a career as an academic and a
journalist. He was clearly one of the intellectual elites, and he devoted his
talents to crusading for a “socialized democracy,” in which employees
would be protected from the “great interstate corporations,”46 among other
hazards and restrictions. For example:

A law forbidding a woman to work in the textile mills at night is a

law increasing rather than restricting her liberty, simply because it
takes from the employer his former right to compel her through sheer
economic pressure to work at night when she would prefer to work
by day.47

Clearly, Walter E. Weyl saw the employer as taking away this woman’s
liberty and people like himself as wanting to restore it to her— even though
it was the employer who offered her an option and surrogates like Weyl
who wanted to take away her option. For intellectual elites who see
society’s consequential knowledge concentrated in people like themselves,
this might make sense. But people who see consequential knowledge
widely diffused among the population at large could reach the opposite
conclusion— already mentioned— that “A fool can put on his coat better
than a wise man can do it for him.” Or her.
Minimum wage laws are another example of intellectual elites and
social justice advocates acting as surrogate decision-makers, preempting the
decisions of both employers and employees. As noted in Chapter 3, the
unemployment rate among black 16-year-old and 17-year-old males was
under 10 percent in 1948, when inflation had rendered the minimum wage
law ineffective. But, after a series of minimum wage increases, beginning in
1950, restored that law’s effectiveness, the unemployment rate of black
males in this age bracket rose, and never fell below 20 percent for more
than three consecutive decades, in the years from 1958 to 1994.48
In some of those years, their unemployment rate was over 40 percent.
Moreover, during those years, the virtually identical unemployment rates
for black and white teenage males that existed when the minimum wage
law was ineffective in 1948, now had a racial gap. Black teenage male
unemployment rates were now often twice as high as the unemployment
rate for white teenage males.49 In 2009— ironically, the first year of the
Obama administration— the annual unemployment rate of black teenage
males as a whole was 52 percent.50
In other words, half of all black teenage males looking for jobs could not
find any, because surrogate decision-makers made it illegal for them to take
jobs at wages that employers were willing to pay, but which third-party
surrogates disliked. Preempting their options left black teenage males the
choice of doing without pay in legal occupations or making money from
illegal activities, such as selling drugs— an activity with dangers from both
the law and rival gangs. But even if unemployed black teenage males just
hung around idle on the streets, no community of any race is made better
off with many adolescent males hanging around with nothing useful to do.
None of these facts has made the slightest impression on many people
advocating higher minimum wage rates. This is another example of
situations in which “friends” and “defenders” of the less fortunate are
oblivious to the harm they are doing. New York Times columnist Nicholas
Kristof, for example, depicted people who oppose minimum wage laws as
people with “hostility” to “raising the minimum wage to keep up with
inflation” because of their “mean-spiritedness” or “at best, a lack of
empathy toward those struggling.”51
There is no need to attribute malign intentions to Nicholas Kristof. Fact-
free moralizing is a common pattern among social justice advocates. But
the fundamental problem is an institutional problem, when laws allow third-
party surrogates to preempt other people’s decisions and pay no price for
being wrong, no matter how high the price paid by others, whom they are
supposedly helping.
Anyone seriously interested in facts about the effects of minimum wage
laws on employment can find such facts in innumerable examples from
countries around the world, and in different periods of history.52 Most
modern, industrial countries have minimum wage laws, but some do not, so
their unemployment levels can be compared to the unemployment levels in
other countries.
It was news in 2003 when The Economist magazine reported that
Switzerland’s unemployment rate “neared a five-year high of 3.9% in
February.”53 Switzerland had no minimum wage law. The city-state of
Singapore has also been without a minimum wage law, and its
unemployment rate has been as low as 2.1 percent in 2013.54 Back in 1991,
when Hong Kong was still a British colony, it too had no minimum wage
law, and its unemployment rate was under 2 percent.55 The last American
administration without a national minimum wage law was the Coolidge
administration in the 1920s. In President Coolidge’s last four years in
office, the annual unemployment rate ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a
low of 1.8 percent.56
While some social justice advocates may think of minimum wage laws
as a way to help low-income people, many special-interest groups in
countries around the world— perhaps more experienced and informed
about their own economic interests— have deliberately advocated
minimum wage laws for the express purpose of pricing some low-income
people out of the labor market. At one time, the groups targeted for
exclusion included Japanese immigrant workers in Canada57 and African
workers in South Africa under apartheid,58 among others.59

Payday Loans
 Similar presumptions have led to many local social justice crusades to
outlaw so-called “payday loans” in low-income neighborhoods. These are
usually short-term loans of small amounts of money, charging something
like $15 per hundred dollars lent for perhaps a few weeks.60 Low-income
people, facing some unexpected financial emergency, often turn to such
loans because banks are unlikely to lend to them, and the money they need
to deal with some emergency must be paid before their next check is due—
whether that is a paycheck from some job, or a check from welfare or some
other source.
Perhaps an old car has broken down, and needs immediate repairs, if
that is the only way someone can get to work from where they live. Or a
family member might have suddenly gotten sick, and needs some expensive
medicine right away. In any event, the borrowers need money they don’t
have, and they need it right now. Paying $15 to borrow $100 until the end
of the month may be one of the very few options available. But that could
work out mathematically to an annual interest rate of several hundred
percent— and social justice advocates consider that “exploitation.”
Accordingly, payday loans have been denounced from the editorial pages of
the New York Times61 to many other venues for social justice activism.62
By the same kind of reasoning as that denouncing payday loan interest
rates as being several hundred percent on an annual basis, renting a hotel
room for $100 a night is paying $36,500 rent annually, which seems
exorbitant for renting a room. But of course most people are very unlikely
to rent a hotel room for a year at that price. Nor is there any guarantee to the
hotel management that every room in a hotel will be rented every night,
even though hotel employees have to be paid every payday, regardless of
how many rooms are rented or not rented.
Nevertheless, based on reasoning about annual interest rates, some states
have imposed interest rate caps, which have often been enough to shut
down most payday loan businesses. Among the other flaws in the social
justice crusaders’ reasoning is that the $15 is not all interest, as economists
define interest. That sum also covers the cost of processing the loan and
covers the inevitable risks of losses from any kind of lending, as well as
covering such common business expenses as employees’ salaries, rent, etc.,
that other businesses have.
 Such costs are a higher percentage of all costs when a small amount of
money is borrowed. It does not cost a bank a hundred times as much to
process a loan of $10,000 as it costs a payday loan business to process a
loan of $100.
In short, the real interest rate— net of other costs— is unlikely to be
anything resembling the alarming interest rate numbers that are thrown
around recklessly, in order to justify preempting the decisions of low-
income people faced with a financial emergency. But, nevertheless,
intellectual elites and social justice crusaders can go away feeling good
about themselves, after depriving poor people of one of their very few
options for dealing with a financial emergency.
To someone directly involved, it may be worth much more than $15 to
avoid losing a day’s pay or to spare a sick family member needless
suffering. But it may never occur to crusading intellectual elites that
ordinary people may have far more consequential knowledge about their
own circumstances than distant surrogates have.
As for “exploitation,” it is not always easy to know what some people
mean specifically when they use that word, other than as an expression of
their disapproval. But if we take “exploitation” in this context to mean that
people who own payday loan businesses receive a higher rate of return on
their business investment than is necessary to compensate them for being in
this particular business, then the complete shutdown of many payday loan
businesses, in the wake of legislation reducing their “interest” charges,
suggests the opposite. Why would anyone completely give up a business
that still earns them as much of a return on their investment as other
businesses receive?
In the particular cases where legislated limits on what is called “interest”
force payday loan businesses to go out of business, social justice reformers
may go away feeling good about having ended “exploitation” of the poor,
when they have in fact simply denied the poor one of their very few options
in an emergency, by preventing the businesses supplying that option from
earning a rate of return common in other businesses.

Housing Decisions
 Even such basic individual decisions as where to live— in what kind of
housing and in what kind of neighborhood— have been preempted by
surrogate decision-makers.
For more than a century, social reformers have used the power of
government to force low-income people to abandon the homes in which
they have chosen to live, and move to places the reformers consider better.
These policies have gone by a variety of names, such as “slum clearance,”
“urban renewal” or whatever other names happened to be in vogue
politically at various times.
Some of the housing that the poorest people lived in, especially back in
the early twentieth century, was truly awful. A survey in 1908 showed that
about half of the families who lived on New York’s Lower East Side had
three or four people sleeping per room, and nearly 25 percent of these
families had five or more people sleeping per room.63 Individual home
bathtubs were very rare in such places at that time. An indoor faucet or
toilet, to be shared by many tenants, was a recent improvement, and they
were by no means universal. There were still thousands of outdoor toilets in
the backyards, which could be something of a challenge in the winter.
Surrogate decision-makers did not merely advise the tenants to leave,
nor did the government provide places to which they could move. Instead,
government officials ordered the slums torn down, and used the police to
evict tenants who did not want to leave. During these and later times,
surrogate decision-makers simply assumed that their own knowledge and
understanding were superior to that of the low-income people they had
forced out of the tenements. Later, after better housing was built as
replacements, the surrogates could feel vindicated.
Even if both the housing that the evicted tenants moved into
immediately and the new housing that was built to replace the slums were
better, the slum tenants already had the former option before they were
evicted— and their choice, when they had one, was to stay where they
were, in order to save some much-needed money, rather than pay higher
rent. Often the better housing that was built as replacements was also more
expensive.
Among the poorest of the European immigrants at that time were
Eastern European Jews. Their men often began working as peddlers on the
streets, while the women and children worked at home— for long hours at
low piecework pay, on consignments of clothing production in the slum
apartments where they lived. They were often trying to save up enough
money to be able to eventually open up some small shop or grocery store, in
hopes of being able to earn a better living that way, or at least not having
their men be peddlers working outdoors on the streets in all kinds of
weather.
Many of these Jewish immigrants had family members back in Eastern
Europe, where they were being attacked by anti-Semitic mobs. The money
being saved was also used to pay the fares of those family members who
desperately needed to escape. During these years, most of the Jewish
immigrants from Eastern Europe who came to America had their fares paid
by family members already living in America,64 even though many Jews at
that time were still poor and living in slums.
Other immigrant groups, living in slums in nineteenth-century and early
twentieth-century America, had similarly urgent situations to deal with.
Italian immigrants, who were overwhelmingly men, often had families back
in the poorer southern regions of Italy, to whom they sent money they
earned in the United States. These immigrants often slept many men to a
room, in order to save money. Observers who noticed that they seemed to
be physically smaller than other men— something not said of Italian men in
America in later generations— may not have known that these men
skimped even on food, in order to save up money with which to either
return to Italy in a few years to rejoin their families, or to send money to
their families to come join them in America.
In an earlier generation, Irish immigrants lived in some of the worst
slums in America— usually in families, but also with other family members
still remaining in Ireland, where a crop failure created a devastating famine
that struck in the 1840s. Like the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in
later years, the Irish living in America sent money back to their family
members in Ireland, so that they could immigrate to America, with their
fares prepaid.65
These and other urgent reasons for needing to save money were part of
the consequential knowledge keenly felt by family members living in the
slums, but less likely to be known by surrogate decision-makers with great
confidence in their own supposedly superior knowledge and understanding.
Early Progressive-era writer Walter E. Weyl said that “a tenement house
law increases the liberty of tenement dwellers.”66 The resistance of slum
dwellers who had to be forced out by police suggests that they saw things
differently.

Children
An even deeper penetration into the lives of other people has been
preempting parents’ role in raising their own children.
The decision as to when and how parents want their children to be
informed and advised about sex was simply preempted by surrogates who
introduced “sex education” into the public schools in the 1960s. Like so
many other social crusades by intellectual elites, the “sex education” agenda
was presented politically as an urgent response to an existing “crisis.” In
this case, the problems to be solved were said to include unwanted
pregnancies among teenage girls and venereal diseases among both sexes.
A Planned Parenthood representative, for example, testified before a
Congressional subcommittee on the need for such programs “to assist our
young people in reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock births and early
marriage necessitated by pregnancy.”67 Similar views, as regards both
venereal diseases and unwanted pregnancies were echoed in many elite
intellectual circles, and questioners or critics were depicted as ignorant or
worse.68
What were the actual facts, as of the time of this “crisis,” supposedly in
urgent need of a “solution” by preempting the role of parents? Venereal
diseases had been declining for years. The rate of infection for gonorrhea
declined every year from 1950 through 1958, and the rate of syphilis
infection was, by 1960, less than half of what it had been in 1950.69 The
pregnancy rate among teenage females had declined for more than a
decade.70
As for the facts about what happened after “sex education” was widely
introduced into public schools, the rate of teenage gonorrhea tripled
between 1956 and 1975.71 The rate of infection for syphilis continued to
decline, but its rate of decline from 1961 on was nowhere near as steep as
its sharp rate of decline in earlier years.72
 During the 1970s, the pregnancy rate among females from 15 years old
to 19 years old rose from approximately 68 per thousand in 1970 to
approximately 96 per thousand by 1980.73 Data for birth rates per thousand
females in this same age group differ numerically— because of abortions
and miscarriages— but the pattern over the years was similar.
Beginning in the years before sex education was introduced into the
public schools on a large scale in the 1960s, the birth rate among unmarried
females, aged 15 to 19, was 12.6 per thousand in 1950, 15.3 in 1960, 22.4
in 1970 and 27.6 in 1980. At the end of the century in 1999, it was 40.4 per
thousand.74 As a percentage of all births to females in the same age bracket
— both married and unmarried— the births to unmarried females in this
age bracket were 13.4 percent of all the births to females of these ages in
1950, 14.8 in 1960, 29.5 in 1970, and 47.6 in 1980. As of the year 2000,
more than three quarters of all the births to females in this age bracket—
78.7 percent— were to unmarried females.75
The reason is not hard to find: The percentage of unmarried teenage
females who had engaged in sex was higher at every age from 15 through
19 by 1976 than it was just five years earlier.76 Nor is it hard to understand
why, when the specifics of what was called “sex education” included such
things as this:

A popular sex instructional program for junior high school students,

aged 13 and 14, shows film strips of four naked couples, two
homosexual and two heterosexual, performing a variety of sexually
explicit acts, and teachers are warned with a cautionary note from the
sex educators not to show the materials to parents or friends: “Many
of the materials of this program shown to people outside the context
of the program itself can evoke misunderstanding and difficulties.”77

When some parents in Connecticut learned of the specifics of such “sex

education” programs and protested, they were denounced as
“fundamentalists” and “right-wing extremists.” It so happens that their
religion is known, even if their political views are not. They were affluent
Episcopalians.78 But here, as with many other issues involving the social
crusades of intellectual elites, arguments against their positions are too
often answered by ad hominem denunciations, rather than by counter-
arguments with facts. Among the comments from “experts” was that “sex
and sexuality have become far too complex and technical to leave to the
typical parent, who is either uninformed or too bashful to share useful
sexual information with his child.”79
Across a broad spectrum of issues, people who see themselves as
possessors of superior consequential knowledge, lacking in other people,
see no problem in preempting other people’s decisions. Nor are
consequences that are the opposite of what was predicted necessarily
chastening. Many advocates of “sex education” in public schools used these
dire consequences as showing an even more urgent need for additional “sex
education.”80
However, as in the case of the early Progressive-era genetic
determinists, there was one prominent supporter of “sex education” in the
public schools who frankly faced the facts. This was Sargent Shriver,
former head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, which had led the early
charge for “sex education” in public schools. He said in testimony before a
Congressional committee in 1978:

Just as venereal disease has skyrocketed 350% in the last 15 years

when we have had more clinics, more pills, and more sex education
than ever in history, teen-age pregnancy has risen.81

As with Carl Brigham’s recanting of his conclusions on genetic

determinism in an earlier generation, it is hard to find others prepared to be
equally frank.

PATTERNS AND CONSEQUENCES

In politics— whether electoral politics or ideological politics— the word
“crisis” often means whatever situation someone wants to change. Far from
automatically indicating some dire condition threatening the public, it often
means simply a golden opportunity for surrogates to use the taxpayers’
money and the government’s power to advance the surrogates’ interests,
whether these interests are political, ideological or financial.
 Intellectual elites crusading for their ideological goals have, for
centuries, seen children as a special target for their messages. As far back as
the eighteenth century, William Godwin said that children— other people’s
children— “are a sort of raw material put into our hands.”82 Their minds
“are like a sheet of white paper.”83 This vision of teaching other people’s
children as a golden opportunity for intellectuals to shape society, by
controlling what is inscribed on these young and presumably blank minds,
has remained a key feature of social crusades to remake the world to fit the
preconceptions of intellectual elites, who see themselves as key possessors
of consequential knowledge.
This same conception of the educational role of crusading intellectual
elites was a central feature of the Progressive era, in both the early
twentieth century and the later twentieth century, continuing on into our
own times. Before Progressive-era icon Woodrow Wilson became President
of the United States, he was president of Princeton University. He saw his
role as an educator to be “to make the young gentlemen of the rising
generation as unlike their fathers as possible.”84 There was no suggestion of
who gave him such a mandate— or even whether parents would tolerate,
much less pay for, such a usurpation of their role, if they knew about it.
Another major figure of the early Progressive era, Professor John Dewey
of Columbia University, likewise saw schools as places to help “eliminate
obvious social evils” through the schools’ “development of children and
youth but also of the future society of which they will be the
constituents.”85 Schools “train the State of to-morrow,” according to
Dewey, and could be instrumental in “overcoming the present defects of our
system.”86 In short, “it is the business of the school environment to
eliminate, so far as possible, the unworthy features of the existing
environment,” and be “weeding out” undesirable “dead wood from the
past.”87 John Dewey has long been recognized as a major and lasting
influence on the role of American public schools. Dewey’s many writings
on education seldom focused on such mundane concerns as how to get
students to better understand mathematics, science or language. He clearly
sought a more expansive role for educators as promoters of a Progressive
vision of society— and doing so behind the backs of parents.
 When Dewey created the Laboratory School at the University of
Chicago, its goals were ideological— reflecting Dewey’s own passionate
feelings about political issues of the time— and especially a sense of need
to change the economic and other institutions of American society.88
Ironically, many intellectual elites— then and now— seem to regard
themselves as promoting a more democratic society, when they preempt
other people’s decisions. Their conception of democracy seems to be
equalization of outcomes, by intellectual elites. This would confer benefits
on the less fortunate, at the expense of those whom these surrogates
consider less deserving. That is very different from democracy as a political
system, based on free choices by members of the voting public, to
determine what laws and policies they want to be governed by— and which
individuals they want to put in charge of the government, to administer
those laws and policies.
No prominent American more openly declared his rejection of
democracy as political control by the voting public than President Woodrow
Wilson. He rejected “popular sovereignty” as a basis for government,
because he saw it as an obstacle impeding what he called “executive
expertness.”89 Clearly, he saw consequential knowledge concentrated in
elite “experts.” He saw “the many, the people” as “selfish, ignorant, timid,
stubborn, or foolish.”90 He deplored what he called “that besetting error of
ours, the error of trying to do too much by vote.”91 He favored government
by surrogate decision-makers, armed with superior knowledge and
understanding— “executive expertness”— and unhindered by the voting
public.
Woodrow Wilson’s response to objections that this would deprive the
people at large of the freedom to live their own lives as they saw fit, was to
redefine the word “freedom.” He used the phrase “the new freedom”92
when running for President in 1912, and published a book with that title.93
By simply depicting government-provided benefits— dispensed by
surrogate decision-makers— as an additional freedom for the recipients,
President Wilson made the issue of people’s loss of freedom disappear, as if
by verbal sleight of hand.
Whether the supposed beneficiaries of these policies would consider a
trade-off of personal freedom for government benefits worthwhile was a
question kept off the agenda by this redefinition of the word “freedom.”
Woodrow Wilson’s book was subtitled “A Call for the Emancipation of the
Generous Energies of a People” and was dedicated, “with all my heart,” to
people who would go into “unselfish public service.”94 Rhetorically, at
least, people were being emancipated, rather than losing freedom.
Similar themes would be echoed again and again, over the years, by
others, on into the twenty-first century. During the vast expansion of the
American welfare state by the Lyndon Johnson administration in the 1960s,
for example, a Cabinet member in that administration used the redefinition
of freedom as increases of the kind of things that governments could
provide, rather than as personal autonomy in one’s own decisions and
behavior:

Only when he can support himself and his family, choose his job and
make a living wage can an individual and his family exercise real
freedom. Otherwise he is a servant to survival without the means to
do what he wants to do.95

Some years later, a book by two Yale professors— Politics, Economics,

and Welfare— likewise defined freedom in terms of things received, rather
than autonomy preserved. As they expressed it, “we shall try to unravel
some of the complexities in the theory and practice of freedom.”96 Their
conception of freedom was “the absence of obstacles to the realisation of
desires.”97 The “complexities” of this Wilsonian definition of freedom are
certainly understandable, since evading the obvious can become very
complex. When Spartacus led an uprising of slaves, back in the days of the
Roman Empire, he was not doing it to get welfare state benefits.
The more sophisticated or “complex” redefinition of freedom has
continued on into the twenty-first century. The author of a book titled The
Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality said: “In this
book, when I speak of freedom, it is the freedom to live a good life and to
do the things that make life worth living. The absence of freedom is
poverty, deprivation, and poor health— long the lot of much of humanity,
and still the fate of an outrageously high proportion of the world today.”98
 Back in the days of the early Progressive movement at the beginning of
the twentieth century, John Dewey questioned whether most people even
cared much about freedom, in the sense the word meant for centuries before
Woodrow Wilson redefined it. Dewey said:

Does freedom in itself and in the things it brings with it seem as

important as security of livelihood; as food, shelter, clothing, or even
as having a good time?99

Dewey asked, “how does the desire for freedom compare in intensity
with the desire to feel equal with others, especially with those who have
previously been called superiors?”100 He said, “as we look at the world we
see supposedly free institutions in many countries not so much overthrown
as abandoned willingly, apparently with enthusiasm.”101
Although Dewey was a professor of philosophy, well aware that theories
“must be regarded as hypotheses” to be subjected to “actions which test
them,” so that they are not to be accepted as “rigid dogmas,”102 no such
tests or evidence accompanied his own sweeping pronouncements about
such things as “obvious social evils” in contemporary American society.103
Nor were such tests applied to Professor Dewey’s other sweeping
pronouncements about “our defective industrial regime,”104 his claim that
“Industrial entrepreneurs have reaped out of all proportion to what they
sowed,”105 or that schools needed to offset “the coarseness, blunders, and
prejudices of their elders” that children see at home.106
This casual contempt for ordinary people and their freedom was by no
means confined to John Dewey, or to educators. In the law as well, there
has been the same disregard of other people’s rights and values by
intellectual elites. One of the leading legal authorities of the Progressive era
was Roscoe Pound, who was for 20 years— from 1916 to 1936— Dean of
the Harvard Law School, which turned out many leading legal scholars
promoting an expansive role for judges in “interpreting” the Constitution to
loosen its restrictions on government power, in the cause of what Roscoe
Pound called “social justice,” as far back as 1907.107
Pound invoked the words “science” and “scientific” repeatedly in his
discussions,108 which had neither the procedures nor the precision of
science. There was to be a “science of politics,”109 and a “science of
law.”110 Similarly, Pound repeatedly called for “social engineering,”111 as if
other human beings were to be like inert components of social machinery,
to be constructed by elites into a society with “social justice.”
With Pound, as with Woodrow Wilson, what the public at large wanted
faded into the background. Pound lamented that “we still harp upon the
sacredness of property before the law” and approvingly cited the “progress
of law away from the older individualism” which “is not confined to
property rights.”112
Thus, in 1907 and 1908, Roscoe Pound set forth principles of judicial
activism— going beyond interpreting the law to making social policy—
that would still be dominant, more than a hundred years later, and on into
the present. One of the rationales for such an expanded role for judges has
been the claim that the Constitution is too hard to amend, so that judges
must amend it by “interpretation,” to adapt it to changing times.
Like so much that has been said and repeated endlessly by elites with the
social justice vision, this rationale is contradicted by readily available facts.
The Constitution of the United States was amended 4 times in 8 years—
from 1913 through 1920113— during the heyday of the Progressives, who
claimed that it was nearly impossible to amend the Constitution.114 When
the people wanted the Constitution amended, it was amended. When the
elites wanted it amended, but the people did not, that was not a “problem”
to be “solved.” That was democracy, even if it frustrated elites convinced
that their superior wisdom and virtue should be imposed on others.
Dean Pound simply dismissed as “dogma” the Constitution’s separation
of powers, because the separation of powers would “limit the courts to
interpretation and application” of the law.115 Pound’s own conception of the
role of judges was far more expansive.
As far back as 1908, Pound referred to the desirability of “a living
constitution by judicial interpretation.”116 He called for “an awakening of
juristic activity,” for “the sociological jurist,” and declared that law “must
be judged by the results it achieves.”117 What he called “mechanical”
jurisprudence118 was condemned for “its failure to respond to vital needs of
present-day life.” When law “becomes a body of rules,” that “is the
condition against which sociologists now protest, and protest rightly,”119 he
said. Why judges and sociologists should be making social policy, instead
of people elected as legislators or executives, was not explained.
Whether in law or in other areas, one of the hallmarks of elite
intellectuals’ seeking to preempt other people’s decisions— whether on
public policy or in their own private lives— is a reliance on unsubstantiated
pronouncements, based on elite consensus, treated as if that was equivalent
to documented facts. One revealing sign of this is how often the arguments
of people with other views are not answered with counter-arguments, but
with ad hominem assertions instead. This pattern has persisted for more
than a century, not only in discussions of social justice issues, but also in
other issues— and not only in the United States, but also among other
intellectual elites in countries on the other side of the Atlantic.
From the earliest days of the Progressive era in the United States, one of
the features of Progressives’ conceptions of advanced social thinking was
that automatic punishment of criminals should be replaced, or at least
supplemented, by treatment of the criminal, as if crime were a disease—
and a disease whose “root causes” could be traced to society, as well as to
the criminal. Such ideas can be traced back at least as far as such
eighteenth-century writers as William Godwin in England and the Marquis
de Condorcet in France.120 But these ideas were often presented by
twentieth-century Progressives as new revelations of modern “social
science” and were widely celebrated among intellectual elites.121
In this atmosphere, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a series of
early 1960s cases, began to “interpret” the Constitution as providing newly
discovered “rights” for criminals that had apparently escaped notice before.
These cases included Mapp v. Ohio (1961), Escobedo v. Illinois (1964) and
Miranda v. Arizona (1966). The Supreme Court majority, led by Chief
Justice Earl Warren, were undeterred by bitter dissenting opinions from
other Justices, who objected to both the dangers being created and the lack
of legal basis for the decisions.122
At a 1965 conference of judges and legal scholars, when a former police
commissioner complained about the trend of recent Supreme Court
decisions on criminal law, Justice William J. Brennan and Chief Justice Earl
Warren sat “stony-faced” during his presentation, according to a New York
Times account. But, after a law professor responded with scorn and ridicule
to what the commissioner said, Warren and Brennan “frequently roared
with laughter.”123
A mere police official opposing learned Olympians of the law may have
seemed humorous to elites at this gathering. But some crime statistics might
present a somewhat different perspective. Prior to the Supreme Court’s
remaking of the criminal law, beginning in the early 1960s, the homicide
rate in the United States had been going down for three consecutive decades
— and that rate, in proportion to population, was in 1960 just under half of
what it had been in 1934.124 But almost immediately after the Supreme
Court’s creation of sweeping new “rights” for criminals, the homicide rate
reversed. It doubled from 1963 to 1973.125
No one found that humorous, least of all the mothers, widows and
orphans of homicide victims. Although this was a nationwide trend, it was
especially severe in black communities— places supposedly being helped
by social justice advocates, who were often also advocates of a de-emphasis
of law enforcement and punishment, seeking instead to treat the “root
causes” of crime.
Both before and after the 1960s sudden upsurge in homicides, the
homicide rate among blacks was consistently some multiple of the
homicide rate among whites. In some years there were more black homicide
victims than white homicide victims— in absolute numbers126— even
though the size of the black population was only a fraction of the size of the
white population. This meant that the sudden upsurge in homicides took an
especially heavy toll in black communities.
Supreme Court Justices with lifetime tenure are classic examples of
elites who institutionally pay no price for being wrong— no matter how
wrong, and no matter how high the price paid by others. Chief Justice Earl
Warren did not even pay the price of admitting a mistake. In his memoirs,
he rejected critics of the Supreme Court’s criminal law decisions. He
blamed crime “in our disturbed society” on “the root causes” of crime—
citing such examples as “poverty,” “unemployment,” and “the degradation
of slum life.”127 But he offered no factual evidence that any of these things
had suddenly gotten worse in the 1960s than they had been in the three
preceding decades, when the homicide rate was going down.
 IMPLICATIONS
How we see the distribution of consequential knowledge is crucial for
deciding what kinds of decisions make sense, through what kinds of
policies and institutions. We each have our own island of knowledge in a
sea of ignorance. Some islands are larger than others, but no island is as
large as the sea. As Hayek conceived it, the enormously vast amount of
consequential knowledge dispersed among the population of a whole
society makes the differences in the amount of such knowledge between
some people and other people “comparatively insignificant.”128
This conclusion provides little basis for intellectual elites to engage in
wholesale preemption of other people’s decisions, whether these are
decisions about how they live their own lives or decisions about the kinds
of laws the voting public want to live under, and the people they want in
charge of carrying out those laws. Intellectual elites with outstanding
achievements within their own respective specialties may give little thought
to how ignorant they may be on a vast spectrum of other concerns.
Even more dangerous than ignorance, however, is a fallacious certitude,
which can afflict people at all educational levels and all IQ levels. While we
may not see our own fallacies, the saving grace in this situation is that we
can often see other people’s fallacies much more clearly— and they can see
ours. In a world of inevitably fallible human beings, with inevitably
different viewpoints and different fragments of consequential knowledge,
our ability to correct each other can be essential to preventing our making
fatally dangerous mistakes as individuals, or as a society.
The fatal danger of our times today is a growing intolerance and
suppression of both opinions and evidence that differ from the prevailing
ideologies that dominate institutions, ranging from the academic world to
the corporate world, the media and governmental institutions.
Many intellectuals with high accomplishments seem to assume that
those accomplishments confer validity to their notions about a broad swath
of issues, ranging far beyond the scope of their accomplishments. But
stepping outside the scope of one’s expertise can be like stepping off a cliff.
A high IQ and low information can be a very dangerous combination, as
a basis for preempting other people’s decisions— especially when this
preemption takes place in circumstances where there is no price for
surrogate decision-makers to pay for being wrong.
Stupid people can create problems, but it often takes brilliant people to
create a real catastrophe. They have already done that enough times— and
in enough different ways— for us to reconsider, before joining their latest
stampedes, led by self-congratulatory elites, deaf to argument and immune
to evidence.
Chapter 5

WORDS, DEEDS AND DANGERS

… we must be aware of the dangers which lie in our
most generous wishes.

Lionel Trilling1

P eople who may share many of the same basic concerns that social justice
advocates have do not necessarily share the same vision or agenda,
because they do not make the same assumptions about options, causation or
consequences. Iconic free-market economist Milton Friedman, for example,
said:

Everywhere in the world there are gross inequities of income and

wealth. They offend most of us. Few can fail to be moved by the
contrast between the luxury enjoyed by some and the grinding
poverty suffered by others.2

Similarly, F.A. Hayek— another iconic free-market economist— said:

It has of course to be admitted that the manner in which the benefits

and burdens are apportioned by the market mechanism would in
many instances have to be regarded as very unjust if it were the result
of a deliberate allocation to particular people.3

Clearly, Hayek also saw life in general as unfair, even with the free
markets he advocated. But that is not the same as saying that he saw society
as unfair. To Hayek, society was “an orderly structure,” but not a decision-
making unit, or an institution taking action.4 That is what governments do.5
But neither society nor government comprehends or controls all the many
and highly varied circumstances— including a large element of luck— that
can influence the fate of individuals, classes, races or nations.
Even within the same family, as we have seen, it matters whether you
were the first-born child or the last-born child. When the first-born child in
five-child families constituted 52 percent of the children from such families
to become National Merit Scholarship finalists, while the fifth-born child in
those families became the finalist just 6 percent of the time,6 that is a
disparity larger than most disparities between the sexes or the races.
In a growing economy, it also matters which generation of the family
you were born into.7 A facetious headline in The Economist magazine—
“Choose your parents wisely”8— highlighted another important truth about
inequalities, illustrated with this impossible advice. Circumstances beyond
our control are major factors in economic and other inequalities. Trying to
understand causation is not necessarily the same as looking for someone to
blame.
The totality of circumstances around us Hayek called a “cosmos”9 or
universe. In this context, what others call “social justice” might more
fittingly be called “cosmic justice,”10 since that is what would be required
to produce the results sought by many social justice advocates.
This is not simply a question about different names. It is a more
fundamental question about what we can and cannot do— and at what costs
and risks. When there are “differences in human fates for which clearly no
human agency is responsible,”11 as Hayek put it, we cannot demand justice
from the cosmos. No human beings, either singly or collectively, can
control the cosmos— that is, the whole universe of circumstances
surrounding us and affecting everyone’s chances in life. The large element
of luck in all our lives means that neither society nor government has either
causal control or moral responsibility extending to everything that has gone
right or wrong in everybody’s life.
Some of us may be able to think of some particular individual, whose
appearance in our lives at one particular juncture altered the trajectory of
our lives. There may be more than one such person, at different stages of
our lives, who changed our prospects in different ways, for better or worse.
Neither we nor surrogate decision-makers control such things. Those who
imagine that they can— that they are either a “self-made man” or surrogate
saviors of other people or the planet— operate in dangerous territory,
littered with human tragedies and national catastrophes.
If the world around us happened to provide equal chances for all people
in all endeavors— whether as individuals or as classes, races or nations—
that might well be seen as a world far superior to the world we actually see
around us today. Whether called social justice or cosmic justice, that might
be seen as ideal by many people who agree on little else. But our ideals tell
us nothing about our capabilities and their limits— or the dangers of trying
to go beyond those limits.
As just one example, from the earliest American Progressives onward,
there has been an ideal of applying criminal laws in a manner
individualized to the criminal, rather than generalized from the crime.12
Before even considering whether this is desirable, there is first the question
of whether human beings are even capable of doing such a thing. Where
would officials acquire such sweeping, intimate and accurate knowledge
about a stranger, much less have the superhuman wisdom to apply it in the
incalculable complications of life?
A murderer may have had an unhappy childhood, but does that justify
gambling other people’s lives, by turning him loose among them, after some
process that has been given the name “rehabilitation”? Are high-sounding
notions and fashionable catchwords important enough to risk the lives of
innocent men, women and children?
F.A. Hayek’s key insight was that all the consequential knowledge
essential to the functioning of a large society exists in its totality nowhere
in any given individual, class or institution. Therefore the functioning and
survival of a large society requires coordination among innumerable people
with innumerable fragments of consequential knowledge. This put Hayek in
opposition to various systems of centrally directed control, whether a
centrally planned economy, systems of comprehensive surrogate decision-
making in the interests of social justice, or presumptions of “society” being
morally responsible for all its inhabitants’ good or bad fates, when nobody
has the requisite knowledge for such responsibility.
 The fact that we cannot do everything does not mean that we should do
nothing. But it does suggest that we need to make very sure that we have
our facts straight, so that we do not make things worse, while trying to
make them better. In a world of ever-changing facts and inherently fallible
human beings, that means leaving everything we say or do be open to
criticism. Dogmatic certitudes and intolerance of dissent have often led to
major catastrophes, and nowhere more so than in the twentieth century. The
continuation and escalation of such practices in the twenty-first century is
by no means a hopeful sign.
Back in the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke made a fundamental
distinction between his ideals and his policy advocacies. “Preserving my
principles unshaken,” he said, “I reserve my activity for rational
endeavours.”13 In other words, having high ideals did not imply carrying
idealism to the extreme of trying to impose those ideals at all costs and
oblivious to all dangers.
Pursuing high ideals at all costs has already been tried, especially in
twentieth-century creations of totalitarian dictatorships, often based on
egalitarian goals with the highest moral principles. But powers conferred
for the finest reasons can be used for the worst purposes— and, beyond
some point, powers conferred cannot be taken back. Milton Friedman
clearly understood this:

A society that puts equality— in the sense of equality of outcome—

ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The
use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force,
introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who
use it to promote their own interests.14

F.A. Hayek— having lived through the era of the rise of totalitarian
dictatorships in twentieth-century Europe— and having witnessed how it
happened— arrived at essentially the same conclusions. But he did not
regard social justice advocates as evil people, plotting to create totalitarian
dictatorships. Hayek said that some of the leading advocates of social
justice included individuals whose unselfishness was “beyond question.”15
 Hayek’s argument was that the kind of world idealized by social justice
advocates— a world with everyone having equal chances of success in all
endeavors— was not only unattainable, but that its fervent but futile pursuit
can lead to the opposite of what its advocates are seeking. It was not that
social justice advocates would create dictatorships, but that their passionate
attacks on existing democracies could weaken those democracies to the
point where others could seize dictatorial powers.
Social justice advocates themselves obviously do not share the
conclusions of their critics, such as Friedman and Hayek. But the
differences in their conclusions are not necessarily differences in
fundamental moral values. Their differences tend to be at the level of
fundamentally different beliefs about circumstances and assumptions
about causation that can produce very different conclusions. They envision
different worlds, operating on different principles, and describe these
worlds with words that have different meanings within the framework of
different visions.
When visions and vocabularies differ so fundamentally, an examination
of facts offers at least a hope of clarification.

VISIONS AND VOCABULARIES

In a sense, words are just the containers in which meanings are
conveyed from some people to other people. But, like some other
containers, words can sometimes contaminate their contents. A word like
“merit,” for example, varies in its meanings. As a result, this word has
contaminated many discussions of social policies, whether it has been used
by advocates or critics of the social justice vision.

Merit
Opponents of group preferences, such as affirmative action for hiring or
for college admissions, often say that each individual should be judged by
that individual’s own merit. In most cases, “merit” in this context seems to
mean individual capabilities that are relevant to the particular endeavor.
Merit in this sense is simply a factual question, and the validity of the
answer depends on the predictive validity of the criteria used to compare
different applicants’ capabilities.
 Others, however— including social justice advocates— see not only a
factual issue, but also a moral issue, in the concept of merit. As far back as
the eighteenth century, social justice advocate William Godwin was
concerned not only about unequal outcomes, but especially “unmerited
advantage.”16 Twentieth-century Fabian socialist pioneer George Bernard
Shaw likewise said that “enormous fortunes are made without the least
merit.”17 He noted that not only the poor, but also many well-educated
people, “see successful men of business, inferior to themselves in
knowledge, talent, character, and public spirit, making much larger
incomes.”18
Here merit is no longer simply a factual question about who has the
particular capabilities relevant to success in a particular endeavor. There is
now also a moral question as to how those capabilities were acquired—
whether they were a result of some special personal exertions or were just
some “unmerited advantage,” perhaps due to being born into unusually
more favorable circumstances than the circumstances of most other people.
Merit in this sense, with a moral dimension, raises very different
questions, which can have very different answers. Do people born into
certain German families or certain German communities deserve to inherit
the benefits of the knowledge, experience and insights derived from more
than a thousand years of Germans brewing beer? Clearly, they do not! It is a
windfall gain. But, equally clearly, their possession of this valuable
knowledge is a fact of life today, whether we like it or not. Nor is this kind
of situation peculiar to Germans or to beer.
It so happens that the first black American to become a general in the
U.S. Air Force— General Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.— was the son of the first
black American to become a general in the U.S. Army, General Benjamin
O. Davis, Sr. Did other black Americans— or white Americans, for that
matter— have the same advantage of growing up in a military family,
automatically learning, from childhood onward, about the many aspects of a
career as a senior military officer?
Nor was this situation unique. One of the most famous American
generals in World War II— and one of the most famous in American
military history— was General Douglas MacArthur. His father was a young
commanding officer in the Civil War, where his performance on the
battlefield brought him the Congressional Medal of Honor. He ended his
long military career as a general.
None of this is peculiar to the military. In the National Football League,
quarterback Archie Manning had a long and distinguished career, in which
he threw more than a hundred touchdown passes.19 His sons— Peyton
Manning and Eli Manning— also had long and distinguished careers as
NFL quarterbacks, which in their cases included winning Super Bowls. Did
other quarterbacks, not having a father who had been an NFL quarterback
before them, have equal chances? Not very likely. But would football fans
rather watch other quarterbacks who were not as good, but who had been
chosen in order to equalize social justice?
The advantages that some people have, in a given endeavor, are not just
disadvantages to everyone else. These advantages also benefit all the people
who pay for the product or service provided by that endeavor. It is not a
zero-sum situation. Mutual benefit is the only way the endeavor can
continue, in a competitive market, with vast numbers of people free to
decide what they are willing to pay for. The losers are the much smaller
number of people who wanted to supply the same product or service. But
the losers were unable to match what the successful producers offered,
regardless of whether the winners’ success was due to skills developed at
great sacrifice or skills that came their way from just happening to be in the
right place at the right time.
When computer-based products spread around the world, both their
producers and their consumers benefitted. It was bad news for
manufacturers of competing products such as typewriters, or the slide rules
that were once standard equipment used by engineers for making
mathematical calculations. Small computerized devices could make those
calculations faster, simpler and with a vastly larger range of applications.
But, in a free-market economy, progress based on new advances inevitably
means bad news for those whose goods or services are no longer the best.
Demographic “inclusion” requires some surrogate decision-makers,
empowered to over-rule what consumers want.
A similar situation exists in the military. A country fighting for its life,
on the battlefield, cannot afford the luxury of choosing its generals on the
basis of demographic representation— “looking like America”— rather
than on the basis of military skills, regardless of how those skills were
acquired. Not if the country wants to win and survive. That is especially so
if the country wants to win its military victories without more losses of
soldiers’ lives than necessary. In that case, it cannot put generals in charge
of those soldiers when these are not the best generals available.
In the social justice literature, unmerited advantages tend to be treated as
if they are deductions from the well-being of the rest of the population. But
there is no fixed or predestined amount of well-being, whether measured in
financial terms or in terms of spectators enjoying a sport, or soldiers
surviving a battle. When President Barack Obama said: “The top 10 percent
no longer takes in one-third of our income, it now takes half,”20 that would
clearly be a deduction from other people’s incomes if there were a fixed or
predestined amount of total income.
This is not an incidental subtlety. It matters greatly whether people with
high incomes are adding to, or subtracting from, the incomes of the rest
of the population. Insinuations are a weak basis for making decisions about
a serious issue. It is too important to have that issue decided— or
obfuscated— by artful words. In plain English: Is the average American’s
income higher or lower because of the products created and sold by some
multi-billionaire?
Again, there is no fixed or predestined total amount of income or wealth
to be shared. If some people are creating more wealth than they are
receiving as income, then they are not making other people poorer. But if
they are creating products or services that are worth less than the income
they receive, then equally clearly they are making other people poorer. But,
although anyone can charge any price they want to, for whatever they are
selling, they are not likely to find people who will pay more than the
product or service is worth to themselves.
Arguing as if some people’s high incomes were deducted from some
fixed or predestined total income— leaving less for others— may be clever.
But cleverness is not wisdom, and artful insinuations are no substitute for
factual evidence, if your goal is knowing the facts. But, if your goals are
political or ideological, there is no question that one of the most politically
successful messages of the twentieth century was that the rich have gotten
rich by taking from the poor.
 The Marxian message of “exploitation” helped sweep communists into
power in countries around the world in the twentieth century, at a pace and
on a scale seldom seen in history. There is clearly a political market for that
message, and communists are just one of the ideological groups to use it
successfully for their own purposes, despite how disastrously that turned
out to be for millions of other human beings living under communist
dictatorships.
The very possibility that poor Americans, for example, are having a
rising standard of living because of progress created by people who are
getting rich— as suggested by Herman Kahn21— would be anathema to
social justice advocates. But it is by no means obvious that empirical tests
of that hypothesis would vindicate those who advocate social justice. It
seems even less likely that social justice advocates would put that
hypothesis to an empirical test.
For people seeking facts, rather than political or ideological goals, there
are many factual tests that might be applied, in order to see if the wealth of
the wealthy is derived from the poverty of the poor. One way might be to
see if countries with many billionaires— either absolutely or relative to the
size of the population— have higher or lower standards of living among the
rest of their people. The United States, for example, has more billionaires
than there are in the entire continent of Africa plus the Middle East.22 But
even Americans living in conditions officially defined as poverty usually
have a higher standard of living than that of most of the people in Africa
and the Middle East.
Other factual tests might include examining the history of prosperous
ethnic minorities, who have often been depicted as “exploiters” in various
times and places over the years. Such minorities have, in many cases over
the years, been either expelled by governments or driven out of particular
cities or countries by mob violence, or both. This has happened to Jews a
number of times over the centuries in various parts of Europe.23 The
overseas Chinese have had similar experiences in various southeast Asian
countries.24 So have Indians and Pakistanis expelled from Uganda in East
Africa.25 So have the Chettiar money-lenders in Burma, after that country’s
laws confiscating much of their property in 1948, drove many of them out
of Burma.26
 The Ugandan economy collapsed in the 1970s, after the government
expelled Asian business owners,27 who had supposedly been making
Africans worse off economically. Interest rates in Burma went up, not
down, after the Chettiars were gone.28 It was much the same story in the
Philippines, where 23,000 overseas Chinese were massacred in the
seventeenth century, after which there were shortages of the goods
produced by the Chinese.29
In centuries past, it was not uncommon for Jews in Europe to be driven
out— denounced as “exploiters” and “bloodsuckers”— from various cities
and countries, whether forced out by government edict or mob violence, or
both. What is remarkable is how often Jews were in later years invited back
to some of the places from which they had been expelled.30
Apparently some of those who drove them out discovered that the
country was worse off economically after the Jews were gone.
Although Catherine the Great banned Jews from immigrating into
Russia, in her later efforts to attract much-needed foreign skills from
Western Europe, including “some merchant people,” she wrote to one of her
officials that people in the occupations being sought should be given
passports to Russia, “not mentioning their nationality and without enquiring
into their confession.” To the formal Russian text of this message she added
a postscript in German saying, “If you don’t understand me, it will not be
my fault” and “keep all this secret.”31
In the wake of this message, Jews began to be recruited as immigrants to
Russia— even though, as a historian has noted, “throughout the whole
transaction any reference to Jewishness was scrupulously avoided.”32 In
short, even despotic rulers may seek to evade their own policies, when it is
impolitic to repeal those policies, and counterproductive to follow them.
These historical events are by no means the only factual tests that could
be used to determine whether more prosperous people are making other
people less prosperous. Nor are these necessarily the best factual tests. But
the far larger point is that a prevailing social vision does not have to
produce any factual test, when rhetoric and repetition can be sufficient to
accomplish their aims, especially when alternative views can be ignored
and/or suppressed. It is that suppression which is a key factor— and it is
already a large and growing factor in academic, political and other
institutions in our own times.
Today it is possible, even in our most prestigious educational institutions
at all levels, to go literally from kindergarten to a Ph.D., without ever
having read a single article— much less a book— by someone who
advocates free-market economies or who opposes gun control laws.
Whether you would agree with them or disagree with them, if you read
what they said, is not the issue. The far larger issue is why education has so
often become indoctrination— and for whose benefit.
The issue is not even whether what is being indoctrinated is true or false.
Even if we were to assume, for the sake of argument, that everything with
which students are being indoctrinated today is true, these issues of today
are by no means necessarily the same as the issues that are likely to arise
during the half-century or more of life that most students have ahead of
them after they have finished their education. What good would it do them
then, to have the right answers to yesterday’s questions?
What they will need then, in order to sort out the new controversial
issues, is an education that has equipped them with the intellectual skills,
knowledge and experience to confront and analyze opposing views— and
subject those views to scrutiny and systematic analysis. That is precisely
what they do not get when being indoctrinated with whatever is currently in
vogue today.
Such “education” sets up whole generations to become easy prey for
whatever clever demagogues come along, with heady rhetoric that can
manipulate people’s emotions. As John Stuart Mill put the issue, long ago:

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that…
Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries
from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and
accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to
do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his
own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually
believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost
for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive
form…33
 What Mill described is precisely what most students today do not get, in
even our most prestigious educational institutions. What they are more
likely to get are prepackaged conclusions, wrapped securely against the
intrusion of other ideas— or of facts inconsistent with the prevailing
narratives.
In the prevailing narratives of our time, someone else’s good luck is
your bad luck— and a “problem” to be “solved.” But when someone has,
however undeservedly, acquired some knowledge and insights that can be
used to design a product which enables billions of people around the world
to use computers— without knowing anything about the specifics of
computer science— that is a product which can, over the years, add trillions
of dollars’ worth of wealth to the world’s existing supply of wealth. If the
producer of that product becomes a multi-billionaire by selling it to those
billions of people, that does not make those people poorer.
People like British socialist George Bernard Shaw may lament that the
producer of this product may not have either the academic credentials or the
personal virtues which Shaw seems to attribute to himself, and to others like
himself. But that is not what the buyers of the computerized product are
paying for, with their own money. Nor is it obvious why a third-party’s
laments should be allowed to affect transactions which are not doing the
third party any harm. Nor is the general track record of third-party
preemptions encouraging.
None of this suggests that businesses have never done anything wrong.
Sainthood is not the norm in business, any more than in politics, in the
media or on academic campuses. That is why we have laws. But it is not a
reason to create ever more numerous and sweeping laws to put ever more
power in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong, regardless
of how high a price is paid by others who are subject to their power.
Slippery words like “merit”— with multiple and conflicting meanings—
can make it hard to clearly understand what the issues are, much less see
how to resolve them.

Racism
“Racism” may be the most powerful word in the social justice
vocabulary. There is no question that racism has inflicted an enormous
amount of needless suffering on innocent people, punctuated by
unspeakable horrors, such as the Holocaust.
Racism might be analogized to some deadly pandemic disease. If so, it
may be worth considering the consequences of responding to pandemics in
different ways. We certainly cannot simply ignore the disease and hope for
the best. But we cannot go to the opposite extreme, and sacrifice every
other concern— including other deadly diseases— in hopes of reducing
fatalities from the pandemic. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example,
death rates from other diseases went up,34 because many people feared
going to medical facilities, where they might catch Covid from other
patients.
Even the most terrible pandemics can subside or end. At some point,
continued preoccupation with the pandemic disease can then cause more
dangers and death from other diseases, and from other life stresses resulting
from continued restrictions that may have made sense when the pandemic
was in full force, but are counterproductive on net balance afterwards.
Everything depends on what the specific facts are at a given time and
place. That is not always easy to know. It may be especially difficult to
know, when special interests have benefitted politically or financially from
the pandemic restrictions, and therefore have every incentive to promote the
belief that those restrictions are still urgently needed.
Similarly, it can be especially hard to know about the current incidence
and consequences of racism, when racists do not publicly identify
themselves. Moreover, people who have incentives to maximize fears of
racism include politicians seeking to win votes by claiming to offer
protection from racists, or leaders of ethnic protest movements who can use
fears of racists to attract more followers, more donations and more power.
No sane person believes that there is zero racism in American society, or
in any other society. Here it may be worth recalling what Edmund Burke
said, back in the eighteenth century: “Preserving my principles unshaken, I
reserve my activity for rational endeavours.”35 Our principles can reject
racism completely. But neither a racial minority nor anyone else has
unlimited time, unlimited energy or unlimited resources to invest in seeking
out every possible trace of racism— or to invest in the even less promising
activity of trying to morally enlighten racists.
 Even if, by some miracle, we could get to zero racism, we already know,
from the history of American hillbillies— who are physically
indistinguishable from other white people, and therefore face zero racism—
that even this is not enough to prevent poverty. Meanwhile, black married-
couple families, who are not exempt from racism, have nevertheless had
poverty rates in single digits, every year for more than a quarter of a
century.36 We also know that racists today cannot prevent black young
people from becoming pilots in the Air Force, or even generals in the Air
Force, nor from becoming millionaires, billionaires or President of the
United States.
Just as we need to recognize when the power of a pandemic has at least
subsided, so that we can use more of our limited time, energy and resources
against other dangers, so we also need to pay more attention to other
dangers besides racism. That is especially so for the younger generation,
who need to deal with the problems and dangers actually confronting them,
rather than remain fixated on the problems and dangers of the generations
before them. If racists cannot prevent today’s minority young people from
becoming pilots, the teachers unions can— by denying them a decent
education, in schools whose top priorities are iron-clad job security for
teachers, and billions of dollars in union dues for teachers unions.37
It is by no means certain whether the enemies of American minorities
are able to do them as much harm as their supposed “friends” and
“benefactors.” We have already seen some of the harm that minimum wage
laws have done, by denying black teenagers the option of taking jobs that
employers are willing to offer, at pay that teenagers are willing to accept,
because unaffected third parties choose to believe that they understand the
situation better than all the people directly involved.
Another “benefit” for minorities, from those with the social justice
vision and agenda, is “affirmative action.” This is an issue often discussed
in terms of the harm done to people who would have gotten particular jobs,
college admissions or other benefits, if these had been awarded on the basis
of qualifications, rather than demographic representation. But the harm
done to the supposed beneficiaries also needs to be understood— and that
harm can be even worse.
 This possibility especially needs to be examined, because it goes
completely counter to the prevailing social justice agenda and its narrative
about the sources of black Americans’ advancement. In that narrative,
blacks’ rise out of poverty was due to the civil rights laws and social
welfare policies of the 1960s, including affirmative action. An empirical
test of that narrative is long overdue.

Affirmative Action
In the prevailing narrative on the socioeconomic progress of black
Americans, statistical data have been cited, showing declining proportions
of the black population living in poverty after the 1960s, and rising
proportions of the black population employed in professional occupations,
as well as having rising incomes. But, as with many other statements about
statistical trends over time, the arbitrary choice of which year to select as
the beginning of the statistical evaluation can be crucial in determining the
validity of the conclusions.
If the statistical data on the annual rate of poverty among black
Americans were to be presented, beginning in 1940— that is, 20 years
before the civil rights laws and expanded social welfare state policies of the
1960s— the conclusions are very different.
These data show that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent
in 1940 to 47 percent over the next two decades38— that is, before the
major civil rights laws and social welfare policies of the 1960s. This trend
continued after the 1960s, but did not originate then and did not accelerate
then. The poverty rate among blacks fell an additional 17 points, to 30
percent in 1970— a rate only slightly lower than that in the two preceding
decades, but certainly not higher. The black poverty rate fell yet again
during the 1970s, from 30 percent in 1970 to 29 percent in 1980.39 This
one-percentage-point decline in poverty was clearly much less than in the
three preceding decades.
Where does affirmative action fit in with this history? The first use of the
phrase “affirmative action” in a Presidential Executive Order was by
President John F. Kennedy in 1961. That Executive Order said that federal
contractors should “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are
employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without
regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”40 In other words, at
that point affirmative action meant equal opportunity for individuals, not
equal outcomes for groups. Subsequent Executive Orders by Presidents
Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon made numerical group outcomes the
test of affirmative action by the 1970s.
With affirmative action now transformed from equal individual
opportunity to equalized group outcomes, many people saw this as a more
beneficial policy for blacks and other low-income racial or ethnic groups to
whom this principle applied. Indeed, it was widely regarded as axiomatic
that this would better promote their progress in many areas. But the one-
percentage-point decline in black poverty during the 1970s, after
affirmative action meant group preferences or quotas, goes completely
counter to the prevailing narrative.
Over the years, as controversies raged about affirmative action as group
preferences, the prevailing narrative defended affirmative action as a major
contributor to black progress. As with many other controversial issues,
however, a consensus of elite opinion has been widely accepted, with little
recourse to vast amounts of empirical evidence to the contrary. Best-selling
author Shelby Steele, whose incisive books have explored the rationales and
incentives behind support for failed social policies,41 cited an encounter he
had with a man who had been a government official involved in the 1960s
policies:

“Look,” he said irritably, “only— and I mean only— the government

can get to that kind of poverty, that entrenched, deep poverty. And I
don’t care what you say. If this country was decent, it would let the
government try again.”42

Professor Steele’s attempt to focus on facts about the actual

consequences of various government programs of the 1960s brought a
heated response:

“Damn it, we saved this country!” he all but shouted. “This country
was about to blow up. There were riots everywhere. You can stand
 there now in hindsight and criticize, but we had to keep the country
together, my friend.”43

From a factual standpoint, this former 1960s official had the sequence
completely wrong. Nor was he unique in that. The massive ghetto riots
across the nation began during the Lyndon Johnson administration, on a
scale unseen before.44 The riots subsided after that administration ended,
and its “war on poverty” programs were repudiated by the next
administration. Still later, during the eight years of the Reagan
administration, which rejected that whole approach, there were no such
massive waves of riots.
Of course politicians have every incentive to depict black progress as
something for which politicians can take credit. So do social justice
advocates, who supported these policies. But that narrative enables some
critics to complain that blacks ought to lift themselves out of poverty, as
other groups have done. Yet the cold facts demonstrate that this is largely
what blacks did, during decades when blacks did not yet have even equal
opportunity, much less group preferences.
These were decades when neither the federal government, the media, nor
intellectual elites paid anything like the amount of attention to blacks that
they did from the 1960s on. As for the attention paid to blacks by
governments in Southern states during the 1940s and 1950s, that was
largely negative, in accordance with the racially discriminatory laws and
policies at that time.
Among the ways by which many blacks escaped from poverty in the
1940s and 1950s was migrating out of the South, gaining better economic
opportunities for adults and better education for their children.45 The Civil
Rights Act of 1964 was an overdue major factor in ending the denial of
basic Constitutional rights to blacks in the South.46 But there is no point
trying to make that also the main source of the black rise out of poverty.
The rate of rise of blacks into the professions more than doubled from 1954
to 196447— that is, before the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nor can
the political left act as if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was solely their work.
The Congressional Record shows that a higher percentage of Republicans
than Democrats voted for that Act.48
 In short, during the decades when the rise of black Americans out of
poverty was greatest, the causes of that rise were most like the causes of the
rise of other low-income groups in the United States, and in other countries
around the world. That is, it was primarily a result of the individual
decisions of millions of ordinary people, on their own initiative, and owed
little to charismatic group leaders, to government programs, to intellectual
elites or to media publicity. It is doubtful if most Americans of that earlier
era even knew the names of leaders of the most prominent civil rights
organizations of that era.
Affirmative action in the United States, like similar group preference
policies in other countries, seldom provided much benefit for people in
poverty.49 A typical teenager in a low-income minority community in the
United States, having usually gotten a very poor education in such
neighborhoods, is unlikely to be able to make use of preferential admissions
to medical schools, when it would be a major challenge just to graduate
from an ordinary college. In a much poorer country, such as India, it could
be an even bigger challenge for a rural youngster from one of the
“scheduled castes”— formerly known as “untouchables.”50
Both in the United States and in other countries with group preference
policies, benefits created for poorer groups have often gone
disproportionately to the more prosperous members of these poorer
groups51— and sometimes to people more prosperous than the average
member of the larger society.52
The central premise of affirmative action is that group “under-
representation” is the problem, and proportional representation of groups is
the solution. This might make sense if all segments of a society had equal
capabilities in all endeavors. But neither social justice advocates, nor
anyone else, seems able to come up with an example of any such society
today, or in the thousands of years of recorded history. Even highly
successful groups have seldom been highly successful in all endeavors.
Asian Americans and Jewish Americans are seldom found among the
leading athletic stars or German Americans among charismatic politicians.
At the very least, it is worth considering such basic facts as the extent to
which affirmative action has been beneficial or harmful, on net balance, for
those it was designed to help— in a world where specific developed
capabilities are seldom equal, even when reciprocal inequalities are
common. One example is the widespread practice of admitting members of
low-income minority groups to colleges and universities under less
stringent requirements than other students have to meet.
Such affirmative action in college admissions policies has been widely
justified on the ground that few students educated in the public schools in
low-income minority neighborhoods have the kind of test scores that would
get them admitted to top-level colleges and universities otherwise. So group
preferences in admissions are thought to be a solution.
Despite the implicit assumption that students will get a better education
at a higher-ranked institution, there are serious reasons to doubt it.
Professors tend to teach at a pace, and at a level of complexity, appropriate
for the particular kinds of students they are teaching. A student who is fully
qualified to be admitted to many good quality colleges or universities can
nevertheless be overwhelmed by the pace and complexity of courses taught
at an elite institution, where most of the students score in the top ten percent
nationwide— or even the top one percent— on the mathematics and verbal
parts of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).
Admitting a student who scores at the 80th percentile to such an
institution, because that student is a member of a minority group, is no
favor. It can turn someone who is fully qualified for success into a
frustrated failure. An intelligent student who scored at the 80th percentile in
mathematics can find the pace of math courses far too fast to keep up with,
while the professor’s brief explanations of complex principles may be
readily understood by the other students in the class, who scored at the 99th
percentile. They may already have learned half this material in high school.
It can be much the same story with the amount and complexity of readings
assigned to students in an elite academic institution.
None of this is news to people familiar with top elite academic
institutions. But many young people from a low-income minority
community may be the first member of their family to go to college. When
such a person is being congratulated for having been accepted into some
big-name college or university, they may not see the great risks there may
be in this situation. Given the low academic standards in most public
schools in low-income minority communities, the supposedly lucky student
may have been getting top grades with ease in high school, and can be
heading for a nasty shock when confronted with a wholly different situation
at the college level.
What is at issue is not whether the student is qualified to be in college,
but whether that student’s particular qualifications are a match or a
mismatch with the qualifications of the other students at the particular
college or university that grants admission. Empirical evidence suggests
that this can be a crucial factor.
In the University of California system, under affirmative action
admissions policies, the black and Hispanic students admitted to the top-
ranked campus at Berkeley had SAT scores just slightly above the national
average. But the white students admitted to UC Berkeley had SAT scores
more than 200 points higher— and the Asian American students had SAT
scores somewhat higher than the whites.53
In this setting, most black students failed to graduate— and, as the
number of black students admitted increased during the 1980s, the number
graduating actually decreased.54
California voters voted to put an end to affirmative action admissions in
the University of California system. Despite dire predictions that there
would be a drastic reduction in the number of minority students in the UC
system, there was in fact very little change in the total number of minority
students admitted to the system as a whole. But there was a radical
redistribution of minority students among the different campuses across the
state.
There was a drastic reduction in the number going to the two top-ranked
campuses— UC Berkeley and UCLA. Minority students were now going to
those particular UC campuses where the other students had academic
backgrounds more similar to their own, as measured by admissions test
scores. Under these new conditions, the number of black and Hispanic
students graduating from the University of California system as a whole
rose by more than a thousand students over a four-year span.55 There was
also an increase of 63 percent in the number graduating in four years with a
grade point average of 3.5 or higher.56
The minority students who fail to graduate under affirmative action
admissions policies are by no means the only ones who are harmed by
being admitted to institutions geared to students with better pre-college
educational backgrounds. Many minority students who enter college
expecting to major in challenging fields like science, technology,
engineering or mathematics— called STEM fields— are forced to abandon
such tough subjects and concentrate in easier fields. After affirmative action
in admissions was banned in the University of California system, not only
did more minority students graduate, the number graduating with degrees in
the STEM fields rose by 51 percent.57
What is crucial from the standpoint of minority students being able to
survive and flourish academically is not the absolute level of their pre-
college educational qualifications, as measured by admissions test scores,
but the difference between their test scores and the test scores of the other
students at the particular institutions they attend. Minority students who
score well above the average of American students as a whole on college
admissions tests can nevertheless be turned into failures by being admitted
to institutions where the other students score even farther above the
average of American students as a whole.
Data from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology illustrate this
situation. Data from MIT showed the black students there had average SAT
math scores at the 90th percentile. But, although these students were in the
top ten percent of American students in mathematics, they were in the
bottom 10 percent of students at MIT, whose students’ math scores were at
the 99th percentile. The outcome was that 24 percent of these extremely
well-qualified black students failed to graduate at MIT, and those who did
graduate were concentrated in the lower half of their class.58 In most
American academic institutions, these same black students would have been
among the best students on campus.
Some people might say that even those students who were concentrated
in the lower half of their class at MIT gained the advantage of having been
educated at one of the leading engineering schools in the world. But this is
implicitly assuming that students automatically get a better education at a
higher-ranked institution. However, we cannot dismiss the possibility that
these students may learn less where the pace and complexity of the
education is geared to students with an extraordinarily stronger pre-college
educational background.
 To test this possibility, we can turn to some fields, such as medicine and
the law, where there are independent tests of how much the students have
learned, after they have completed their formal education. The graduates of
both medical schools and law schools cannot become licensed to practice
their professions without passing these independent tests.
A study of five state-run medical schools found that the black-white
difference in passing the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination was
correlated with the black-white difference on the Medical College
Admission Test before entering medical school.
In other words, blacks trained at medical schools where there was little
difference between black and white students— in their scores on the test
that got them admitted to medical school— had less difference between the
races in their rates of passing the Medical Licensing test years later, after
graduating from medical school.59 The success or failure of blacks on these
tests after graduation was correlated more with whether they were trained
with other students whose admissions test scores were similar to theirs,
rather than being correlated with whether the medical school was highly
ranked or lower ranked. Apparently they learned better where they were not
mismatched by affirmative action admissions policies.
There were similar results in a comparison of law school graduates who
took the independent bar examination, in order to become licensed as
lawyers. George Mason University law school’s student body as a whole
had higher law school admissions test scores than the admissions test scores
of the student body at the Howard University law school, a predominantly
black institution. But the black students at both institutions had law school
admissions test scores similar to each other. The net result was that black
students entered the law school at George Mason University with
admissions test scores lower than that of the other law school students there.
But apparently not so at Howard University.
Data on the percentage of black students admitted to each law school
who both graduated from law school and passed the bar examination on the
first try showed that 30 percent of the black students at George Mason
University law school did so— compared to 57 percent of the black
students from the Howard University law school who did so.60 Again, the
students who were mismatched did not succeed as well as those who were
not. As with the other examples, the students who were not mismatched
seemed to learn better when taught in classes where the other students had
educational preparation similar to their own.
These few examples need not be considered definitive. But they provide
data that many other institutions refuse to release. When UCLA Professor
Richard H. Sander sought to get California bar examination data, in order to
test whether affirmative action admissions policies produced more black
lawyers or fewer black lawyers, a lawsuit was threatened if the California
Bar Association released that data.61 The data were not released. Nor is this
an unusual pattern. Academic institutions across the country, that proclaim
the benefits of affirmative action “diversity,” refuse to release data that
would put such claims to the test.62
A study that declared affirmative action admissions policies a success—
The Shape of the River by William Bowen and Derek Bok— was widely
praised in the media, but its authors refused to let critics see the raw data
from which they reached conclusions very different from the conclusions of
other studies— based on data these other authors made available.63
Moreover, other academic scholars found much to question about the
conclusions reached by former university presidents Bowen and Bok.64
Where damaging information about the actual consequences of
affirmative action admissions policies are brought to light and create a
scandal, the response has seldom been to address the issue, but instead to
denounce the person who revealed the scandalous facts as a “racist.” This
was the response when Professor Bernard Davis of the Harvard medical
school said in the New England Journal of Medicine that black students
there, and at other medical schools, were being granted diplomas “on a
charitable basis.” He called it “cruel” to admit students unlikely to meet
medical school standards, and even more cruel “to abandon those standards
and allow the trusting patients to pay for our irresponsibility.”65
Although Professor Davis was denounced as a “racist,” black economist
Walter E. Williams had learned of such things elsewhere,66 and there was a
private communication from an official at the Harvard medical school some
years earlier that such things were being proposed.67
Similarly, when a student at Georgetown University revealed data
showing that the median score at which black students were admitted to that
law school was lower than the test score at which any white student was
admitted, the response was to denounce him as a “racist,” rather than
concentrating on the serious issue raised by that revelation.68 That median
score, incidentally, was at the 70th percentile, so these were not
“unqualified” students, but students who would probably have more chance
of success at some other law schools, and when later confronting the need
to pass a bar exam to become lawyers.
Being a failure at an elite institution does a student no good. But the
tenacity with which academic institutions fiercely resist anything that might
force them to abandon counterproductive admissions practices suggests that
these practices may be doing somebody some good. Even after California
voters voted to end affirmative action admissions practices in the University
of California system, that led to continuing efforts to circumvent this
prohibition.69 Why? What good does having a visible minority student
presence on campus do, if most of them do not graduate?
One clue might be what many colleges have long done with their athletic
teams in basketball and football, which can bring in millions of dollars in
what are classified as “amateur” sports. Some successful college football
coaches have incomes higher than the incomes of their college or university
presidents. But the athletes on their teams have been paid nothing70 for
spending years providing entertainment for others, at the risk of bodily
injuries— and the perhaps greater and longer-lasting risk to their character,
from spending years pretending to be getting an education, when many are
only doing enough to maintain their eligibility to play. An extremely small
percentage of college athletes in basketball and football go on to a career in
professional sports.
A disproportionate number of college basketball and football stars are
black71— and academic institutions have not hesitated to misuse them in
these ways. So we need not question whether these academic institutions
are morally capable of bringing minority youngsters on campus to serve the
institution’s own interests. Nor need we doubt academics’ verbal talents for
rationalization, whether trying to convince others or themselves.72
The factual question is simply whether there are institutional interests
being served by having a visible demographic representation of minority
students on campus, whether those students get an education and graduate
or not. The hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money that comes into
an academic institution annually can be put at risk if ethnic minorities are
seriously “under-represented” among the students, since that raises the
prospect of under-representation being equated with racial discrimination.
And that issue can be a legal threat to vast amounts of government money.
Nor is this the only outside pressure on academic institutions to continue
affirmative action admissions policies that are damaging to the very groups
supposedly being favored. George Mason University’s law school was
threatened with losing its accreditation if it did not continue admitting
minority students who did not have qualifications as high as other students,
even though data showed that this was not in the minority students’ own
best interests.73 The reigning social justice fallacy that statistical disparities
in group representation mean racial discrimination has major impacts.
Minority students on campus are like human shields used to protect
institutional interests— and casualties among human shields can be very
high.
Many social policies help some groups while harming other groups.
Affirmative action in academia manages to inflict harm on both the students
who were not granted admissions, despite their qualifications, and also
many of those students who were admitted to institutions where they were
more likely to fail, even when they were fully qualified to succeed in other
institutions.
Economic self-interest is by no means the only factor leading some
individuals and institutions to persist in demonstrably counterproductive
affirmative action admissions policies. Ideological crusades are not readily
abandoned by people who are paying no price for being wrong, and who
could pay a heavy price— personally and socially— for breaking ranks
under fire and forfeiting both a cherished vision and a cherished place
among fellow elites. As with the genetic determinists and the “sex
education” advocates, there have been very few people willing to
acknowledge facts that contradict the prevailing narrative.
Even where there is good news about people that surrogate decision-
makers are supposedly helping, it seldom gets much attention when the
good results have been achieved independently of surrogate decision-
makers. For example, the fact that most of the rise of blacks out of poverty
occurred in the decades before the massive government social programs of
the 1960s, before the proliferation of charismatic “leaders,” and before
widespread media attention, has seldom been mentioned in the prevailing
social justice narrative.
Neither has there been much attention paid to the fact that homicide rates
among non-white males in the 1940s (who were overwhelmingly black
males in those years) went down by 18 percent in that decade, followed by
a further decline of 22 percent in the 1950s. Then suddenly that reversed in
the 1960s,74 when criminal laws were weakened, amid heady catchwords
like “root causes” and “rehabilitation.” Perhaps the most dramatic— and
most consequential— contrast between the pre-1960s progress of blacks
and negative trends in the post-1960s era was that the proportion of black
children born to unmarried women quadrupled from just under 17 percent
in 1940 to just over 68 percent at the end of the century.75
Intellectual elites, politicians, activists and “leaders”— who took credit
for the black progress that supposedly all began in the 1960s— took no
responsibility for painful retrogressions that demonstrably did begin in the
1960s.
Such patterns are not peculiar to blacks or to the United States. Group
preference policies in other countries did little for people in poverty, just as
affirmative action did little for black Americans in poverty. The benefits of
preferential treatment in India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, for example, tended
to go principally to more fortunate people in low-income groups in these
countries,76 just as in the United States.77

IMPLICATIONS
Where, fundamentally, did the social justice vision go wrong? Certainly
not in hoping for a better world than the world we see around us today, with
so many people suffering needlessly, in a world with ample resources to
have better outcomes. But the painful reality is that no human being has
either the vast range of consequential knowledge, or the overwhelming
power, required to make the social justice ideal become a reality. Some
fortunate societies have seen enough favorable factors come together to
create basic prosperity and common decency among free people. But that is
not enough for many social justice crusaders.
 Intellectual elites may imagine that they have all the consequential
knowledge required to create the social justice world they seek, despite
considerable evidence to the contrary. But, even if they were somehow able
to handle the knowledge problem, there still remains the problem of having
enough power to do all that would need to be done. That is not just a
problem for intellectual elites. It is an even bigger problem— and danger—
for the people who might give them that power.
The history of totalitarian dictatorships that arose in the twentieth
century, and were responsible for the deaths of millions of their own people
in peacetime, should be an urgent warning against putting too much power
in the hands of any human beings. That some of these disastrous regimes
were established with the help of many sincere and earnest people, seeking
high ideals and a better life for the less fortunate, should be an especially
relevant warning to people seeking social justice, in disregard of the
dangers.
It is hard to think of any power exercised by human beings over other
human beings that has not been abused. Yet we must have laws and
governments, because anarchy is worse. But we cannot just keep
surrendering more and more of our freedoms to politicians, bureaucrats and
judges— who are what elected governments basically consist of— in
exchange for plausible-sounding rhetoric that we do not bother to subject to
the test of facts.
Among the many facts that need to be checked is the actual track record
of crusading intellectual elites, seeking to influence public policies and
shape national institutions, on a range of issues extending from social
justice to foreign policies and military conflict.
As regards social justice issues in general, and the situation of the poor in
particular, intellectual elites who have produced a wide variety of policies
that claim to help the poor, have shown a great reluctance to put the actual
consequences of those policies to any empirical test. Often they have been
hostile to others who have put these policies to some empirical test. Where
social justice advocates have had the power to do so, they have often
blocked access to data sought by scholars who want to do empirical tests on
the consequences of such policies as affirmative action academic
admissions policies.
 Perhaps most surprising of all, many social justice advocates have shown
little or no interest in remarkable examples of progress by the poor— when
that progress was not based on the kinds of policies promoted in the name
of social justice. The striking progress made by black Americans in the
decades before the 1960s has been widely ignored. So has the demonstrable
harm suffered by black Americans after the social justice policies of the
1960s. These included a sharp reversal of the homicide rate decline and a
quadrupling of the proportion of black children born to unmarried women.
Government policies made fathers a negative factor for mothers seeking
welfare benefits.
Social justice advocates who denounce elite New York City public high
schools that require an entrance examination for admissions pay no
attention to the fact that black student admissions to such schools were
much higher in the past, before the elementary schools and middle schools
in black communities were ruined by the kinds of policies favored by social
justice advocates. Back in 1938, the proportion of black students who
graduated from elite Stuyvesant High School was almost as high as the
proportion of blacks in the New York City population.78
As late as 1971, there were more black students than Asian students at
Stuyvesant.79 As of 1979, blacks were 12.9 percent of the students at
Stuyvesant, but that declined to 4.8 percent by 1995.80 By 2012, blacks
were just 1.2 percent of the students at Stuyvesant.81 Over a span of 33
years, the proportion of black students at Stuyvesant High School fell to
less than one tenth of what it had been before. Neither of the usual suspects
— genetics or racism— can explain these developments in those years. Nor
is there any evidence of soul-searching by social justice advocates for how
their ideas might have played a role in all this.
On an international scale, and on issues besides education, those with the
social justice vision often fail to show any serious interest in the progress of
the less fortunate, when it happens in ways unrelated to the social justice
agenda. The rate of socioeconomic progress of black Americans before the
1960s is a classic example. But there has been a similar lack of interest in
the ways by which poverty-stricken Eastern European Jewish immigrants,
living in slums, rose to prosperity, or how similarly poverty-stricken
Japanese immigrants in Canada did the same. In both cases, their current
prosperity has been dealt with rhetorically, by calling their achievements
“privilege.”82
There have been many examples of peoples and places around the world
that lifted themselves out of poverty in the second half of the twentieth
century. These would include Hong Kong,83 Singapore,84 and South
Korea.85 In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the huge nations of
India86 and China87 had vast millions of poor people rise out of poverty.
The common denominator in all these places was that their rise out of
poverty began after government micro-managing of the economy was
reduced. This was especially ironic in the case of China, with a communist
government.
With social justice advocates supposedly concerned with the fate of the
poor, it may seem strange that they seem to have paid remarkably little
attention to places where the poor have risen out of poverty at a dramatic
rate and on a massive scale. That at least raises the question whether the
social justice advocates’ priorities are the poor themselves or the social
justice advocates’ own vision of the world and their own role in that vision.
What are those of us who are not followers of the social justice vision
and its agenda to do? At a minimum, we can turn our attention from
rhetoric to the realities of life. As the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes said, “think things instead of words.”88 Today it is
especially important to get facts, rather than catchwords. These include not
only current facts, but also the vast array of facts about what others have
done in the past— both the successes and the failures. As the distinguished
British historian Paul Johnson said:

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary

arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib
assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested
before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and
discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false.89
 NOTES
EPIGRAPH
1. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
(New York: Penguin Press, 2007), p. 95.

CHAPTER 1: “EQUAL CHANCES” FALLACIES

1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, A Discourse on Inequality, translated by
Maurice Cranston (London: Penguin Books, 1984), p. 57.
2. Sam McCaig, “Where in the World Do NHL Players Come From?”
Sports Illustrated (online), October 14, 2018; Helene Elliott,
“California Hockey Has Come So Far,” Los Angeles Times, September
6, 2020, p. D6; The Economist, Pocket World in Figures: 2022
Edition (London: Profile Books, 2021), pp. 14, 214; Shawn Hubler,
“California’s Population Dips During Tumultuous 2020,” New York
Times, May 8, 2021, p. A17.
3. Charles Issawi, “The Transformation of the Economic Position of the
Millets in the Nineteenth Century,” Christians and Jews in the
Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, Vol. I: The
Central Lands, edited by Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New
York: Holmes and Meier, 1982), pp. 262–263.
4. Yuan-li Wu and Chun-hsi Wu, Economic Development in Southeast
Asia: The Chinese Dimension (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,
1980), p. 51.
5. Jean Roche, La Colonisation Allemande et le Rio Grande do Sul
(Paris: Institut Des Hautes Études de L’Amérique Latine, 1959), pp.
388–389.
6. R. Bayly Winder, “The Lebanese in West Africa,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History, Vol. IV, Issue 3 (April 1962), p. 309.
7. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–
1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 139.
8. Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times (New York:
Arno Press, 1969), pp. 254–259, 261.
9. Haraprasad Chattopadhyaya, Indians in Africa: A Socio-Economic
Study (Calcutta: Bookland Private Limited, 1970), p. 394.
10. Andrew Gibb, Glasgow: The Making of a City (London: Croom
Helm, 1983), p. 116; Bruce Lenman, An Economic History of
Modern Scotland, 1660–1976 (London: B.T. Batsford, 1977), p. 180.
11. Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy
Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (New York: Doubleday,
2003), p. 108.
12. Myron Weiner, Sons of the Soil: Migration and Ethnic Conflict in
India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 102–104.
13. See, for example, Andrew D. Mellinger, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John L.
Gallup, “Climate, Coastal Proximity, and Development,” The Oxford
Handbook of Economic Geography, edited by Gordon L. Clark,
Maryann P. Feldman, and Meric S. Gertler (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000); Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of
Geographic Environment (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1911); Thomas Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and Politics, revised and
enlarged edition (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 3–5, 8–10, 13–83.
14. Caryn E. Neumann, “Beer,” Germany and the Americas: Culture,
Politics, and History, edited by Thomas Adam (Santa Barbara,
California: ABC-CLIO, 2005), Volume I, pp. 130–133.
15. Jim Mann, “Tsingtao Beer: Bottling Profits for China,” Los Angeles
Times, October 12, 1986, pp. F1, F7.
16. Robert F. Foerster, The Italian Emigration of Our Times, p. 261.
17. “Brazilian Beverage Market Is Evolving,” Brazilian Bulletin, January
1975, p. 6.
18. Jürgen Tampke, The Germans in Australia (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006), p. 101.
19. Marc Helmond, Total Revenue Management (TRM): Case Studies,
Best Practices and Industry Insights (Cham, Switzerland: Springer,
2020), p. 167.
20. Horst Dornbusch, “Bavaria,” The Oxford Companion to Beer, edited
by Garrett Oliver (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 104.
21. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, The Slave Economy of the Old South:
Selected Essays in Economic and Social History (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1968), p. 269.
22. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Migrations and Cultures: A World
View (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. 2, 150, 153, 158, 164, 166,
176, 192, 207, 211, 218–219, 284–285, 289–290, 307, 312, 345, 353,
367.
23. For documented examples, see Thomas Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and
Politics, revised and enlarged edition, pp. 396–402.
24. “Degrees Conferred, by Level, Discipline, and Gender, 2018–19,”
Chronicle of Higher Education (Almanac 2021–2022), August 20,
2021, p. 43.
25. Ibid.
26. See Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide
to the Economic Progress of Women In America, 2012 edition
(Washington: AEI Press, 2012). See also Thomas Sowell, Economic
Facts and Fallacies, second edition (New York: Basic Books, 2015),
Chapter 3 and Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Reconsidered:
Was It Necessary in Academia? (Washington: AEI Press, 1975), pp.
23–27.
27. Jessica Semega, Melissa Kollar, Emily A. Shrider, and John F.
Creamer, “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2019,” Current
Population Reports, P60–270 (RV) (Washington: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 2020 and 2021), pp. 11, 51.
28. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Who Chooses Part-Time Work and
Why?” Monthly Labor Review, March 2018, pp. 5–7. See also
Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies, second edition, pp.
61, 69, 72, 74, 82–83, 89 and Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action
Reconsidered, pp. 23, 24. See also Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Women’s
Figures, 2012 edition, pp. 17–18.
29. See John Iceland and Ilana Redstone, “The Declining Earnings Gap
between Young Women and Men in the United States, 1979–2018,”
Social Science Research, Vol. 92 (November 2020), pp. 1–11; Diana
Furchtgott-Roth, Women’s Figures, 2012 edition, pp. 14, 15, 16, 19;
Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Reconsidered, pp. 28, 31, 32, 33;
Warren Farrell, Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind
the Pay Gap and What Women Can Do About It (New York:
Amacom, 2005), p. xxiii; Anita U. Hattiangadi and Amy M. Habib, A
Closer Look at Comparable Worth, second edition (Washington:
Employment Policy Foundation, 2000), p. 43; Thomas Sowell,
Education: Assumptions versus History (Stanford: Hoover
Institution Press, 1986), pp. 95, 97; Laurence C. Baker, “Differences
in Earnings Between Male and Female Physicians,” The New
England Journal of Medicine, April 11, 1996, p. 960; Marianne
Bertrand and Kevin Hallock, “The Gender Gap in Top Corporate
Jobs,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, October 2001, p. 17.
30. “The Economic Role of Women,” The Economic Report of the
President, 1973 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1973), p. 105.
31. Sam Dean and Johana Bhuiyan, “Why are Black and Latino people
still kept out of tech industry?” San Francisco Chronicle, July 7,
2020, p. C1.
32. U.S. Department of Education, Digest of Education Statistics 2019,
55th edition (Washington: National Center of Education Statistics,
2021), p. 345.
33. Ibid., p. 351.
34. Mohamed Suffian bin Hashim, “Problems and Issues of Higher
Education Development in Malaysia,” Development of Higher
Education in Southeast Asia: Problems and Issues, edited by Yip
Yat Hoong (Singapore: Regional Institute of Higher Education and
Development, 1973), Table 8, pp. 70–71.
35. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1985), p. 677; Myron Weiner, “The Pursuit of
Ethnic Equality Through Preferential Policies: A Comparative Public
Policy Perspective,” From Independence to Statehood, edited by
Robert B. Goldmann and A. Jeyaratnam Wilson (London: Frances
Pinter, 1984), p. 64; Cynthia H. Enloe, Police, Military and
Ethnicity: Foundations of State Power (New Brunswick:
Transaction Books, 1980), p. 143.
36. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by Richard
Mayne (New York: The Penguin Press, 1994), p. 17.
37. James Oliphant, “Faith’s Role In Picking a New Justice,” Los Angeles
Times, April 22, 2010, p. A11; Peter Baker, “Kagan Is Sworn In as
the Fourth Woman, and 112th Justice, on the Supreme Court,” New
York Times, August 8, 2010, pp. 1, 13; Julie Zauzmer, “Back Home,
Supreme Court Nominee Is Active in a Liberal Episcopalian Church,”
Washington Post, February 4, 2017, p. B2; Julie Hirschfeld Davis,
“In Highlight for President, Gorsuch Is Sworn In as Court’s 113th
Justice,” New York Times, April 11, 2017, p. A19. This was by no
means the only statistical disparity among the Justices. For 11
consecutive years, every Justice of the Supreme Court had a law
degree from one of just 3 Ivy League law schools— Harvard, Yale
and Columbia. Peter Baker, “Kagan Is Sworn In as the Fourth
 Woman, and 112th Justice, on the Supreme Court,” New York Times,
August 8, 2010, pp. 1, 13; William Wan, “The High Court’s Ivy
League Problem,” Washington Post, July 13, 2018, p. A4; Nicholas
Fandos, “Barrett Sworn In to Supreme Court After 52–48 Vote,” New
York Times, October 27, 2020, p. A1.
38. Aleksandra Sandstrom, “Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition
of the 116th Congress,” Pew Research Center, January 3, 2019, p. 3.
39. Thomas Sowell, “New Light on Black I.Q.,” New York Times, March
27, 1977, Sunday magazine section, pp. 56–58, 60, 62; Thomas
Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, revised and enlarged edition (New
York: Basic Books, 2011), Chapter 17.
40. Ana Amélia Freitas-Vilela, et al., “Maternal Dietary Patterns During
Pregnancy and Intelligence Quotients in the Offspring at 8 Years of
Age: Findings from the ALSPAC Cohort,” Maternal & Child
Nutrition, Vol. 14, Issue 1 (January 2018), pp. 1–11; Ingrid B.
Helland, et al., “Maternal Supplementation with Very-Long-Chain n-3
Fatty Acids During Pregnancy and Lactation Augments Children’s IQ
at 4 Years of Age,” Pediatrics, Vol. 111, No. 1 (January 2003), pp.
e39–e44.
41. See, for example, Helene McNulty, et al., “Effect of Continued Folic
Acid Supplementation beyond the First Trimester of Pregnancy on
Cognitive Performance in the Child: A Follow-up Study from a
Randomized Controlled Trial (FASSTT Offspring Trial),” BMC
Medicine, Volume 17 (2019), pp. 1–11; Aoife Caffrey, et al., “Effects
of Maternal Folic Acid Supplementation During the Second and Third
Trimesters of Pregnancy on Neurocognitive Development in the
Child: An 11-Year Follow-up from a Randomised Controlled Trial,”
BMC Medicine, Volume 19 (2021), pp. 1–13; Ann P. Streissguth,
Helen M. Barr, and Paul D. Sampson, “Moderate Prenatal Alcohol
Exposure: Effects on Child IQ and Learning Problems at Age 7 ½
Years,” Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Volume
14, No. 5 (September/October 1990), pp. 662–669; Ernest L. Abel
 and Robert J. Sokol, “Incidence of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and
Economic Impact of FAS-Related Anomalies,” Drug and Alcohol
Dependence, Volume 19, Issue 1 (January 1987), pp. 51–70; Johann
K. Eberhart and Scott E. Parnell, “The Genetics of Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorders,” Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental
Research, Volume 40, Issue 6 (June 2016), pp. 1154–1165; Edward P.
Riley, M. Alejandra Infante, and Kenneth R. Warren, “Fetal Alcohol
Spectrum Disorders: An Overview,” Neuropsychology Review,
Volume 21, Issue 2 (June 2011), pp. 73–80.
42. Julia M. Rohrer, Boris Egloff, and Stefan C. Schmukle, “Examining
the Effects of Birth Order on Personality,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 112, No. 46 (November 17,
2015), p. 14225; Lillian Belmont and Francis A. Marolla, “Birth
Order, Family Size, and Intelligence,” Science, Vol. 182, No. 4117
(December 14, 1973), p. 1098; Sandra E. Black, Paul J. Devereux and
Kjell G. Salvanes, “Older and Wiser? Birth Order and IQ of Young
Men,” CESifo Economic Studies, Vol. 57, 1/2011, pp. 109, 112, 116.
43. Alison L. Booth and Hiau Joo Kee, “Birth Order Matters: The Effect
of Family Size and Birth Order on Educational Attainment,” Journal
of Population Economics, Vol. 22, No. 2 (April 2009), p. 377.
44. Philip S. Very and Richard W. Prull, “Birth Order, Personality
Development, and the Choice of Law as a Profession,” Journal of
Genetic Psychology, Vol. 116, No. 2 (June 1, 1970), pp. 219–221;
Richard L. Zweigenhaft, “Birth Order, Approval-Seeking and
Membership in Congress,” Journal of Individual Psychology, Vol.
31, No. 2 (November 1975), p. 208; William D. Altus, “Birth Order
and Its Sequelae,” Science, Vol. 151 (January 7, 1966), pp. 44–49.
45. William D. Altus, “Birth Order and Its Sequelae,” Science, Vol. 151
(January 7, 1966), p. 45.
46. Jere R. Behrman and Paul Taubman, “Birth Order, Schooling, and
Earnings,” Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 4, No. 3, Part 2: The
 Family and the Distribution of Economic Rewards (July 1986), p.
S136; Astronauts and Cosmonauts: Biographical and Statistical
Data, Revised August 31, 1993, Report Prepared by the
Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, Transmitted to
the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives, One Hundred Third Congress, Second Session,
March 1994 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994), p.
19; Daniel S.P. Schubert, Mazie E. Wagner, and Herman J.P.
Schubert, “Family Constellation and Creativity: Firstborn
Predominance Among Classical Music Composers,” The Journal of
Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 1 (1977), pp. 147–149; Robert J. Gary-
Bobo, Ana Prieto and Natalie Picard, “Birth Order and Sibship Sex
Composition as Instruments in the Study of Education and Earnings,”
Discussion Paper No. 5514 (February 2006), Centre for Economic
Policy Research, London, p. 22.
47. Amy L. Anderson, “Individual and Contextual Influences on
Delinquency: The Role of the Single-Parent Family,” Journal of
Criminal Justice, Volume 30 (2002), pp. 575–587; Kathleen M. Ziol-
Guest, Greg J. Duncan, and Ariel Kalil, “One-Parent Students Leave
School Earlier,” Education Next, Spring 2015, pp. 37–41; Nick
Spencer, “Does Material Disadvantage Explain the Increased Risk of
Adverse Health, Educational, and Behavioural Outcomes Among
Children in Lone Parent Households in Britain? A Cross Sectional
Study,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Volume
59 (2005), pp. 152–157; James Bartholomew, The Welfare State
We’re In (London: Politico’s, 2006), revised edition, pp. 275, 276,
278.
48. Maggie Gallagher, “Fatherless Boys Grow Up Into Dangerous Men,”
Wall Street Journal, December 1, 1998, p. A22; Dewey G. Cornell,
Elissa P. Benedek, and David M. Benedek, “Characteristics of
Adolescents Charged with Homicide: Review of 72 Cases,”
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1987), pp. 13, 14;
 Stephen Baskerville, “Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?” The
Independent Review, Volume 8, No. 4 (Spring 2004), pp. 485–486;
Delphine Theobald, David P. Farrington, and Alex Piquero,
“Childhood Broken Homes and Adult Violence: An Analysis of
Moderators and Mediators,” Journal of Criminal Justice, Volume 41
(2013), pp. 44–45, 47–50.
49. Stephen Baskerville, “Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?” The
Independent Review, Volume 8, No. 4 (Spring 2004), p. 485.
50. “Boys with Absentee Dads Twice as Likely to be Jailed,” Washington
Post, August 21, 1998, p. A3.
51. Bruce J. Ellis, John E. Bates, Kenneth A. Dodge, David M. Fergusson,
L. John Horwood, Gregory S. Pettit, and Lianne Woodward, “Does
Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual
Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?” Child Development, Vol. 74, No. 3
(May-June 2003), pp. 801–821; Stephen Baskerville, “Is There Really
a Fatherhood Crisis?” The Independent Review, Volume 8, No. 4
(Spring 2004), p. 485; James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We’re
In, revised edition, p. 276.
52. See, for example, Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The
Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee,
2001), p. viii; James Bartholomew, The Welfare State We’re In,
revised edition, pp. 275, 276, 278.
53. See, for example, Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom; James
Bartholomew, The Welfare State We’re In, revised edition, Chapters
4 and 6.
54. “Choose Your Parents Wisely,” The Economist, July 26, 2014, p. 22;
Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, Meaningful Differences in the
Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Baltimore: Paul
H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1995), pp. 123–124, 125–126, 128, 198–
199, 247.
55. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Selected Population Profile in the United
States,” 2019 American Community Survey, 1-Year Estimates, Table
S0201.
56. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Age— All People (Both Sexes
Combined) by Median and Mean Income: 1974 to 2020,” Current
Population Survey, 1975–2021, Annual Social and Economic
Supplements (CPS ASEC), Table P–10.
57. The Economist, Pocket World in Figures: 2022 Edition, p. 18.
58. Roy E. H. Mellor and E. Alistair Smith, Europe: A Geographical
Survey of the Continent (New York: Columbia University Press,
1979), p. 3; Antony R. Orme, “Coastal Environments,” The Physical
Geography of Africa, edited by William M. Adams, Andrew S.
Goudie, and Antony R. Orme (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996), p. 238; Encyclopaedia Britannica, Britannica Concise
Encyclopedia, revised and expanded edition (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, 2006), p. 643.
59. Roy E. H. Mellor and E. Alistair Smith, Europe, p. 3.
60. Ibid.
61. Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth
of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937), pp. 20–21.
62. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1976), p. 337.
63. See, for example, William A. Hance, The Geography of Modern
Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964), pp. 3–6, 12–
19, 32–33; Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by
Richard Mayne, pp. 117–126; David E. Bloom, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Paul
Collier, and Christopher Udry, “Geography, Demography, and
Economic Growth in Africa,” Brookings Papers on Economic
Activity, Vol. 1998, No. 2 (1998), pp. 207–273. See also Thomas
 Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History (New
York: Basic Books, 1998), pp. 99–109.
64. Fernand Braudel, A History of Civilizations, translated by Richard
Mayne, p. 120.
65. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602: A Social and
Administrative Survey (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1964), Volume 2, pp. 841–842.
66. Ellen Churchill Semple, The Geography of the Mediterranean
Region: Its Relation to Ancient History (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 1931), p. 5.
67. Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, p.
280.
68. Ibid.
69. Andrew D. Mellinger, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John L. Gallup, “Climate,
Coastal Proximity, and Development,” The Oxford Handbook of
Economic Geography, edited by Gordon L. Clark, Maryann P.
Feldman, and Meric S. Gertler, pp. 169, 177–179, 182. Note
especially the world map on page 178.
70. See, for example, Frederick R. Troeh and Louis M. Thompson, Soils
and Soil Fertility, sixth edition (Ames, Iowa: Blackwell, 2005), p.
330; Xiaobing Liu, et al., “Overview of Mollisols in the World:
Distribution, Land Use and Management,” Canadian Journal of Soil
Science, Vol. 92 (2012), pp. 383–402; Darrell Hess, McKnight’s
Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation, eleventh edition
(Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., 2014), pp.
362–363.
71. Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence
in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (New York: Harper
Collins, 2003), pp. 355–361.
72. Andrew D. Mellinger, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and John L. Gallup, “Climate,
Coastal Proximity, and Development,” The Oxford Handbook of
Economic Geography, edited by Gordon L. Clark, Maryann P.
Feldman, and Meric S. Gertler, pp. 169, 180, 181.
73. Ibid., pp. 178, 179, 182, 183.
74. Robert J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya, fifth edition (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1994), p. 455.
75. Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human
Societies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 352.
76. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are
So Rich and Some So Poor (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1998), pp. 4–5.
77. Ibid., p. 6.
78. See, for example, Paul Robert Magosci, A History of Ukraine (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1996), p. 6; Tony Judt, Postwar: A
History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), p.
648; Peter Duffy, “75 Years Later, Survivor Helps Commemorate
Ukrainian Famine,” New York Times, December 19, 2007, p. B3;
Will Horner and Kirk Maltais, “Ukraine Tensions Drive Up Wheat
Prices,” Wall Street Journal, February 1, 2022, p. B11.
79. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies,
second edition, Chapter 3. See also Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Women’s
Figures, 2012 edition.
80. “The World’s Least Honest Cities,” The Telegraph.UK, September 25,
2013.
81. Eric Felten, “Finders Keepers?” Reader’s Digest, April 2001, pp. 102–
107.
82. See Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, “Cultures of Corruption:
Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets,” Working Paper 12312,
 National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2006, Table 1, pp. 19–
22.
83. John Stuart Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Vol. III:
Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to
Social Philosophy, edited by J.M. Robson (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1965), p. 882.
84. John P. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and
Russian Industrialization 1885–1913 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1970), pp. 176, 187; Linda M. Randall, Reluctant
Capitalists: Russia’s Journey Through Market Transition (New
York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 56–57; Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi
Zingales, Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 57; Bryon MacWilliams,
“Reports of Bribe-Taking at Russian Universities Have Increased,
Authorities Say,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 18,
2002 (online); Transparency International, Transparency
International Corruption Perceptions Index 2021 (Berlin:
Transparency International Secretariat, 2022), pp. 2–3.
85. Karl Stumpp, The German-Russians: Two Centuries of Pioneering
(Bonn: Edition Atlantic-Forum, 1967), p. 68.
86. Gurcharan Das, India Unbound: The Social and Economic
Revolution from Independence to the Global Information Age (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 143. For information on the
overseas Chinese merchants, see Clifton A. Barton, “Trust and Credit:
Some Observations Regarding Business Strategies of Ethnic Chinese
Traders in South Vietnam,” and Janet T. Landa, “The Political
Economy of the Ethnically Homogenous Chinese Middleman Group
in Southeast Asia: Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship in a Plural
Society,” in The Chinese in Southeast Asia, Volume 1: Ethnicity and
Economic Activity, edited by Linda Y.C. Lim and L.A. Peter Gosling
(Singapore: Mazuren Asia, 1983), pp. 53, 90.
87. Renée Rose Shield, Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th
Street (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), Chapter 5.
88. Eric J. Evans, The Shaping of Modern Britain: Identity, Industry and
Empire, 1780–1914 (New York: Longman, 2011), p. 136.
89. Brian Murdoch, “Introduction,” German Literature of the Early
Middle Ages, edited by Brian Murdoch (Rochester, New York:
Camden House, 2004), Volume 2, p. 10; Samantha Zacher,
“Introduction to Medieval Literature,” A Companion to British
Literature, Volume I: Medieval Literature 700–1450, edited by
Robert DeMaria, Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher (West
Sussex, United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), p. xxxv; Jean W.
Sedlar, East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000–1500 (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1994), pp. 440, 447, 449.
90. Gordon East, “The Concept and Political Status of the Shatter Zone,”
Geographical Essays on Eastern Europe, edited by Norman J.G.
Pounds (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961), p. 14.
91. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has
Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), pp. 85–87.
92. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, p. 250.
93. Carlo M. Cipolla, Literacy and Development in the West (Baltimore:
Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 16, 17.
94. See, for example, N.J.G. Pounds, An Historical Geography of Europe
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Charles Murray,
Human Accomplishment, pp. 295–303.
95. Bernard Nkemdirim, “Social Change and the Genesis of Political
Conflict in Nigeria,” Civilisations, Vol. 25, Nos. 1–2 (1975), p. 94.
96. Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical
Study (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 100; Amy Chua,
World on Fire, pp. 108, 109.
97. Charles O. Hucker, China’s Imperial Past: An Introduction to
Chinese History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1975), p. 65; Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization,
translated by J.R. Foster (New York: Cambridge University Press,
1985), pp. 69, 138, 140.
98. Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, translated by J.R.
Foster, pp. 288, 333–336.

CHAPTER 2: RACIAL FALLACIES

1. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of
European History, revised edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1918), p. 100.
2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “The Social and Economic Status of the
Black Population in the United States: An Historical View, 1790–
1978,” Current Population Reports, Series P–23, No. 80 (Washington:
Bureau of the Census, no date), p. 31; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
“Race and Hispanic Origin of Householder— Families by Median and
Mean Income: 1947 to 2021,” Current Population Survey, 1948–2022,
Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Table F–5.
3. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Selected Population Profile in the United
States,” 2019 American Community Survey, 1-Year Estimates, Table
S0201.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Selected Characteristics of People 15
Years Old and Over by Total Money Income in 2020, Work Experience
in 2020, Race, Hispanic Origin, and Sex,” Current Population Survey,
2021, Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC), Table
PINC–01.
8. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that 2 percent
of black families were millionaires. (Ana Hernández Kent and Lowell
R. Ricketts, “Wealth Gaps between White, Black and Hispanic
Families in 2019,” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, January 5,
2021.) Census data show that there were more than ten million black
families. This means that there were thousands of black millionaire
families. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Family Groups: 2020,” Current
Population Survey, 2020, Annual Social and Economic Supplement,
Table FG10.
9. “A League of Their Own,” Forbes, June/July 2022, p. 21; “Forbes
400,” Forbes, October 2020, p. 104.
10. Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega,
“Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current
Population Reports, P60–273 (Washington: U.S. Government
Publishing Office, 2021), pp. 57–59.
11. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Poverty Status of Families, by Type of
Family, Presence of Related Children, Race, and Hispanic Origin:
1959 to 2020,” Current Population Survey, 1960–2021, Annual
Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Table 4; Emily A.
Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega, “Income
and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current Population Reports,
P60–273, pp. 14, 56.
12. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Poverty Status of Families, by Type of
Family, Presence of Related Children, Race, and Hispanic Origin:
1959 to 2020,” Current Population Survey, 1960–2021, Annual
Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Table 4.
13. Ibid.
14. These data from the New York State Education Department are cited
in Thomas Sowell, Charter Schools and Their Enemies (New York:
Basic Books, 2020), pp. 49, 140–187. Such data are available on the
Internet for anyone who wants to compare charter school results with
 results in the same communities, whether for research purposes or for
making choices of places to send their own children.
15. Data from the New York State Education Department are shown in
Thomas Sowell, Charter Schools and Their Enemies, p. 49.
16. E. Franklin Frazier, “The Impact of Urban Civilization Upon Negro
Family Life,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (October
1937), p. 615.
17. Charles Lanman, Dictionary of the United States Congress
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864), p. 537; Grady
McWhiney, Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South
(Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1988), p. 253.
18. Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United
States to 1860 (Washington: Carnegie Institution of Washington,
1933), Vol. II, p. 831.
19. Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South: A Study in
Regional Resources and Human Adequacy (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1932), pp. 167–168, 175.
20. Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture, p. 196.
21. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1989), Vol. I, pp. 362–363.
22. Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s
Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States,
edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953),
pp. 12, 64, 65, 87, 90, 147, 327, 391.
23. Robert E. Lee, Lee’s Dispatches: Unpublished Letters of General
Robert E. Lee, C.S.A. to Jefferson Davis and the War Department of
the Confederate States of America, 1862–65, edited by Douglas
Southall Freeman, New Edition (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1957), p. 8.
24. Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to
Meet It, enlarged edition (New York: A. B. Burdick, 1860), pp. 40,
41, 44, 381.
25. Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, The Slave Economy of the Old South:
Selected Essays in Economic and Social History, edited by Eugene
D. Genovese (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968),
p. 107.
26. Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South, pp. 148, 168, 304.
27. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Total Population,” 2011–2015 American
Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B01003; U.S. Bureau of
the Census, “Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (In
2015 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars),” 2011–2015 American Community
Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B19013.
28. Brett Barrouquere and Dylan T. Lovan, “Kentucky County Feels Food
Stamp Reductions Sharply,” Washington Post, February 2, 2014, p.
A5.
29. See the data from the following publications: U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Per Capita Income, Median Family Income, and Low
Income Status in 1969 for States, Standard Metropolitan Statistical
Areas, and Counties: 1970 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1974), pp. 7, 83; U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City
Data Book, 1972 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1973), pp. 19, 186, 189, 198, 201; U.S. Bureau of the Census, County
and City Data Book, 1983 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1983), pp. 26, 214, 222, 228, 236; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1980 Census of Population, Volume 1: General Social and
Economic Characteristics, Part 1, United States Summary, PC80–1–
C1 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), p. 1–10t;
U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book: 1994
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994), pp. 23, 214,
219, 228, 233; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of
 Population: Social and Economic Characteristics, United States,
1990 CP–2–1 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993),
p. 48; U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book: 2000
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2001), pp. 33, 34, 81,
82, 210, 225, 226; U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Money Income in the
United States: 1997 (With Separate Data on Valuation of Noncash
Benefits),” Current Population Reports, P60–200 (Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1998), p. vii; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
2020 Poverty and Median Household Income Estimates— Counties,
States, and National, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates
(SAIPE) Program, Release date: December 2021; U.S. Bureau of the
Census, “QuickFacts” for Clay County, Kentucky and Owsley
County, Kentucky, downloaded on January 12, 2023; Emily A.
Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega, “Income
and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current Population Reports,
P60–273, p. 27.
30. Annie Lowrey, “Bluegrass-State Blues,” New York Times Magazine,
June 29, 2014, p. 13.
31. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Selected Characteristics of the Total and
Native Populations in the United States,” 2010–2014 American
Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table S0601.
32. See the data from the following publications: U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Per Capita Income, Median Family Income, and Low
Income Status in 1969 for States, Standard Metropolitan Statistical
Areas, and Counties: 1970, pp. 7, 83; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
County and City Data Book, 1972, pp. 19, 186, 189, 198, 201; U.S.
Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book, 1983, pp. 26,
214, 222, 228, 236; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1980 Census of
Population, Volume 1: General Social and Economic
Characteristics, Part 1, United States Summary, PC80–1–C1, p. 1–
10t; U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City Data Book: 1994,
pp. 23, 214, 219, 228, 233; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census
 of Population: Social and Economic Characteristics, United States,
1990 CP–2–1, p. 48; U.S. Bureau of the Census, County and City
Data Book: 2000, pp. 33, 34, 81, 82, 210, 225, 226; U.S. Bureau of
the Census, “Money Income in the United States: 1997 (With
Separate Data on Valuation of Noncash Benefits),” Current
Population Reports, P60–200, p. vii; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
2020 Poverty and Median Household Income Estimates— Counties,
States, and National, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates
(SAIPE) Program, Release date: December 2021; U.S. Bureau of the
Census, “QuickFacts” for the following counties in Kentucky:
Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie, and Mogoffin, downloaded on
November 15, 2022; Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen
and Jessica Semega, “Income and Poverty in the United States:
2020,” Current Population Reports, P60–273, p. 27.
33. Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911), p. 113.
34. Ibid.
35. See, for example, J.R. McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean
World: An Environmental History (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), pp. 27, 44, 46, 104, 110, 142–143; Ellen
Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, pp. 521,
522, 530, 531, 599, 600; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and
the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, translated by Siân
Reynolds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), Vol. I, pp.
38, 46, 57, 97; Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South, pp.
242, 246–247; Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward
Society (New York: The Free Press, 1958). See also James N.
Gregory, The Southern Diaspora: How The Great Migrations of
Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 76. A revealing
elaboration of the American hillbilly culture was part of a best-selling
 book by J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and
Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016).
36. Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and
Inheritance (New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), p. 254.
37. J. Todd Moye, Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War
II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), especially p. 13;
Martin Weil, “Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., 89, Dies; First Black General in
Air Force,” Washington Post, July 6, 2002, p. B7; “Black Colonel
Getting General’s Rank,” New York Times, January 26, 1970, p. 13;
Nick Thimmesch, “‘Chappie’ James: A Remarkable Human Being,”
Human Events, March 18, 1978, p. 218.
38. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, p. 365.
39. Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom, edited by Arthur M.
Schlesinger, pp. 476n, 614–622.
40. Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, enlarged
edition, p. 34.
41. Grady McWhiney, Cracker Culture, Chapters 2 and 3; David Hackett
Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 365–368, 740–743.
42. [Daniel Patrick Moynihan], The Negro Family: The Case for
National Action (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1965), p.
8. Moynihan was not identified as the author, when this was issued as
an anonymous government publication. Only after it became
controversial was Moynihan identified as the author.
43. See, for example, the data in Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The
State of White America 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum,
2012), p. 160.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.; [Daniel Patrick Moynihan], The Negro Family, p. 8.
46. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, “Births: Final Data for 2000,” National
Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 50, No. 5 (February 12, 2002), Table 19,
p. 49.
47. Charles Murray, Coming Apart, p. 161.
48. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations (Washington: The Cato
Institute, 2016), p. 164.
49. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Collected Legal Papers (New York: Peter
Smith, 1952), pp. 230–231.
50. John Dewey, for example, said of people who disagreed with him over
whether the disarmament treaties he favored were as effective in
deterring war as a military defense build-up would be that they had
“the stupidity of habit-bound minds.” John Dewey, “Outlawing Peace
by Discussing War,” New Republic, May 16, 1928, p. 370. Another
prominent early Progressive, Professor Edward A. Ross, author of 28
books, referred to people with different views as “kept” spokesmen
for special interests, a “mercenary corps” as contrasted with “us
champions of the social welfare.” Edward Alsworth Ross, Seventy
Years of It: An Autobiography (New York: D. Appleton-Century
Company, 1936), pp. 97–98. Among later Progressives, Professor
Paul Krugman, in his book Arguing with Zombies referred to the
“dishonesty,” “bad faith” and “zombie” ideas of conservatives. Paul
Krugman, Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics and the
Fight For a Better Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021), pp. 7–8.
In a similar vein, Professor Andrew Hacker simply declared that
“conservatives don’t really care whether black Americans are happy
or unhappy.” Andrew Hacker, Two Nations: Black and White,
Separate, Hostile, Unequal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1992), p. 51.
51. Madison Grant, a central figure among the early Progressives, said:
“There exists to-day a widespread and fatuous belief in the power of
 environment, as well as of education and opportunity to alter heredity,
which arises from the dogma of the brotherhood of man, derived in its
turn from the loose thinkers of the French Revolution and their
American mimics.” Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race
or the Racial Basis of European History, revised edition, p. 16. See
also Carl Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1923), pp. xx, xxi, 75–78, 143–147, 154,
189, 190–192, 194, 197, 202, 209–210. See also “Foreword,” by
Robert M. Yerkes on pages vii–viii; Clarence S. Yoakum and Robert
M. Yerkes, Army Mental Tests (New York: Henry Holt and Company,
1920), pp. 17, 30; [Robert M. Yerkes,] National Academy of
Sciences, Psychological Examining in the United States Army
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921), Vol. XV, Part III,
pp. 553, 742, 785, 789, 791.
52. Otto Klineberg, Race Differences (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1935), p. 182.
53. James M. McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction
to the NAACP (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pp. 165,
172–174.
54. Ibid., pp. 206, 367, 371–372; John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the
Progressive Era: 1900–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1977), p. 115. See also pp. 141–148. James D. Anderson, The
Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2010), pp. 4, 20–23, 94–102.
55. Jason L. Riley, “Philanthropy and Black Education,” City Journal,
Summer 2016, pp. 82, 84, 86.
56. John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, p. 115.
57. Mandel Sherman and Cora B. Key, “The Intelligence of Isolated
Mountain Children,” Child Development, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December
1932), pp. 279, 283. See also Lester R. Wheeler, “A Comparative
Study of the Intelligence of East Tennessee Mountain Children,”
 Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (May 1942),
pp. 327–328; L.R. Wheeler, “The Intelligence of East Tennessee
Mountain Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Volume
23, Issue 5 (May 1932), pp. 361, 363.
58. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment (London:
Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1969), p. 155.
59. Hugh Gordon, Mental and Scholastic Tests Among Retarded
Children (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1923), p. 39.
60. Rudolf Pintner, Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results (New
York: Henry Holt and Company, 1923), p. 352; Rudolph Pintner and
Ruth Keller, “Intelligence Tests of Foreign Children,” Journal of
Educational Psychology, Volume 13, No. 4 (1922), pp. 214, 215.
61. Clifford Kirkpatrick, Intelligence and Immigration (Baltimore: The
Williams & Wilkins Company, 1926), pp. 24, 31, 34.
62. Otto Klineberg, Race Differences, pp. 182–183.
63. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Total Population,” 2011–2015 American
Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B01003; U.S. Bureau of
the Census, “Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (In
2015 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars),” 2011–2015 American Community
Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B19013; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
2020 Poverty and Median Household Income Estimates— Counties,
States, and National, Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates
(SAIPE) Program, Release date: December 2021; U.S. Bureau of the
Census, “QuickFacts” for the following counties in Kentucky:
Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie, Mogoffin, and Owsley,
downloaded on November 15, 2022 and January 12, 2023; Emily A.
Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega, “Income
and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current Population Reports,
P60–273, p. 27. See also Brett Barrouquere and Dylan T. Lovan,
“Kentucky County Feels Food Stamp Reductions Sharply,”
Washington Post, February 2, 2014, p. A5; Annie Lowrey,
 “Bluegrass-State Blues,” New York Times Magazine, June 29, 2014,
p. 13.
64. Mandel Sherman and Cora B. Key, “The Intelligence of Isolated
Mountain Children,” Child Development, Vol. 3, No. 4 (December
1932), pp. 279, 283.
65. Lester R. Wheeler, “A Comparative Study of the Intelligence of East
Tennessee Mountain Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology,
Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (May 1942), pp. 327, 328. See also L.R. Wheeler,
“The Intelligence of East Tennessee Mountain Children,” Journal of
Educational Psychology, Volume 23, Issue 5 (May 1932), pp. 360,
363. “A study by Lacy, for example, showed that the average I.Q. of
colored children dropped steadily from 99 to 87 in the first four
school grades, whereas the White I.Q. remained almost stationary.”
Otto Klineberg, “Mental Testing of Racial and National Groups,”
Scientific Aspects of the Race Problem, edited by Herbert Spencer
Jennings (Washington: Catholic University Press, 1941), p. 280.
66. Lester R. Wheeler, “A Comparative Study of the Intelligence of East
Tennessee Mountain Children,” Journal of Educational Psychology,
Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 (May 1942), p. 322.
67. Ibid., pp. 327, 328.
68. Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, p.
532.
69. See, for example, J.R. McNeill, The Mountains of the Mediterranean
World, pp. 27, 44, 46, 104, 110, 142–143; Ellen Churchill Semple,
Influences of Geographic Environment, pp. 521, 522, 530, 531, 599,
600; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, translated by Siân Reynolds, Vol. I, pp.
38, 46, 57, 97; Rupert B. Vance, Human Geography of the South, pp.
242, 246–247; Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward
Society; J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy. See also James N. Gregory, The
Southern Diaspora, p. 76.
70. Sandra Scarr and Richard A. Weinberg, “IQ Test Performance of
Black Children Adopted by White Families,” American Psychologist
(October 1976), pp. 726–739.
71. Linda O. McMurry, George Washington Carver: Scientist and
Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 8–9, 12, 13–
20.
72. Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence, p. 190.
73. H.H. Goddard, “The Binet Tests in Relation to Immigration,” Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, Vol. 18, No. 2 (December 1913), p. 110.
74. Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race: Conservation,
Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant (Burlington: University
of Vermont Press, 2009), p. 98.
75. Thomas C. Leonard, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive
Era,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 2005),
p. 211.
76. Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race, p. 99.
77. Edward Alsworth Ross, The Old World in the New: The Significance
of Past and Present Immigration to the American People (New
York: The Century Company, 1914), pp. 285–286.
78. Edward Alsworth Ross, “Who Outbreeds Whom?” Proceedings of the
Third Race Betterment Conference (Battle Creek, Michigan: Race
Betterment Foundation, 1928), p. 77.
79. John L. Gillin, “In Memoriam: Edward Alsworth Ross,” The Midwest
Sociologist, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Fall 1951), p. 18; Howard W. Odum,
“Edward Alsworth Ross: 1866–1951,” Social Forces, Vol. 30, No. 1
(October 1951), p. 126.
80. Edward Alsworth Ross, Sin and Society: An Analysis of Latter-Day
Iniquity (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1907), pp. ix–xi.
81. Julius Weinberg, Edward Alsworth Ross and the Sociology of
Progressivism (Madison: The State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
1972), p. 136.
82. See, for example, Roscoe Pound, “The Theory of Judicial Decision.
III. A Theory of Judicial Decision For Today,” Harvard Law Review,
Vol. 36, No. 8 (June 1923), pp. 940–959; Roscoe Pound, Law and
Morals (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North
Carolina Press, 1924); Roscoe Pound, Criminal Justice in The
American City— A Summary, Part VII (Cleveland Foundation,
1922). See also Julius Weinberg, Edward Alsworth Ross and the
Sociology of Progressivism, pp. 136–137. See also Walter K. Olson,
Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered
America (New York: Encounter Books, 2011), pp. 6, 40; Robert
Heineman, Authority and the Liberal Tradition: From Hobbes to
Rorty (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1994),
second edition, pp. 129–131; James Davids, Erik Gustafson, and
Sherena Arrington, Clashing Worldviews in the U.S. Supreme Court:
Rehnquist vs. Blackmun (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books,
2020), pp. 41–42; David M. Rabban, Law’s History: American Legal
Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 423–471.
83. “Dr. R.T. Ely Dies; Noted Economist,” New York Times, October 5,
1943, p. 25; See Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race (New York:
Basic Books, 2013), pp. 31, 33, 34–35.
84. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, pp. 29, 30, 33, 34, 35;
Lawrence J. Rhoades, A History of the American Sociological
Association: 1905–1980 (Washington: American Sociological
Association, 1980), pp. 1, 2, 5; William E. Spellman, “The
Economics of Edward Alsworth Ross,” American Journal of
Economics and Sociology, Vol. 38, No. 2 (April 1979), pp. 132–133.
85. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, pp. 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35.
86. Ibid., pp. 29–35.
87. Michael S. Lawlor, The Economics of Keynes in Historical Context:
An Intellectual History of the General Theory (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), p. 305n.
88. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, pp. 24–43.
89. Carl N. Degler, In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and
Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 43; Richard Overy, The Twilight
Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York:
Viking, 2009), pp. 104–105.
90. Thomas C. Leonard, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive
Era,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 2005),
p. 216.
91. “Obituary: Sir Francis Galton,” Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society, Vol. 74, No. 3 (February 1911), p. 315; Mark H. Haller,
Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), p. 11.
92. Richard T. Ely, “The Price of Progress,” Administration, Vol. III, No.
6 (June 1922), p. 662.
93. Thomas C. Leonard, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive
Era,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 2005),
p. 212.
94. Ibid., p. 213.
95. Ibid., p. 214.
96. Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of
European History, revised edition, p. xxi.
97. Ibid., p. 49.
98. Matthew Pratt Guterl, The Color of Race in America: 1900–1940
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 67.
99. Sidney Fine, “Richard T. Ely, Forerunner of Progressivism, 1880–
1901,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (March
1951), pp. 609, 610.
100. Dr. R.T. Ely Dies; Noted Economist,” New York Times, October 5,
1943, p. 25; Sidney Fine, “Richard T. Ely, Forerunner of
Progressivism, 1880–1901,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review,
Vol. 37, No. 4 (March 1951), pp. 613, 614.
101. Henry C. Taylor, “Richard Theodore Ely: April 13, 1854-October 4,
1943,” The Economic Journal, Vol. 54, No. 213 (April 1944), p.
137.
102. Thomas C. Leonard, “Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive
Era,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Fall 2005),
p. 215.
103. Henry C. Taylor, “Richard Theodore Ely: April 13, 1854-October 4,
1943,” The Economic Journal, Vol. 54, No. 213 (April 1944), p.
133.
104. Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the
American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New
York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 83.
105. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era: 1910–
1917 (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1954), pp. 64–66;
Tom Lewis, Washington: A History of Our National City (New
York: Basic Books, 2015), pp. 272–275.
106. Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and American
Internationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p.
80.
107. Larry Walker, “Woodrow Wilson, Progressive Reform, and Public
Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 104, No. 3
(Autumn 1989), pp. 512–513; Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson
and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman
 & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 255, 259, 260; Woodrow Wilson, The State:
Elements of Historical and Practical Politics, revised edition
(Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., Publishers, 1898), p. 625; Woodrow
Wilson, The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the
Generous Energies of a People (New York: Doubleday, Page &
Company, 1913, 1918), pp. 20, 284.
108. Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American
Politics (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1885), pp. 8, 242–243; Woodrow
Wilson, Constitutional Government in the United States (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1908), pp. 157, 158, 159, 160, 167, 168,
169, 192, 193, 194.
109. Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, pp. 19, 20, 261, 283, 284, 294.
110. See, for example, Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth,
and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2013), p. 2. See also Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom,
Politics, Economics, and Welfare: Planning and Politico-Economic
Systems Resolved into Basic Social Processes (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 29, 36, 49, 425, 518.
111. Edward Alsworth Ross, Seventy Years of It, pp. 97–98.
112. Roscoe Pound, “The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence,” The
Green Bag, October 1907, pp. 614, 615.
113. Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending the Master Race, pp. 6, 10, 17, 22,
23, 28, 31, 32.
114. Ibid., p. 17.
115. Ibid., p. 250.
116. Eligio R. Padilla and Gail E. Wyatt, “The Effects of Intelligence and
Achievement Testing on Minority Group Children,” The
Psychosocial Development of Minority Group Children, edited by
Gloria Johnson Powell, et al (New York: Brunner/Mazel, Publishers,
1983), p. 418.
117. H.H. Goddard, “The Binet Tests in Relation to Immigration,” Journal
of Psycho-Asthenics, Vol. 18, No. 2 (December 1913), p. 110.
118. N.J.G. Pounds, An Historical Geography of Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 9.
119. Philip E. Vernon, Intelligence and Cultural Environment, pp. 101,
145, 157–158; Mandel Sherman and Cora B. Key, “The Intelligence
of Isolated Mountain Children,” Child Development, Vol. 3, No. 4
(December 1932), p. 284; [Robert M. Yerkes,] National Academy of
Sciences, Psychological Examining in the United States Army, Vol.
XV, Part III, p. 705. See also Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Race,
pp. 67–68.
120. I.M. Stead, Celtic Art in Britain before the Roman Conquest
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 4.
121. Luigi Barzini, The Europeans (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1983), p. 47.
122. Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and
Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp.
210–211, 214–218.
123. Andrew Tanzer, “The Bamboo Network,” Forbes, July 8, 1994, p.
139; The Economist, Pocket World in Figures: 1997 Edition
(London: Profile Books, 1996), p. 14.
124. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Total Population,” 2011–2015 American
Community Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B01003; U.S. Bureau of
the Census, “Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (In
2015 Inflation-Adjusted Dollars),” 2011–2015 American Community
Survey, 5-Year Estimates, Table B19013; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
2020 Poverty and Median Household Income Estimates—
Counties, States, and National, Small Area Income and Poverty
Estimates (SAIPE) Program, Release date: December 2021; U.S.
Bureau of the Census, “QuickFacts” for the following counties in
Kentucky: Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie, Mogoffin, and
 Owsley, downloaded on November 15, 2022 and January 12, 2023;
Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega,
“Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current
Population Reports, P60–273, p. 27. See also Brett Barrouquere and
Dylan T. Lovan, “Kentucky County Feels Food Stamp Reductions
Sharply,” Washington Post, February 2, 2014, p. A5; Annie Lowrey,
“Bluegrass-State Blues,” New York Times Magazine, June 29, 2014,
p. 13.
125. Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence, p. 29.
126. Ibid., p. xx.
127. Carl C. Brigham, “Intelligence Tests of Immigrant Groups,”
Psychological Review, Vol. 37, Issue 2 (March 1930), p. 165.
128. Rudolf Pintner, Intelligence Testing: Methods and Results, new
edition (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1931), p. 453; Charles
Murray, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the
Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 (New York: HarperCollins,
2003), pp. 291, 292; Malcolm Gladwell, “Getting In,” The New
Yorker, October 10, 2005, pp. 80–86.
129. Sandra Scarr and Richard A. Weinberg, “IQ Test Performance of
Black Children Adopted by White Families,” American Psychologist
(October 1976), pp. 726, 732, 736.
130. James R. Flynn, “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests
Really Measure,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 101, No. 2 (1987), pp.
171–191. See also James R. Flynn, “The Mean IQ of Americans:
Massive Gains 1932 to 1978,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 1
(1984), pp. 29–51.
131. Since IQ tests were often used to assess the mental level of children—
and it would be unrealistic to expect six-year-olds to do as well on
these tests as twelve-year-olds, each child’s performance is compared
to the average performance of children the same age. To do this, each
child’s raw score on an IQ test was called the child’s “mental age.”
 That mental age is then compared to the same child’s chronological
age by creating a fraction, with the child’s mental age divided by that
child’s chronological age. The resulting quotient is then multiplied by
100, so that the resulting “intelligence quotient” (IQ) can be read as
the percentage of the average performance of children the same age.
Thus an IQ of 85 means that the individual correctly answered 85
percent of the questions answered by others in the same age bracket,
and an IQ of 115 indicates that the individual correctly answered 15
percent more questions than others in the same age category. For
adults, the IQ test score is no longer so directly linked with age but
the intelligence quotient of a given individual is compared with that
of other adults in general.
132. Lisa H. Trahan, et al., “The Flynn Effect: A Meta-Analysis,”
Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 140, No. 5 (2014), pp. 1332–1360;
James R. Flynn, “The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to
1978,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 1 (1984), pp. 29–51.
133. James R. Flynn, Where Have All the Liberals Gone? Race, Class,
and Ideals in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2008), pp. 72–74.
134. Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America
(New York: Encounter Books, 2021), p. 38.
135. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and
Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), p. 99.
Belief that innate mental inferiority of black children had been
proved was reported as “a common fallacy” by James B. Conant in
1961. James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs: A Commentary on
Schools in Metropolitan Areas (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p.
12.
136. Arthur R. Jensen, Genetics and Education (New York: Harper &
Row, 1972), pp. 43–44.
137. James R. Flynn, “The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive Gains 1932 to
1978,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 95, No. 1 (1984), pp. 29–51;
James R. Flynn, Where Have All the Liberals Gone?, pp. 72–74;
James R. Flynn, “Massive IQ Gains in 14 Nations: What IQ Tests
Really Measure,” Psychological Bulletin, Vol. 101, No. 2 (1987), pp.
171–191.
138. Rochelle Sharpe, “Losing Ground: In Latest Recession, Only Blacks
Suffered Net Employment Loss,” Wall Street Journal, September 14,
1993, pp. A1, A12.
139. Glenn B. Canner, et al., “Home Mortgage Disclosure Act: Expanded
Data on Residential Lending,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, November
1991, p. 870; Glenn B. Canner and Dolores S. Smith, “Expanded
HMDA Data on Residential Lending: One Year Later,” Federal
Reserve Bulletin, November 1992, p. 808.
140. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Report to the
Congress on Credit Scoring and Its Effects on the Availability and
Affordability of Credit, submitted to the Congress pursuant to
Section 215 of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of
2003, August 2007, p. 80.
141. Thomas Sowell, The Housing Boom and Bust, revised edition (New
York: Basic Books, 2009), pp. 103–104; Alicia H. Munnell, et al.,
“Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data,” Federal
Reserve Bank of Boston, Working Paper No. 92–7, October 1992,
pp. 2, 25.
142. Thomas Sowell, The Housing Boom and Bust, revised edition, pp.
29, 30, 31, 36–44, 48, 51, 72–74, 77, 81–82, 100, 109.
143. Thomas Sowell, “Froth in Frisco or Another Bubble?” Wall Street
Journal, May 26, 2005, p. A13.
144. Thomas Sowell, The Housing Boom and Bust, revised edition,
Chapters 3 and 5; Dean Baker, The Housing Bubble and the Great
Recession: Ten Years Later, Center for Economic and Policy
 Research, September 2018; Justin Lahart, “The Great Recession: A
Downturn Sized Up,” Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2009, p. A12;
“No Place Like Home,” The Economist, January 18, 2020, special
report on housing, p. 3.
145. Bob Zelnick, Backfire: A Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action
(Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1996), p. 330.
146. See the “Dear Colleague Letter” issued by the U.S. Department of
Justice and U.S. Department of Education on January 8, 2014.
147. Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom, No Excuses: Closing
the Racial Gap in Learning (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004),
pp. 138, 139.
148. Ibid., p. 140.
149. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Companion: Quotations from the
Speeches, Essays, and Books of Martin Luther King, Jr., selected
by Coretta Scott King (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), p. 101.

CHAPTER 3: CHESS PIECES FALLACIES

1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1971), pp. 30–31, 43, 60–61, 302, 325.
2. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty
Classics, 1976), pp. 380–381.
3. Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke,
Volume II: Party, Parliament, and the American Crisis 1766–1774,
edited by Paul Langford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981),
p. 459.
4. “Maryland’s Mobile Millionaires,” Wall Street Journal, March 12,
2010, p. A18.
5. “Ducking Higher Taxes,” Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2010, p.
A18.
6. David Walker and Mike Foster, “New U.K. Tax Sends Hedge Funds
Fleeing,” Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2009, p. C2.
7. “Iceland’s Laffer Curve,” Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2007, p.
A14.
8. Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation: The People’s Business (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1924), p. 74; Robert A. Wilson, “Personal
Exemptions and Individual Income Tax Rates, 1913–2002,” Statistics
of Income Bulletin, Spring 2002, p. 219.
9. Robert A. Wilson, “Personal Exemptions and Individual Income Tax
Rates, 1913–2002,” Statistics of Income Bulletin, Spring 2002, p. 219;
Gene Smiley and Richard H. Keehn, “Federal Personal Income Tax
Policy in the 1920s,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 2
(June 1995), pp. 286, 295; United States Internal Revenue Service,
Statistics of Income: 1920 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1922), p. 5; United States Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of
Income: 1928 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1930), p. 5.
10. Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation, pp. 13, 79, 80, 94, 127–128, and
Chapter VIII.
11. “Text of President’s Speech Elaborating His Views,” Washington
Post, February 13, 1924, p. 4; Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation, pp. 17,
20–21, 80, 150–151.
12. Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation, p. 170.
13. Gene Smiley and Richard H. Keehn, “Federal Personal Income Tax
Policy in the 1920s,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 2
(June 1995), p. 289. See also Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation, pp. 79–
80, 141.
14. See, for example, my monograph, “‘Trickle Down Theory’ and ‘Tax
Cuts for the Rich’” (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2012).
15. Robert A. Wilson, “Personal Exemptions and Individual Income Tax
Rates, 1913–2002,” Statistics of Income Bulletin, Spring 2002, p.
 219; United States Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income:
1920, p. 5; United States Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of
Income: 1928, p. 5.
16. See, for example, Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic
Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), Part II.
17. Henry Hazlitt, The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt (Irvington-on-Hudson,
New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1993), p. 329.
18. Peter Robinson, “A Capital Thinker,” Stanford Magazine,
January/February 2007, p. 47.
19. William N. Walker, “Nixon Taught Us How Not to Fight Inflation,”
Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2021, p. A13.
20. Michael Wines, “Caps on Prices Only Deepen Zimbabweans’ Misery,”
New York Times, August 2, 2007, pp. A1, A8.
21. See, for example, Robert L. Schuettinger and Eamonn F. Butler, Forty
Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation
(Washington: Heritage Foundation, 1979); Thomas Sowell, Basic
Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, fifth edition
(New York: Basic Books, 2015), Chapter 3.
22. See Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, fifth edition, pp. 1, 39–48, 49.
23. Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, revised and enlarged
edition (New York: Basic Books, 2019), pp. 52–55, 105–110; Thomas
Sowell, Basic Economics, fifth edition, Chapter 11.
24. Walter E. Williams, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed
on Discrimination (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2011), p. 42.
25. Ibid., pp. 42–43.
26. George J. Stigler, “The Economics of Minimum Wage Legislation,”
American Economic Review, Vol. 36, No. 3 (June 1946), p. 358.
27. Walter E. Williams, Race & Economics, pp. 42–43.
28. Alison Stewart, First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First
Black Public High School (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2013),
Chapter 10; Frederick W. Gooding, Jr., American Dream Deferred:
Back Federal Workers in Washington, DC, 1941–1981 (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), pp. 101–105, 107–109, 111,
113–115. See also Thomas Sowell, A Personal Odyssey (New York:
The Free Press, 2000), p. 110.
29. Milton & Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 238.
30. Gary S. Becker, The Economics of Discrimination, second edition
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
31. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities,
revised and enlarged edition, pp. 49–52. The term “Discrimination
II,” used in those pages, was defined and illustrated on pages 30–33.
32. Bernard E. Anderson, Negro Employment in Public Utilities: A Study
of Racial Policies in the Electric Power, Gas, and Telephone
Industries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970);
Venus Green, Race on the Line: Gender, Labor, and Technology in
the Bell System, 1880–1980 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001),
pp. 210–211; Michael R. Winston, “Through the Back Door:
Academic Racism and the Negro Scholar in Historical Perspective,”
Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Summer 1971), pp. 695, 705; Milton &
Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 91–92, 94–95, 105–106, 153–154; Greg
Robinson, “Davis, Allison,” Encyclopedia of African-American
Culture and History, edited by Colin A. Palmer (Detroit: Thomson-
Gale, 2006), Volume C–F, p. 583; “The Talented Black Scholars
Whom No White University Would Hire,” Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education, No. 58 (Winter 2007/2008), p. 81; Thomas
Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, revised and enlarged edition,
pp. 49–52; Thomas Sowell, Race and Economics (New York: David
McKay Company, Inc., 1975), pp. 182–183.
33. See, for example, Bernard E. Anderson, Negro Employment in Public
Utilities, pp. 73, 80, 84–87, 92–95, 114, 139, 150, 152; Venus Green,
Race on the Line, pp. 210–211; Michael R. Winston, “Through the
Back Door: Academic Racism and the Negro Scholar in Historical
Perspective,” Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Summer 1971), pp. 695,
705; Greg Robinson, “Davis, Allison,” Encyclopedia of African-
American Culture and History, edited by Colin A. Palmer, Volume
C–F, p. 583; “The Talented Black Scholars Whom No White
University Would Hire,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education,
No. 58 (Winter 2007/2008), p. 81; Thomas Sowell, Discrimination
and Disparities, revised and enlarged edition, pp. 49–52; Thomas
Sowell, Race and Economics, pp. 182–183.
34. Bernard E. Anderson, Negro Employment in Public Utilities; Venus
Green, Race on the Line, pp. 210–211; Michael R. Winston,
“Through the Back Door: Academic Racism and the Negro Scholar in
Historical Perspective,” Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Summer 1971),
pp. 695, 705; Milton & Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People, pp. 91–
92, 94–95, 105–106, 153–154; Greg Robinson, “Davis, Allison,”
Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, edited by
Colin A. Palmer, Volume C–F, p. 583; “The Talented Black Scholars
Whom No White University Would Hire,” Journal of Blacks in
Higher Education, No. 58 (Winter 2007/2008), p. 81; Thomas
Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities, revised and enlarged edition,
pp. 49–52; Thomas Sowell, Race and Economics, pp. 182–183.
35. “The Talented Black Scholars Whom No White University Would
Hire,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, No. 58 (Winter
2007/2008), p. 81; Michael R. Winston, “Through the Back Door:
Academic Racism and the Negro Scholar in Historical Perspective,”
Daedalus, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Summer 1971), p. 705.
36. Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the
World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 23,
27.
37. Raphael Mahler, “Jews in Public Service and the Liberal Professions
in Poland, 1918–1939,” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4 (October
1944), pp. 298, 299.
38. Walter E. Williams, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1989), pp. 78, 101–105.
39. Ibid., p. 81.
40. “Class and the American Dream,” New York Times, May 30, 2005, p.
A14.
41. Eugene Robinson, “Tattered Dream: Who’ll Tackle the Issue of
Upward Mobility?” Washington Post, November 23, 2007, p. A39.
42. E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Political Stupidity, U.S. Style,” Washington Post,
July 29, 2010, p. A23. This column also appeared in Investor’s
Business Daily, under the title “Overtaxed Rich Is a Fairy Tale of
Supply Side.”
43. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama:
2013 (Washington: United States Government Publishing Office,
2018), Book II, p. 1331.
44. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We
Can Do About Them (New York: W.W. Norton, 2015), p. 88.
45. Ibid., p. 90.
46. Ibid., p. xv.
47. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Income Mobility in the U.S. from
1996 to 2005,” November 13, 2007, p. 7.
48. See, for example, W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, “By Our Own
Bootstraps: Economic Opportunity & the Dynamics of Income
Distribution,” Annual Report, 1995, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas,
p. 8; Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl and Kirk A. Foster,
Chasing the American Dream: Understanding What Shapes Our
Fortunes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 105; Thomas
 A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank, “The Life Course Dynamics of
Affluence,” PLoS ONE, January 28, 2015, p. 5.
49. Thomas A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank, “The Life Course Dynamics of
Affluence,” PLoS ONE, January 28, 2015, p. 5.
50. W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, “By Our Own Bootstraps:
Economic Opportunity & the Dynamics of Income Distribution,”
Annual Report, 1995, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, p. 8.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Income Mobility in the U.S. from
1996 to 2005,” November 13, 2007, p. 10. See also “Movin’ On Up,”
Wall Street Journal, November 13, 2007, p. A24.
54. Niels Veldhuis, et al., “The ‘Poor’ Are Getting Richer,” Fraser
Forum, January/February 2013, p. 25.
55. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Consumer Expenditures Report,”
Report 1090, December 2020, Table 1, p. 12.
56. Ibid.
57. John McNeil, “Changes in Median Household Income: 1969 to 1996,”
Current Population Reports, P23–196 (Washington: U.S. Bureau of
the Census, 1998), p. 1.
58. Herman P. Miller, Income Distribution in the United States
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), p. 7.
59. Louis Uchitelle, “Stagnant Pay: A Delayed Impact,” New York Times,
June 18, 1991, p. D2.
60. Barbara Vobejda, “Elderly Lead All in Financial Improvement,”
Washington Post, September 1, 1998, p. A3.
61. Amy Kaslow, “Growing American Economy Leaves Middle Class
Behind,” Christian Science Monitor, November 1, 1994, p. 2.
62. Compare Tom Wicker, “L.B.J.’s Great Society,” New York Times,
May 7, 1990, p. A15; Tom Wicker, “Let ’Em Eat Swiss Cheese,” New
York Times, September 2, 1988, p. A27.
63. Paul Krugman, “Rich Man’s Recovery,” New York Times, September
13, 2013, p. A25.
64. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Income Mobility in the U.S. from
1996 to 2005,” November 13, 2007, p. 4.
65. Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income Division, “The 400
Individual Income Tax Returns Reporting the Largest Adjusted Gross
Incomes Each Year, 1992–2014,” December 2016, Table 4, p. 17.
66. Emily A. Shrider, Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen and Jessica Semega,
“Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020,” Current
Population Reports, P60–273 (Washington: U.S. Government
Publishing Office, 2021), p. 9.
67. Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Great Divide, p. xv.
68. Alan Reynolds, Income and Wealth (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 2006), p. 67.
69. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and
an Xbox: What Is Poverty in the United States Today?”
Backgrounder, No. 2575, Heritage Foundation, July 18, 2011, p. 10.
70. Thomas A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank, “The Life Course Dynamics of
Affluence,” PLoS ONE, January 28, 2015, p. 5.
71. W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, “By Our Own Bootstraps:
Economic Opportunity & the Dynamics of Income Distribution,”
Annual Report, 1995, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, p. 16; U.S.
Bureau of the Census, “Age— All People (Both Sexes Combined) by
Median and Mean Income: 1974 to 2020,” Current Population
Survey, 1975–2021, Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS
ASEC), Table P–10.
72. Alan Reynolds, Income and Wealth, p. 22.
CHAPTER 4: KNOWLEDGE FALLACIES
1. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological
Origins of Political Struggles (New York: Basic Books, 2002),
Chapter 3.
2. Joses C. Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in
Buenos Aires, 1850–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998), pp. 119, 145–146. Similarly, most of the Italian immigrants to
Australia, between 1881 and 1899, came from places containing only
10 percent of the population of Italy. Helen Ware, A Profile of the
Italian Community in Australia (Melbourne: Australian Institute of
Multicultural Affairs and Co.As.It. Italian Assistance Association,
1981), p. 12.
3. Helen Ware, A Profile of the Italian Community in Australia, p. 12.
4. G. Cresciani, “Italian Immigrants 1920–1945,” The Australian People:
An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origins, edited
by James Jupp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.
501.
5. Walter D. Kamphoefner, “The German Agricultural Frontier: Crucible
or Cocoon,” Ethnic Forum, Volume 4, Nos. 1–2 (Spring 1984), pp.
24–25.
6. Theodore Huebener, The Germans in America (Philadelphia: Chilton
Company, 1962), p. 84; Hildegard Binder Johnson, “The Location of
German Immigrants in the Middle West,” Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, edited by Henry Madison Kendall, Volume
XLI (1951), pp. 24–25.
7. Jack Chen, The Chinese of America (San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1980), p. 18.
8. Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, “Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians in
Colombia,” The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration,
 edited by Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi (London: The Centre for
Lebanese Studies, 1992), p. 368.
9. Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews 1870–1914
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 76,
78.
10. Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of
Immigrant New York (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p.
185.
11. Charles A. Price, The Methods and Statistics of ‘Southern Europeans
in Australia’ (Canberra: The Australian National University, 1963),
p. 45.
12. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1971), pp. 30–31, 43, 60–61, 302, 325.
13. Frederick Jackson Turner, “Pioneer Ideals and the State University,”
Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: “The Significance of the
Frontier in American History” and Other Essays, edited by John
Mack Faragher (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), p. 116.
14. F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1960), p. 26.
15. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 30–31, 43, 60–61, 302, 325.
16. Ibid.
17. See John Dewey, “Can Education Share in Social Reconstruction?”
John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 9: 1933–1934,
edited by Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1986), pp. 205–209.
18. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, translated by Maurice
Cranston (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), p. 69.
19. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (London: G.G.J. and J.
 Robinson, 1793). The word “Political” in the title was used in the
sense common at the time, referring to organized society— the polity
— much as the expression “political economy” in that same era
referred to the economics of the society or polity, as distinguished
from the economics of a household or a business. In short, Godwin
wrote on social justice, as that term is used today.
20. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on Morals and Happiness, edited by F.E.L. Priestley
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1946), Vol. I, p. 104.
21. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, edited by W.J.
Ashley (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1909), p. 947.
22. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” Collected Works of John Stuart Mill,
Vol. XVIII: Essays on Politics and Society, edited by J.M. Robson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 269.
23. John Stuart Mill, “Civilization,” Ibid., p. 139.
24. Ibid., p. 121.
25. John Stuart Mill, “De Tocqueville on Democracy in America [I],”
Ibid., p. 86.
26. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” Ibid., p. 222.
27. Ibid. p. 267.
28. John Stuart Mill, “Civilization,” Ibid., p. 128.
29. Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva
Edison Invented the Modern World (New York: Crown, 2007), p. 4;
Ford Richardson Bryan, Beyond the Model T: The Other Ventures of
Henry Ford, revised edition (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,
1997), p. 175.
30. Peter L. Jakab, Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers
and the Process of Invention (Washington: Smithsonian Institution
Press, 1990), pp. 2–3, 7.
31. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, translated by Maurice
Cranston, p. 115.
32. Ibid., p. 89.
33. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on Morals and Happiness, edited by F.E.L. Priestley, Vol.
I, p. 446; Antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical
Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, translated by June
Barraclough (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1955), p. 114.
34. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence: 1846–
1895 (New York: International Publishers, 1942), p. 190.
35. Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism (London: Constable and Company, 1928), p. 456.
36. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1978), p. 239.
37. Mona Charen, Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to
Help— and the Rest of Us (New York: Sentinel, 2004), p. 124.
38. Ralph Nader, “The Safe Car You Can’t Buy,” The Nation, April 11,
1959, p. 312.
39. Milton & Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People: Memoirs (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 454.
40. George J. Stigler, Memoirs of an Unregulated Economist (New York:
Basic Books, 1988), p. 89.
41. Ibid., p. 178.
42. Milton & Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People, pp. 370–371.
43. John Maynard Keynes, Two Memoirs: Dr. Melchoir, A Defeated
Enemy and My Early Beliefs (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949), pp.
97–98.
44. Ibid., p. 98.
45. R.F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (London: Macmillan,
1952), p. 468.
46. Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy: An Essay on Certain Political
and Economic Tendencies in the United States (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1912), pp. 164, 353.
47. Ibid., p. 164.
48. Walter E. Williams, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed
on Discrimination (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2011), pp. 42–
43.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., p. 43.
51. Nicholas Kristof, “Is a Hard Life Inherited?” New York Times, August
10, 2014, Sunday Review section, p. 1.
52. See, for examples, Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common
Sense Guide to the Economy, fifth edition (New York: Basic Books,
2015), Chapter 11; Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities,
revised and enlarged edition (New York: Basic Books, 2019), pp. 52–
55, 105–110; P.T. Bauer, “Regulated Wages in Under-developed
Countries,” The Public Stake in Union Power, edited by Philip D.
Bradley (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1959), pp.
324–349; Walter E. Williams, Race & Economics, pp. 32–38, 46–48,
51–53.
53. “Economic and Financial Indicators,” The Economist, March 15,
2003, p. 100.
54. “Economic and Financial Indicators,” The Economist, September 7,
2013, p. 92.
55. “Hong Kong’s Jobless Rate Falls,” Wall Street Journal, January 16,
1991, p. C16.
56. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States:
Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office,
1975), Part 1, p. 126.
57. Charles H. Young and Helen R. Y. Reid, The Japanese Canadians
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1938), pp. 47–50; Tomoko
Makabe, “The Theory of the Split Labor Market: A Comparison of
the Japanese Experience in Brazil and Canada,” Social Forces, March
1981, pp. 795, 796.
58. Walter E. Williams, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (New
York: Praeger Publishers, 1989), pp. 70–74; Walter E. Williams, Race
& Economics, pp. 46–48; Walter E. Williams, The State Against
Blacks (New York: New Press, 1982), pp. 39–40.
59. P.T. Bauer, “Regulated Wages in Under-developed Countries,” The
Public Stake in Union Power, edited by Philip D. Bradley, pp. 324–
349; Walter E. Williams, Race & Economics, pp. 32–38. For a more
general discussion of minimum wage laws and their effects on
unemployment, see Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, fifth edition,
pp. 213–215, 220–233; Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and
Disparities, revised and enlarged edition, pp. 52–55, 105–110.
60. Yuka Hayashi and Lalita Clozel, “CFPB Reveals Its Plan to Overhaul
Payday-Lending Regulation,” Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2019,
p. B11.
61. For examples, see the following editorials from the New York Times:
“391 Percent Payday Loan,” April 13, 2009, p. A20, “Pay Pals,” June
10, 2009, p. A28, and “Borrowers Bled Dry,” July 13, 2009, p. A18.
62. See, for example, “Payday Parasites,” Washington Post, February 14,
2008, p. A24; Bethany McLean, “Loan Shark Inc.,” The Atlantic
Monthly, May 2016, pp. 64–69; “A Crackdown on Predatory Payday
Loans,” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2017, p. A13; “Payday
Lenders, Unleashed,” Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2019, p. A10.
63. Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East
European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 148.
64. Simon Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States:
Background and Structure,” Perspectives in American History, edited
by Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard
University, 1975), Vol. IX, p. 113.
65. Oliver MacDonagh, “The Irish Famine Emigration to the United
States,” Perspectives in American History, edited by Donald Fleming
and Bernard Bailyn (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Charles Warren
Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, 1976),
Vol. X, pp. 394–395.
66. Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy, p. 164.
67. United States Senate, Eighty-Ninth Congress, Second Session, Family
Planning Program: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on
Employment, Manpower and Poverty of the Committee on Labor
and Public Welfare (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office,
1966), p. 84.
68. The New York Times editorially rejected “emotions and unexamined
tradition” in this area, and its education editor declared: “To fear that
sex education will become synonymous with greater sexual
permissiveness is to misunderstand the fundamental purpose of the
entire enterprise.” Fred M. Hechinger, “Introduction,” Sex Education
and the Schools, edited by Virginia Hilu (New York: Harper & Row,
1967), p. xiv. See also “Three’s a Crowd,” New York Times, March
17, 1972, p. 40.
69. The American Social Health Association, Today’s VD Control
Problem (New York: American Social Health Association, 1966),
Table 1, p. 20.
70. Jacqueline R. Kasun, The War Against Population: The Economics
and Ideology of World Population Control (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1988), p. 142.
71. Hearings Before the Select Committee on Population, Ninety-Fifth
Congress, Second Session, Fertility and Contraception in America:
Adolescent and Pre-Adolescent Pregnancy (Washington: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1978), Volume II, p. 253.
72. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, Sexually Transmitted Disease
Surveillance 2019 (April 2021), p. 33.
73. Jacqueline R. Kasun, The War Against Population, pp. 142, 144.
74. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, “Births to Teenagers in the United
States, 1940–2000,” National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 49, No. 10
(September 25, 2001), Table 1, p. 10.
75. Ibid. See also graphs on page 2.
76. Marvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, “Sexual and Contraceptive
Experience of Young Unmarried Women in the United States, 1976
and 1971,” Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 2 (March-
April 1977), p. 56.
77. Suzanne Fields, “‘War’ Pits Parents vs. Public Policy,” Chicago Sun-
Times, October 17, 1992, p. 19.
78. Ibid.
79. James Hottois and Neal A. Milner, The Sex Education Controversy:
A Study of Politics, Education, and Morality (Lexington,
Massachusetts: Lexington Books, 1975), p. 6.
80. See, for example, Hearings Before the Select Committee on
Population, Ninety-Fifth Congress, Second Session, Fertility and
Contraception in America, Volume II, pp. 1, 2; Paul A. Reichelt and
Harriet H. Werley, “Contraception, Abortion and Venereal Disease:
 Teenagers’ Knowledge and the Effect of Education,” Family
Planning Perspectives, Vol. 7, No. 2 (March-April 1975), pp. 83–88;
Les Picker, “Human Sexuality Education: Implications for Biology
Teaching,” The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 46, No. 2 (February
1984), pp. 92–98.
81. Hearings Before the Select Committee on Population, Ninety-Fifth
Congress, Second Session, Fertility and Contraception in America,
Volume II, p. 625.
82. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on Morals and Happiness, edited by F.E.L. Priestley, Vol.
I, p. 47.
83. William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners,
and Literature (London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797), p. 70.
84. Woodrow Wilson, “What is Progress?” American Progressivism: A
Reader, edited by Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto (Lanham,
Maryland: Lexington Books, 2008), p. 48.
85. John Dewey, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the
Philosophy of Education (New York: The Macmillan Company,
1916), p. 92.
86. John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of To-Morrow (New York:
E.P. Dutton & Company, 1915), p. 304.
87. John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 24.
88. See, for example, Robert B. Westbrook, “Schools for Industrial
Democrats: The Social Origins of John Dewey’s Philosophy of
Education,” American Journal of Education, Vol. 100, No. 4
(August 1992), pp. 401–419.
89. Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science
Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2 (June 1887), p. 207.
90. Ibid., p. 208.
91. Ibid., p. 214.
92. Ronald J. Pestritto and William J. Atto, “Introduction to American
Progressivism,” American Progressivism, edited by Ronald J.
Pestritto and William J. Atto, pp. 23–25.
93. Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation
of the Generous Energies of a People (New York: Doubleday, Page
& Company, 1918, 1913), pp. vii–viii, 294. See also pages 19–20,
261, 283–284.
94. Ibid., p. v.
95. Ramsey Clark, Crime in America: Observations On Its Nature,
Causes, Prevention and Control (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1970), p. 60.
96. Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom, Politics, Economics, and
Welfare: Planning and Politico-Economic Systems Resolved into
Basic Social Processes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976),
p. 36.
97. Ibid., p. 29.
98. Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of
Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 2.
99. John Dewey, “Freedom and Culture,” John Dewey: The Later Works,
1925–1953, Volume 13: 1938–1939, edited by Jo Ann Boydston
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), p. 65.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid., p. 66.
102. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 1920), p. 145.
103. John Dewey, Democracy and Education, p. 92.
104. Ibid., p. 369.
105. John Dewey, “Liberalism and Social Action,” John Dewey: The
Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 11: 1935–1937, edited by Jo Ann
Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), p.
53.
106. John Dewey and Evelyn Dewey, Schools of To-Morrow, p. 109.
107. Roscoe Pound, “The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence,” The
Green Bag, October 1907, pp. 614, 615.
108. Roscoe Pound, Criminal Justice in the American City: A Summary
(The Cleveland Foundation, 1922), Part VII, pp. 4, 13, 14, 29, 30, 31;
Roscoe Pound, Law and Morals (Chapel Hill: North Carolina
University Press, 1924), pp. ii, iii, 6, 33, 44, 59.
109. Roscoe Pound, Law and Morals, pp. 13, 14.
110. Roscoe Pound, The Ideal Element in Law (Indianapolis: Liberty
Fund, 2002), pp. 19, 45, 104, 108, 110, 207, 258–259, 313.
111. Roscoe Pound, Criminal Justice in the American City, Part VII, pp.
5, 51; Roscoe Pound, “The Theory of Judicial Decision. III. A
Theory of Judicial Decision for Today,” Harvard Law Review, Vol.
36, No. 8 (June 1923), pp. 954, 955, 956, 957, 958.
112. Roscoe Pound, “The Need of a Sociological Jurisprudence,” The
Green Bag, October 1907, pp. 612, 613.
113. Barry Cushman, “Federalism,” The Cambridge Companion to the
United States Constitution, edited by Karen Orren and John W.
Compton (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 216.
114. Herbert Croly, a leading Progressive author and the first editor of The
New Republic magazine, deplored what he called “the practical
immutability of the Constitution.” Herbert Croly, The Promise of
American Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912, 1909),
p. 200.
115. Roscoe Pound, “The Theory of Judicial Decision. III. A Theory of
Judicial Decision for Today,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 8
 (June 1923), p. 946.
116. Roscoe Pound, “Mechanical Jurisprudence,” Columbia Law Review,
Vol. 8, No. 8 (December 1908), p. 615.
117. Ibid., pp. 605, 609, 612.
118. Roscoe Pound, Law and Morals, pp. 55–56, 58; Roscoe Pound, “The
Theory of Judicial Decision. III. A Theory of Judicial Decision for
Today,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 8 (June 1923), pp. 950,
953.
119. Roscoe Pound, “Mechanical Jurisprudence,” Columbia Law Review,
Vol. 8, No. 8 (December 1908), pp. 612, 614.
120. Godwin, Condorcet and some latter-day believers in that approach are
quoted in Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions, pp. 157–161, 197.
121. Louis D. Brandeis, “The Living Law,” Illinois Law Review, Vol. 10,
No. 7 (February 1916), p. 462; John Dewey, Human Nature and
Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1922), pp. 18–19, 46; Roscoe Pound, “Review:
The Principles of Anthropology and Sociology in Their Relation to
Criminal Procedure by Maurice Parmelee,” American Political
Science Review, Vol. 3, No. 2 (May 1909), pp. 283–284.
122. See Fred P. Graham, “High Court Puts New Curb on Powers of the
Police to Interrogate Suspects,” New York Times, June 14, 1966, pp.
1, 25.
123. Sidney E. Zion, “Attack on Court Heard by Warren,” New York
Times, September 10, 1965, pp. 1, 38.
124. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States,
Part 1, p. 414.
125. Ibid.; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United
States: 1980 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1980), p.
186.
126. See U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United
States: 1982–83 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1982), p.
178.
127. Chief Justice Earl Warren, The Memoirs of Earl Warren (Garden
City, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1977), p. 317. Such
a reaction was not peculiar to Chief Justice Earl Warren. As far back
as the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke saw a similar pattern
among some of his contemporaries: “They never had any kind of
system right or wrong, but only invented occasionally some
miserable tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties
into which they had proudly strutted.” Edmund Burke, Speeches and
Letters on American Affairs (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.,
1961), p. 8.
128. F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 30.

CHAPTER 5: WORDS, DEEDS AND DANGERS

1. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and
Society (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1953), pp. 214–215.
2. Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 146.
3. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty: A New Statement of
the Liberal Principles of Justice and Political Economy, Vol. II: The
Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1976), p. 64.
4. Ibid., p. 95; See also pp. 64, 75, 79; Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation
and Liberty: A New Statement of the Liberal Principles of Justice
and Political Economy, Vol. I: Rules and Order (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 27.
5. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. II: TheMirage of
Social Justice, p. 64.
6. Robert C. Nichols, “Heredity, Environment, and School Achievement,”
Measurement and Evaluation in Guidance, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer
1968), p. 126.
7. Alan Reynolds, Income and Wealth (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 2006), p. 67.
8. “Choose Your Parents Wisely,” The Economist, July 26, 2014, pp. 21–
22, 25.
9. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. I: Rules and
Order, Chapter 2.
10. See, for example, Thomas Sowell, The Quest for Cosmic Justice
(New York: The Free Press, 1999).
11. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. II: The Mirage of
Social Justice, p. 68.
12. Roscoe Pound, Criminal Justice in the American City: A Summary
(The Cleveland Foundation, 1922), Part VII, pp. 28–29, 87–88;
Roscoe Pound, “The Theory of Judicial Decision. III. A Theory of
Judicial Decision for Today,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 8
(June 1923), pp. 944, 945, 957; John Dewey, Human Nature and
Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology (New York: Henry
Holt and Company, 1922), p. 46.
13. Edmund Burke, Speeches and Letters on American Affairs (New
York: E.P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1961), p. 198.
14. Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, p. 148.
15. Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. II: The Mirage of
Social Justice, p. 67.
16. William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its
Influence on Morals and Happiness, edited by F.E.L. Priestley
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1946), Vol. II, p. 419.
17. Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and
Capitalism (London: Constable and Company, 1928), p. 254.
18. Ibid., p. 169.
19. Ken Murray, “Genetics, Athletics Mesh for Mannings,” Baltimore
Sun, December 12, 2004, p. 1D.
20. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Barack Obama:
2013 (Washington: United States Government Publishing Office,
2018), Book II, p. 1331.
21. Herman Kahn, World Economic Development: 1979 and Beyond
(Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 60–61.
22. “Operation Wealth Speed,” Forbes, April/May 2021, p. 72.
23. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism:
1550–1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 5–23.
24. Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, second edition
(London: Oxford University Pres, 1965), pp. 404n, 472–476, 478,
526–527; Lennox A. Mills, Southeast Asia: Illusion and Reality in
Politics and Economics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1964), p. 123; J.A.C. Mackie, “Anti-Chinese Outbreaks in
Indonesia, 1959–68,” The Chinese in Indonesia, edited by J.A.C.
Mackie (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1976), pp. 82, 83, 92.
25. “Is Africa Ready for Amin?” Newsweek, August 4, 1975, pp. 36, 41;
Roger Mann, “Amin Buys Loyalty of Soldiers,” Washington Post,
April 6, 1977, p. A13; Steven Strasser, Helen Gibson, and Ron
Moreau, “The Fall of Idi Amin,” Newsweek, April 23, 1979, pp. 41–
42; Pranay B. Gupte, “Picking Up the Pieces in Uganda Is Not Easy,”
New York Times, June 1, 1980, p. E2.
26. Sean Turnell, Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and
Microfinance in Burma (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2008), pp. 13–
14, 49; Ian Brown, Burma’s Economy in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 96–97.
27. “Is Africa Ready for Amin?” Newsweek, August 4, 1975, pp. 36, 41;
Roger Mann, “Amin Buys Loyalty of Soldiers,” Washington Post,
April 6, 1977, p. A13; Steven Strasser, Helen Gibson, and Ron
Moreau, “The Fall of Idi Amin,” Newsweek, April 23, 1979, pp. 41–
42; Pranay B. Gupte, “Picking Up the Pieces in Uganda Is Not Easy,”
New York Times, June 1, 1980, p. E2.
28. Sean Turnell, Fiery Dragons, p. 193. See also Usha Mahajani, The
Role of Indian Minorities in Burma and Malaya (Westport,
Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973), p. 20.
29. Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, second edition, pp.
513, 514n, 515.
30. Solomon Grayzel, A History of the Jews: From the Babylonian Exile
to the End of World War II (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society of America, 1947), pp. 387–394; Esther Benbassa, The Jews
of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present, translated by
M.B. DeBevoise (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp.
15, 16, 20–21; H.H. Ben-Sasson, “The Collapse of Old Settlements
and the Establishment of New Ones, 1348–1517,” A History of the
Jewish People, edited by H.H. Ben-Sasson (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1976), pp. 561–565.
31. Roger P. Bartlett, Human Capital: The Settlement of Foreigners in
Russia, 1762–1804 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979),
pp. 35, 86–87, 88.
32. Ibid., p. 87.
33. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” Collected Works of John Stuart Mill,
Vol. XVIII: Essays on Politics and Society, edited by J.M. Robson
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), p. 245.
34. See Rob Arnott and Casey B. Mulligan, “How Deadly Were the Covid
Lockdowns?” Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2023, p. A15; Casey
B. Mulligan and Robert D. Arnott, “The Young Were Not Spared:
What Death Certificates Reveal about Non-Covid Excess Deaths,”
 Inquiry, Vol. 59 (2022), pp. 1–9; Jiaquan Xu, et al., “Mortality in the
United States, 2021,” NCHS Data Brief, No. 456, December 2022,
Figure 4, p. 4.
35. Edmund Burke, Speeches and Letters on American Affairs, p. 198.
36. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Poverty Status of Families, by Type of
Family, Presence of Related Children, Race, and Hispanic Origin:
1959 to 2020,” Current Population Survey, 1960–2021, Annual
Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC), Table 4.
37. Terry M. Moe, Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s
Public Schools (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p.
280.
38. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and
White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1997), p. 233.
39. Ibid.
40. Hugh Davis Graham, “The Origins of Affirmative Action: Civil Rights
and the Regulatory State,” The Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, Vol. 523 (September 1992), pp. 53, 54.
41. See, for example, Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character: A
New Vison of Race in America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990);
Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together
Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York:
HarperCollins, 2006).
42. Shelby Steele, White Guilt, p. 123.
43. Ibid., p. 124.
44. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and
White, pp. 158–161.
45. James P. Smith and Finis Welch, Race Differences in Earnings: A
Survey and New Evidence (Santa Monica, California: The Rand
 Corporation, 1978), pp. 15, 19. See also p. 14.
46. “Civil Rights Act,” New York Times, July 5, 1964, p. E1.
47. Daniel P. Moynihan, “Employment, Income, and the Ordeal of the
Negro Family,” Daedalus, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 1965), p. 752.
48. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and
White, p. 150; Congressional Record: Senate, June 19, 1964, p.
14511; E.W. Kenworthy, “Action by Senate: Revised Measure Now
Goes Back to House for Concurrence,” New York Times, June 20,
1964, p. 1; Congressional Record: House, July 2, 1964, p. 15897;
“House Civil Rights Vote,” New York Times, July 3, 1964, p. 9; E.W.
Kenworthy, “President Signs Civil Rights Bill,” New York Times,
July 3, 1964, pp. 1, 9; Statistics of the Congressional Election of
November 6, 1962 (Washington: United States Government Printing
Office, 1963), p. 46; William Anderson, “Predicts G.O.P. Will
Capture House in 1964,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 20,
1962, p. 8.
49. For documented examples, see Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action
Around the World: An Empirical Study (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2004), pp. 11, 13, 26–27, 30–32, 33, 34, 61, 62–63,
69, 120–122.
50. Ibid., p. 32.
51. Ibid., pp. 12–13, 30, 33, 34, 121–122.
52. Ibid., pp. 12, 13, 120, 121.
53. John H. Bunzel, “Affirmative-Action Admissions: How It “Works” at
UC Berkeley,” The Public Interest, Fall 1988, p. 124; National
Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education: 1996
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996,) p. 86.
54. John H. Bunzel, “Affirmative-Action Admissions: How It “Works” at
UC Berkeley,” The Public Interest, Fall 1988, p. 125.
55. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch: How Affirmative
Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities
Won’t Admit It (New York: Basic Books, 2012), pp. 138, 153, 154.
56. Ibid., p. 154.
57. Ibid.
58. Arthur Hu, “Minorities Need More Support,” The Tech (M.I.T.),
March 17, 1987, pp. 4, 6.
59. Robert Lerner and Althea K. Nagai, Racial and Ethnic Preferences in
Admissions at Five Public Medical Schools (Washington: Center for
Equal Opportunity, 2001), pp. 12, 34–36, 51–52, 71–73, 81–83.
60. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, p. 231.
61. Ibid., pp. 237–244; Gail Heriot, “A Dubious Expediency,” A Dubious
Expediency: How Race Preferences Damage Higher Education,
edited by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzschild (New York:
Encounter Books, 2021), pp. 73–74, 75.
62. See, for example, Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom,
“Reflections on The Shape of the River,” UCLA Law Review, Vol.
46, No. 5 (June 1999), pp. 1588–1590.
63. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, pp. 106, 236.
64. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, “Reflections on The
Shape of the River,” UCLA Law Review, Vol. 46, No. 5 (June 1999),
pp. 1583–1631; Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch,
pp. 106–107, 236–237; Thomas Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and Politics,
revised and enlarged edition (New York: Basic Books, 2016), pp.
200–203.
65. Merrill Sheils, et al., “Minority Report Card,” Newsweek, July 12,
1976, pp. 74–75; Bernard D. Davis, “Academic Standards in Medical
Schools,” New England Journal of Medicine, May 13, 1976, pp.
1118–1119; J.W. Foster, “Race and Truth at Harvard,” The New
Republic, July 17, 1976, pp. 16–20. An example of what Professor
 Davis warned against was Dr. Patrick Chavis, who had been admitted
under a minority preference program to the medical school at the
University of California at Davis. Richard H. Sander and Stuart
Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, p. 195.
66. Thomas Sowell, A Man of Letters (New York: Encounter Books,
2007), p. 118.
67. Ibid., p. 107; Thomas Sowell, A Personal Odyssey (New York: The
Free Press, 2000), pp. 202–203.
68. Gail Heriot, “A Dubious Expediency,” A Dubious Expediency, edited
by Gail Heriot and Maimon Schwarzschild, pp. 46–50, 274–275;
Robin Wilson, “Article Critical of Black Students’ Qualifications
Roils Georgetown U. Law Center,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
April 24, 1991, pp. A33, A35.
69. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, pp. 158–162.
70. Eric Kelderman, “College Presidents Created a Money Monster. Now
Will They Tame It?” Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 68,
Issue 12 (February 18, 2022), p. 7; Bill Saporito, “The NCAA Keeps
Running Plays Against Pay for Student-Athletes,” Washington Post,
May 25, 2023, p. A19.
71. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “about half of the
athletes in those Division I sports are Black.” At colleges where 2.4
percent of the undergraduate student population were black males,
they were “55 percent of their football teams and 56 percent of their
men’s basketball teams.” Victoria Jackson, “The NCAA’s Farcical
Anti-Athlete Argument: The Real ‘March Madness’ Is the
Organization’s Work to Deprive Athletes of More Educational
Resources,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 67, Issue 16
(April 16, 2021).
72. Some of the incentives, constraints and patterns in academic
institutions are addressed in Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and
Fallacies, second edition (New York: Basic Books, 2011), Chapter 4.
 Brad Wolverton, “NCAA Considers Easing Demands on Athletes’
Time,” Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 62, Issue 18
(January 15, 2016); Marc Tracy, “N.C.A.A. Declines to Punish North
Carolina for Academic Fraud,” New York Times, October 14, 2017, p.
D1. An older account suggests that this sort of thing has been going
on for generations. Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The
Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (New York: Free Press, 1993),
Chapter 9.
73. Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr., Mismatch, pp. 220–230.
74. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health, United
States, 2006 (Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health
Statistics, 2007), Table 45, p. 228; Barry Latzer, The Rise and Fall of
Violent Crime in America (New York: Encounter Books, 2016), p.
93.
75. [Daniel Patrick Moynihan], The Negro Family: The Case for
National Action (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1965), p.
8; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services, “Births: Final Data for 2000,” National
Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 50, No. 5 (February 12, 2002), Table 19,
p. 49.
76. Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World, pp. 12–13, 30,
33, 34, 61, 62–63, 69.
77. Ibid., pp. 13, 120–122.
78. Reginald G. Damerell, Education’s Smoking Gun: How Teachers
Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America (New York:
Freundlich Books, 1985), p. 164.
79. Leonard Buder, “Board Asks Defeat of a Bill Retaining 4 Specialized
Schools’ Entrance Tests,” New York Times, May 17, 1971, p. 26.
80. Maria Newman, “Cortines Has Plan to Coach Minorities into Top
Schools,” New York Times, March 18, 1995, p. 1.
81. Fernanda Santos, “Black at Stuy,” New York Times, February 26,
2012, Metropolitan Desk, p. 6.
82. Donald Harman Akenson, “Diaspora, the Irish and Irish Nationalism,”
The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and
Present, edited by Allon Gal, et al (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 190–191;
Michael Ornstein, Ethno-Racial Inequality in the City of Toronto:
An Analysis of the 1996 Census (Toronto: Access and Equity Unit,
City of Toronto, 2000), p. ii.
83. Milton Friedman, “Asian Values: Right…” National Review,
December 31, 1997, pp. 36–37; Alex Singleton, “Creating a
Showplace of Free Markets: Sir John Cowperthwaite,” Fraser
Forum, October 2006, pp. 23–24; William McGurn, “Yes, Minister,”
Far Eastern Economic Review, March 31, 1994, p. 29.
84. “Relax, Mr. Lee,” The Economist, January 16, 1988, p. 20; “The Wise
Man of the East,” The Economist, March 28, 2015, p. 18; Chun Han
Wong and P.R. Venkat, “Singapore’s Lee Set Model for Emerging
Economies,” Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2015, p. A1; Daniel
Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle
for the World Economy (New York: Touchstone, 2002), pp. 164–168,
183–184.
85. Ethan Epstein, “Democracy, Gangnam-Style,” The Weekly Standard,
December 17, 2012, pp. 23–26; David Ekbladh, “How to Build a
Nation,” The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 19–
20; Norman Pearsltine, “How South Korea Surprised the World,”
Forbes, April 30, 1979, pp. 53 ff.
86. Gurcharan Das, “India Unbound,” The American Spectator, Summer
Reading Issue 2001, pp. 36–38; Rakesh Mohan, “India at the
Crossroads,” Far Eastern Economic Review, March 2, 2000, p. 34.
87. “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics,” The Economist, November
28, 1992, special survey on China, pp. 6–8; “Enter the Dragon,” The
 Economist, March 10, 2001, pp. 23–25; “The Fruits of Growth,” The
Economist, January 2, 2021, pp. 28–29.
88. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Collected Legal Papers (New York: Peter
Smith, 1952), p. 293.
89. Paul Johnson, The Quotable Paul Johnson: A Topical Compilation of
His Wit, Wisdom and Satire, edited by George J. Marlin, et al (New
York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1994), p. 138.
 INDEX
Ability, 2, 5, 8
developed capabilities: 1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 21, 40, 103, 105, 106, 119
innate potential: 2, 3, 9, 11, 29–44
Ad Hominem Arguments, 1, 22, 30, 37, 84, 91, 97, 124, 150 (endnote 50)
Advantages, 106, 107–108
Affirmative Action, 44, 105, 115–127, 185–186 (endnote 65)
Africa and Africans, 2, 12, 20, 56, 109
Age, 11, 25, 114, 116
Agriculture, 13, 16–17, 20, 39, 57
America and Americans (see also Asian Americans; Black Americans;
Hillbillies; Hispanic Americans; White Americans; White Southerners),
1–2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 17, 27, 33, 34, 43, 50–51, 63, 78, 84, 93, 114
American Economic Association, 34
American Sociological Association, 34
Animals, 14
Argentina, 3, 72–73
Aristotle, 40
Armenians, 3
Asia and Asians, 18, 108, 110
Asian Americans, 6, 7, 23, 44–46, 119, 120, 129
Athens, 39
Australia, 3, 73, 74, 168 (endnote 2)

Balkans, 39
Banks, 45–46, 86
Beauvoir, Simone de, 79
Becker, Gary S., 59
Beer, 3, 4, 106
Berlin, 3–4
Billionaires, 23, 49–50, 53, 64, 69, 109
Birth Order, 9, 21, 102
Black Americans, 5, 7, 10, 23–25, 26, 27, 28, 30–31, 32, 33, 42–46, 58–61,
83–84, 98–99, 106, 114–115, 116, 117, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126,
127, 128–129, 144 (endnote 8), 152 (endnote 65), 160 (endnote 135),
186 (endnote 71)
Bohemia, 19
Bok, Derek, 123
Bowen, William, 123
Braudel, Fernand, 12
Brazil, 3
Brennan, William J., 98
Brigham, Carl, 33, 41–42, 92
Britain and Britons, 2, 10, 14–15, 17, 18, 19, 38, 40, 50–51, 71, 78
Buenos Aires, 73
Burke, Edmund, 50, 104, 114, 179 (endnote 127)
Burma, 109–110
Bush, George H.W., 66
Businesses, 2, 5, 18, 51–52, 86–87, 88, 100, 106, 112

California, 1–2, 3–4, 7, 43–44, 120–121, 123, 124

Cambridge University, 34
Canada and Canadians, 1, 17, 64, 85, 129
Catherine the Great, 110
Catholics, 8, 28
Cato Institute, 70
Causation, 20, 76, 102, 105
Certitude, 30, 42, 96, 97, 100, 104, 126
Chamberlain, Neville, 34
Chess Pieces, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 59, 62, 67
Chettiars, 109, 110
Chicago, 3–4, 25, 93
Children, 9–11, 20, 28, 29, 32–33, 89–91, 92, 95–96, 127
China and Chinese, 2, 3, 14–15, 17, 18, 20, 23, 40–41, 73, 84, 109, 110, 130
Christian Science Monitor, 66
Churchill, Winston, 34
Cicero, 38
City University of New York, 67
Civil Rights Laws, 115, 117, 118
Classes, 2, 11, 69
Climate, 1–2, 4
Colleges and Universities, 35, 42, 44, 72, 78, 100, 119–126, 186 (endnote
71)
Colombia, 73–74
Columbia University, 35, 37, 62, 93
Condorcet, Marquis de, 79, 97
Coolidge, Calvin, 52, 84
Cornell University, 41
Cosmic Justice, 102
Covid-19 Pandemic, 113
Crime, 10, 68–69, 83–84, 97, 98, 103, 128–129
Culture, 4, 6, 16–18, 19, 21, 26–27

Dalmatia, 19
Dangers, 100, 104, 113–114, 127–128
Davis, Benjamin O., Junior and Senior, 106
Davis, Bernard, 124, 185–186 (endnote 65)
Democracy, 49, 82, 93, 97
Demographic Representation, 1, 2, 3, 5–8, 108, 115, 118, 125
Dewey, John, 76, 93, 95–96, 150 (endnote 50)
Discrimination, 2, 4, 5–6, 7, 22, 27–28, 29, 31, 44–46, 59–60, 93, 117, 125
Diseases, 18, 21, 89–91
Dworkin, Ronald, 79

The Economist Magazine, 84, 102

Edison, Thomas, 78
Education, 5, 6, 7, 10, 19, 20, 21, 27, 31, 35, 72, 82, 93, 96, 117–118
accreditation: 125
admissions standards: 119
charter schools: 25
colleges and universities: 35, 42, 44, 72, 78, 100
discipline: 46
indoctrination: 35, 92, 111–112
 law schools: 34, 96, 122, 123, 124, 125–126
medical schools: 118, 122
mismatching students: 119–124
retrogression: 129
sex education: 89–91, 126, 174 (endnote 68)
student athletes: 124–125, 186 (endnotes 71 and 72)
teachers: 46, 114
teachers unions: 114
test scores: 119, 121–123
Egypt, 15, 17
Ellis Island, 33, 38, 39
Ely, Richard T., 35, 36
Empirical Evidence, v, 6, 8, 22–29, 30, 31, 38, 41, 44–46, 49, 53, 70, 95,
99, 100, 108–109, 110–111, 115, 116, 119–124, 128
Employment, 5–6, 7, 8, 22, 44–45, 59–60, 82–85, 86, 87
Engineers, 5, 6, 7
Entertainment, 5
Environment, 4, 16–18
Epidemics, 19
Equality and Inequality, 1, 5, 6, 8, 9–16, 17, 78, 101–105
equal chances: 1–21, 103, 105
equal opportunity: 1, 7–8, 21, 47, 116, 117
equal outcomes: 1, 47, 104, 116
reciprocal inequalities: 4–8, 16, 40, 119
Euclid, 38, 40
Eugenics, 35, 36
Eurasian Landmass, 14
Europe and Europeans, 3–4, 12–13, 15–16, 19–20, 39, 40, 41, 68
Ancient Europe: 38, 39
Eastern Europe: 19, 33, 34, 38, 39, 73–74, 88
Northern Europe: 38, 39
Southern Europe: 33, 34, 38, 39
Western Europe: 19, 38, 39
Exploitation, 2, 41, 85, 86, 87, 110

Fabian Socialism, 78–79, 106

Families, 9–10, 20, 79, 86, 89, 102
married couples: 24, 27, 28, 65, 74, 114
single-parent families: 24–25, 27, 28–29, 127, 128–129
white families raising black orphans: 33
Famine, 19
Federal Reserve System, 54, 55
Finland, 17
Fisher, Irving, 35
Flynn, James R., 42–43, 44
Food, 3, 15, 56, 95
Fool, 74, 83
Ford, Henry, 78
France and French, 4, 12
Freedom or Liberty, 21, 22, 36, 37, 41, 48, 76, 82–83, 84, 89, 94–95, 104,
127
Friedman, Milton, 55, 59, 77, 80, 101, 104, 105

Galton, Sir Francis, 30

Genetic Determinism, 6, 8–9, 22, 23, 24, 29–44, 47, 79, 91, 92, 126, 129
Genocide, 35–36, 44
Geography, 3, 12–13, 31, 32–33, 39
George Mason University, 122–123, 125
Georgetown University, 124
Georgia, 31
Germany and Germans, 3, 18, 73, 106, 119
Goddard, H.H., 33
Godwin, William, 77, 92, 97, 106, 170 (endnote 19)
Government, 8, 31, 36–37, 40, 45, 46, 48, 49, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60–61, 68, 75,
77–78, 82, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93–94, 96, 99, 101–102, 116–117, 118,
125, 126, 128, 130
Grant, Madison, 35, 37–38, 150 (endnote 51)
Greece and Greeks, 2, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41

Habsburg Empire, 2
Harvard, 13, 34, 35, 74, 96, 124
Hayek, F.A., 75, 77, 80, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104–105
Helper, Hinton, 28
Hillbillies, 26–27, 31, 32–33, 41, 57, 114
Hispanic Americans, 1, 7, 25, 120, 121
History, 2, 3, 12, 19, 20, 22, 23, 28, 34, 39, 40, 41, 47, 50
Hitler, Adolf, 36, 37
Homicide, 19, 98, 99, 126, 129
Honesty, 16–18, 21
Hong Kong, 84, 129
Hotels, 85–86
Housing, 45–46, 87–89, 95
Howard University, 123
Human Capital, 16–18, 19, 20–21

Ibos, 2
Iceland, 51–52
Immigrants, 32, 33, 39, 42, 72–74, 88–89, 168 (endnote 2)
Incas, 14
Income, 6, 7, 23, 32, 54, 62–70, 85–87, 108–111
India and Indians, 2, 18, 15, 23, 109, 110, 118, 127, 130
Industrial Revolution, 15–16, 78
Industries, 2, 21, 95–96
Inflation, 53–55, 83, 84
Intellectual Elites, 29, 34, 35, 44, 71, 77–78, 79, 80, 86, 92, 96–97, 98, 99,
100, 117, 126, 127, 128
Intelligence, 9, 42, 43, 82, 100, 152 (endnote 65), 159 (endnote 131), 160
(endnote 135)
Interest Rates, 85–86
Internal Revenue Service, 53, 64, 67
Ireland and Irish, 5, 74, 89
Iroquois, 14
Italy and Italians, 2, 3, 19, 32, 40, 73, 74, 88, 168 (endnote 2)

Japan and Japanese, 17, 23, 129

Jensen, Arthur R., 43–44
Jews, 5, 8, 17, 33, 61, 88, 109, 110, 119, 129
Johnson, Lyndon B., 66, 96, 116, 117
Jowett, Benjamin, 71, 75

Kahn, Herman, 109

Kennedy, John F., 116
Keynes, John Maynard, 34, 81
Knowledge, 15–16, 71–100, 103, 106, 113–114
consequential knowledge: 72–78, 80–81, 82, 83, 86, 89, 92, 93, 99, 100,
127
distribution of knowledge: 72, 74–77, 78–79, 80–81, 82, 83, 84, 114–115
higher and lower knowledge: 72, 74
omnicompetence: 80–81
unarticulated knowledge: 75
Korea and Koreans, 23
Kristof, Nicholas, 84
Krugman, Paul, 67, 150 (endnote 50)

Landes, David S., 15

Languages, 19, 20, 42, 93
Law, 5, 8, 34, 38, 49, 84, 96–97, 128, 179 (endnote 127)
Law Schools, 34, 96, 122, 123, 124, 125–126, 135 (endnote 37)
Leaders, 118, 126, 127
Lebanon and Lebanese, 2, 73–74
Liberty or Freedom, 21, 22, 36, 37, 41, 48, 76, 82–83, 84, 89, 94–95, 104,
127
Lincoln Memorial, 39
Literacy, 19, 38
Llamas, 14
London, 3–4
Los Angeles, 3–4, 43–44

MacArthur, Douglas, 106–107

Malaysia and Malays, 2, 7, 127
Manning, Archie, 107
Manning, Eli, 107
Manning, Peyton, 107
Marwaris, 2, 18
Marx, Karl, 18, 78–79, 109
Maryland, 5
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 34, 121–122
Mathematics, 38, 93
Media, 7, 44, 64, 80, 117, 118, 123
Medical Schools, 118, 122, 124
Medical Science, 21, 34, 61
Mediterranean Sea, 38
Mellon, Andrew, 52–53
Mental Tests, 25, 30–33, 39, 41–44, 119–120, 121, 122, 124, 159 (endnote
131)
Merit, 105–113
Mexican Americans, 23
Mexico and Mexicans, 17
Middle East, 39, 109
Migration, 72–74, 117–118
Military, 106–107, 108, 128
Mill, John Stuart, 18, 78, 111–112
Millionaires and Billionaires, 23, 49–50, 53, 54, 69, 109
Minimum Wage Laws, 57–60, 83–85, 114
Mismatching Students, 119–124
Morality, 48, 49, 65, 84, 101, 104, 106, 114, 125
Mountains and Foothills, 32–33
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, v, 28, 29, 149 (endnote 42)
Murray, Charles, 43
Myrdal, Gunnar, 43

Nader, Ralph, 79
Napoleon, 19
Narratives, 115, 116, 117, 126
Nations, 2, 11
Natural Resources, 15–16
Nature, 1, 12–16
New York City, 3–4, 17, 18, 74, 129
New York Times, 56, 62, 66, 84, 98, 174 (endnote 68)
New Zealand, 42
Newton, Sir Isaac, 40
Nigeria and Nigerians, 2, 11, 20
Nixon, Richard, 55, 116
Non-Profit Organizations, 60–61
Northern United States, 30, 32
Noyes, Alfred, 41

Obama, Barack, 27, 62, 83, 108

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 28
Oregon, 51
Orphans, 33, 42
Ottoman Empire, 2
Oxford University, 71, 79

Pakistan and Pakistanis, 109

Paris, 3–4
Payday Loans, 85–87
Pencils, 76
Pierce Arrow Automobile, 41
Pilots, 21, 27
Plato, 40
Poland and Poles, 2, 61
Politics, 49, 53, 54–55, 64, 75, 92, 108–109, 113–114, 117, 118, 128
Portugal and Portuguese, 17, 19, 32
Pound, Roscoe, 34, 37, 96, 97
Pounds, N.J.G., 39
Poverty, 24, 27, 32, 34, 41, 68–69, 85–86, 95, 101, 109, 114, 115–117, 118,
127, 129–130
Power, 104, 112, 114, 127–128
Preempting Decisions, 79–80, 82, 86, 93, 97, 99, 112
Pregnancy, 89–90, 91
Prices, 55–56, 76
Princeton University, 92
Probability, 1, 19, 20, 21
Progressives, 8–9, 29–30, 34, 37, 38, 41, 44, 78–79, 82, 91, 92, 93, 95, 96–
97
Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans, 36
Pythagoras, 38, 40

Racism, 4, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29–30, 58, 59, 113–115
Rawls, John, 48, 74, 76
Read, Leonard, 76
Reagan, Ronald, 66, 117
Reciprocal Inequalities, 4–8, 16, 40, 119
Redistribution of Income and Wealth, 49–55, 65–66, 69
Rent Control Laws, 57
Reynolds, Alan, 70
Rich People, 5, 49–55, 62, 67–69, 109
Riots, 117
Roman Empire, 3, 15, 38, 41, 55
Rome, 3–4
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 37–38
Roosevelt, Theodore, 34, 37–38
Ross, Edward A., 34, 37, 150 (endnote 50)
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1, 15, 76, 78, 79
Russia and Russians, 18

Sander, Richard H., 123

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), 33, 119–120
Science, 30, 41–42, 44, 78, 93, 96, 121
Scotland and Scots, 2, 4, 32
Seager, Henry Rogers, 35
Semple, Ellen Churchill, 27, 33
Sexes, 6–7, 10, 16, 27–28, 47, 82–83, 84, 89, 102
Shaw, George Bernard, 79, 106
Shriver, Sargent, 91–92
Silicon Valley, 6
Singapore, 84, 129
Slavery, 10, 28, 29, 38, 95
Slovaks, 32
Smith, Adam, 12, 48–49
Social Classes, 1, 10, 69–70
Social Justice
advocates: 5, 11, 61–62, 71, 74, 85, 86, 101–105, 109, 119, 128, 129, 130
agenda: 47, 115, 129
assumptions: 48, 50, 127
vision: 11, 48–49, 57, 82, 105, 127
vocabulary: 105–127
writings: 2–3, 6, 48
Society, 48, 74, 76, 78, 101–102
Sociology, 37, 97
Socrates, 40
Sorting People, 74
South Africa, 61
Southern Europe, 33, 34
Southern United States, 30–31, 32, 117
Sowell, Thomas, 45, 58
Spain and Spaniards, 19, 32, 72, 73
Spartacus, 95
Sri Lanka, 127
Stagnation, 66–67, 69, 78
Stanford University, 34
Statues, 39
Steele, Shelby, 116–117
Stigler, George J., 58, 80
Stiglitz, Joseph E., 62, 68
Stuyvesant High School, 129
Supreme Court of the United States, 8, 39, 98, 99, 135 (endnote 37)
Surrogate Decision-Makers, 57, 74–76, 80, 82, 86–89, 92, 93–94, 100, 103,
126
Sweden and Swedes, 1–2
Switzerland, 51, 84

Taussig, Frank, 35
Taxes, 36, 51–52, 69, 92
inflation “tax”: 53–55
tax rate vs. tax revenue: 50
Thernstrom, Abigail, 46
Thernstrom, Stephan, 46
Titanic, 72
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 25, 28
Transportation Costs, 12–15
Turnover, 62–64, 67, 68, 69–70

Uganda, 109, 110

Unemployment, 57, 58, 59, 83
United Nations, 17
United States of America (see also America and Americans; Asian
Americans; Black Americans; Hispanic Americans; White Americans;
White Southerners), 1–2, 3, 7, 9, 10, 39, 50, 55, 73, 109, 127
U.S. Air Force: 27, 114
U.S. Army: 30–31, 41, 42, 106–107
U.S. Treasury Department: 63–64
University of California, 43–44, 120–121, 124
University of California at Berkeley, 43–44, 120–121
University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), 120–121, 123
University of Chicago, 93
University of Michigan, 63, 68

Venice, 74
Violence, 22, 68–69, 88, 109–110
Visions, 21, 35, 48–49, 105

Walker, Francis A., 33

Wall Street Journal, 51
War, 19, 106–107
Warren, Earl, 98
Washington Post, 62, 66
Wealth, 18, 49–55, 69
Welfare State, 28, 29, 115
Wellington, Duke of, 19
Western Europe, 33, 34
Weyl, Walter E., 82–83, 124
White Americans (see also Hillbillies), 23, 24, 28, 30–31, 44–46, 114, 120,
122
White Northerners, 28, 32
White Southerners, 5, 25–26, 28, 30–31, 61
White Supremacy, 21, 28, 34, 61
Wicker, Tom, 66
Wilson, Woodrow, 36, 37, 52, 92, 93–94, 95
Winfrey, Oprah, 23
Woods, Tiger, 23
Wright Brothers, 78

Yale University, 35, 37, 94

Zero-Sum Processes, 107–108

Zimbabwe, 56