Thomas Sowell on the Origins of Economic Disparities

welcome to uncommon knowledge I am Peter Robinson Thomas Soul has taught and studied

economic

s, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions including Cornell UCLA and Amherst, and is now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution dr. Sol has published more than a dozen books, including his most recent volume, a revised and expanded edition on discrimination and

disparities

. Tom, welcome, thank you, let me cite discrimination and

disparities

in this edition. This new edition addresses the non sequitur underlying the predominant social view of our That is, if individual

economic

benefits are not due solely to individual merit, there is justification for politicians to redistribute those benefits.

Close quote, Tom, we want to be a country based on individual merit, so if some people are rich through no fault of their own and other people are poor through no fault of their own, isn't it clear that the government should play Robin Hood and take from the rich and give to the poor? Why is it a nice good rather than an obvious one? Oh my gosh, I don't know where to start, take your time. You can imagine that I will now take the extreme case where someone literally has no merit, he knows that he inherits an empire.

I don't know big grocery stores or whatever, he doesn't know anything about it. He does not care. I have no idea how to manage it and so on. He said: Well, clearly, hand it over to the politicians. What are you going to do with that Empire? It would be worth a lot more to almost anyone else and it would be worth a lot more to him now that things have radically changed. different values ​​for different people, what normally happens in the market is you transfer to someone, if it's worth two billion dollars, someone who knows what you're doing may be worth five billion to them and they'll pay that five billion to get it. . and he will handle it better than a politician, he will handle it well, look, this is the problem with recording a show with you, you just talk sense and you talk about it so concisely, then we might as well go to lunch right now, okay, the argument. basic argument let's lay out the argument here about discrimination and disparities in the early 20th century, the key factor behind socioeconomic disparities, as seen by the leading progressive intellectuals of that time, was genetics;

In other words, some people got ahead and others were left behind for reasons of a race, yes, the late 20th century racist argument for continuing dating discrimination, insidious and unfair discrimination had become the predominant explanation, okay, so let's take each of them in turn, the genetic or racist explanation that you write about in the mid-20th century. Even one of the leading proponents of the influence of genetic factors, such as the famous I guess a lot of people, Arthur Jensen of the University of California at Berkeley, down the street, rejected the idea of ​​an IQ ceiling for some groups. .

Could you explain well what that means? Jensen said: Why are you surprised that there are black children with IQs of 115 or higher and in the previous era, in the early 20th century, it was thought that there was such a low ceiling that you had to make sure that certain people just didn't do it? would they do? reproduce, that's the whole eugenics movement, which was very large and there were hundreds of eugenics courses in colleges and universities all over the country, so Jensen rejects me, rejects that kind of interpretation, well, once you've done it rejected, it really is the rest of it becomes a matter of much lesser consequences, so the racist argument is rejected on scientific grounds, yes, rather than rhetoric, of course, this leads us, of course, to the other explanation to disparate results, once again at the heart of the prevailing opinion.

The social view of our times is the seemingly invincible fallacy that group outcomes and human efforts would tend to be equal or at least comparable or random if there were no biased interventions and it is explained that for us empirically it is the easiest way to explain it in almost nowhere. In the world or in any period of history you find any society and what groups that compete openly end up with the same results as on the genetic side. By the way, this is a study of families where one of the children becomes a National Merit Finalist. the Merit Scholarship in five children's families, the firstborn becomes a finalist more times than the other four siblings combined now that is not genetic, there are other real sins, that discrimination is just luck, birth order, good luck in the draw, but it was more than that. tells us something about the importance of parental attention in a child's development and that is also reinforced by the fact that twins tend to have on average several IQ points lower and people who are born single because Obviously neither twin gets all the attention from their parents' father and also supporting that is that when one of the twins is stillborn or died shortly after birth, the other twin has an average IQ much closer to the norm.

I see that's okay, so the point here is that we eliminate the racism argument which leaves us with the discrimination argument and what you're saying is no, no, no, look at example after example where we know, in experiments more or less controlled, families with five children, twins, etc., there are factors that have nothing to do with justice or injustice but simply happen yes yes yes it is also true it is also true and for children's families to reach 300 mm Li's oh, it's true in Britain in Norway in any other number of other countries where there have been enormous trials, so once again I'm going to take discrimination to the disparities to bring them to American society.

It may seem strange, true, that during the 19th century of mass immigration from Europe to the United States it was not unusual to find The Jewish and Italian neighborhoods in New York represented by Irish politicians, a situation that did not change until well into the 20th century as it might have. This was because if you look at the history of the three groups it is clear that the Irish had much more political experience in Europe before any of them set foot on American soil. I mean, when you think about how many factors are at play, it's amazing to think that they're going to work the same for almost any group.

Yes, we define it anyway. The other thing is so frustrating. I can think of countless different examples of this. Disparities in various situations, including situations where discrimination or genetics are not possible. People on the other side can't give you a single example. Read reams of paper from social justice advocates and you don't find a single example anywhere in the world. There are people who have done international studies on a daily basis as if you already knew the French, their stories. In no society is everyone poor. All parts of the population had the same. Very well, the results can also be noted by the way that even within this I have found surprising even within bands or socioeconomic strata, that is, people who or ethnic groups that are actually doing quite well, there are differences which can be surprising and, to quote you, Again, Jews have been especially well represented in retail finance and clothing production, but they are by no means equally well represented in heavy industries such as steel production. or cars.

Yes, and it has nothing to do with it. No, we are not talking about relative disadvantages. achieved success in different fields, yes, from I don't know, Andrew Carnegie, I guess as a Scotsman who is making steel and Ford is if the Fords and the Dodge Brothers are the production cars of northern Europe and it just worked out that way way, yes, without envy. reason, yes, okay, you see, if you say yes, well, of course, if I quote the book to you, you will say yes, which is what you should do all the time. Okay, continue here to make your argument again.

I'm going to quote you, but I'm going to get more than a yes from your time about this statistical under- or over-representation of various groups that is not unique to the United States or our times for centuries. have been countries where the majority of members of various professions and the majority of business owners in entire industries have been members of some subordinate minority. Okay, present a couple of examples. Let's take a couple of examples from the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Oh yeah, tell us about them. Gosh, some people call them the Southeast Asian Jews, considering the numbers involved, you could call the Jews the Eastern European Chinese, but there is country after country where more than half of the outlets are owned by people that they are Chinese.

I mean Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, all that, there are countries after countries where the majority of the billionaires are Chinese outside of China, outside of China, and this is one of the other things, sir, this has nothing to do with a genetic issue, in 1994 there were 57 million. Overseas Chinese and 1 billion people in China, the 57+ million produce a lot of wealth, it's the 1 billion people in China, okay, Jews in Eastern Europe as another example, yes, neat group AB, yes, tell us about them, it is very rare in retail and in many parts of Eastern Europe. be largely in the hands of very overrepresented Jews and the universities in the late 19th century 1/3 of the people at the University of Vienna would use them and they were generally more successful students Indians in East Africa oh my goodness, and you see something that is related to the desire to confiscate the wealth of the rich, they made that new gang, the people of India and Pakistan dominated a modern industry in that country, finally, of course, the politicians decided what should be expropriated, they were expropriated.

They were sentenced, they were not allowed to take any wealth with them, but we need importance and all the things that were left there, their businesses and so on went to the mainland, the Ugandan economy collapsed, these people came destitute mainly to England and within a decade They were on their way to prosperity again the same with the Cubans here who left Castro took over Castro took over 1959 a million Cubans left with almost nothing yes and left behind all the wealth they had in Cuba you move forward half a century and the Cuban American companies in the United States had incomes greater than the income of the entire nation of Cuba, even though they were not in the United States and did not drive cars from the 1950s in the 21st century.

So the underlying assumption Just to close the argument here, the underlying assumption of the social view, the social justice view that without discrimination approximately equal outcomes will prevail is refuted by every page of recorded history. Yes that's fine. Jews in Eastern Europe abroad. Chinese in Southeast Asia, they rise in spite of discrimination yes, okay, and they rise better than the people who discriminate against them, okay, we tend to think. I believe in this new social vision. Social justice is a completely contemporary thing, but you're right, it's been around for half a century. Argue not only that it is a mistake but that it has caused positive harm.

Yes. Discrimination and disparities with the predominant social vision arose. A less critical approach towards behavior, as well as multiculturalism. actions for everyone, then what you're talking about here is not explicitly government actions or programs, but rather the way people are beginning to think about society in the United States. Murder rates, venereal disease infection rates, and teen pregnancy rates are among the social factors. the pathologies that fell sharply in the 1950s reverse and begin to worsen in the 1960s. Well, only the ideas are what people carry in their heads, but the idea is that they were carried out in policies in the classic place, in public housing projects that people think about today. a public housing project is actually chaos, violence and such, drug dens and Sophia.

I remember in the 1940s when one of our relatives was admitted to a public housing project in New York and we were very proud because in those days you were admitted because even though you were just a hard-working person you had a good record you got a job stable women with nuts with fatherless children did not admit it and so on and so it was not only that the place was good but it was It was an honor to have passed these tests to reach these places. You tell the story of two blackouts that illustrate what is happening here.

The first blackout was in November 1965. In fact, I can remember we lived in upstate New York. I lived in upstate New York and there was one month I can remember when we were having dinner and the lights in the house went off mm-hmm and then came back on for a moment and we all looked at each other and thought what was what. What happened, well, of course, when you turned on the television, we found out what happened, a big power outage and in New York City, where in the northof the state the lights just went off and on again in New York City, the city went dark all night, yeah.

You write that that night the crime rate was lower than usual, yes, than usual. 1965, second blackout. A very similar event took place in July 1977 and you write again. New York City was once again in darkness all night, but now there was widespread looting and arson—yes, sixty-five people. they behaved in New York City at the door, yeah, and in the seventies, so what happens in those 12 years? This was one of the many things that got worse in the 1960s. There are a lot of them. Steven Pinker has a book on international homicide rates and he said that the general trend over the centuries is for the homicide rate to go down, but in the 1960s the rate did a 180 degree turn, as he said, when it went up and this was common in all Western societies and is due to the same I guess one thing I'm trying to get at here is to what extent the police function because of this new social vision They are wrong if they try to loot or burn, the police will come straight to them no, no, there is not much the house can do the first line of defense is morality and the law as a statement of what principles it is dealing with adju death that and all you have are other policemen, there are not that many policemen you know, you could double the number of policemen and if you destroy them it seems that you put morality, you will not get anywhere, so in 1965 the people who had grown up, Let's see 65 that will be dominated by people who had gone through the adults in 65 they remember the depression yes, they remember the Second World War yes they have had the experience of rebuilding the country in the 1950s and they take for granted what we would do now term traditional morality, that's true, yes, you just don't steal things, yes, you don't destroy property, yes, so what other example?

It was the exchange buffet restaurant that I mentioned, yes, yes, yes, and I remember going to them to explain what I was going to say. you go in and you pick up, you go through the line and you pick up your own food and then you break, you bring your plates a little bit there and then you come to the cashier and you tell them how much you owe and they There are 70 some of the 70 some of these restaurants there were a lot of them in New York dozens dozen okay okay and lasted 78 years in the 1960s they collapsed because people were no longer honest okay in In England it was even more dramatic because they really set the standard for self-controlled societies and of course If you have a lot of self-control you don't need a lot of government control, but you don't have it. the government is not going to stand alone and the government itself is often contaminated, so to speak, by these same ideas that, for example, in London in 1954 there were a total of 12 armed robberies in the city of London that year in a time when anyone could buy a shotgun no questions asked, a couple of decades later, and there were 1,400 armed robberies in London despite some of the strictest gun control laws in the world.

God, I'm still surprised what they do. we do about the speed at which society changes again, you have what I love about our blackouts because they're two snapshots, they're almost literally what people do when they think no one's watching, yeah, the lights go out and they're just a dozen years between well behaved people helping each other in this difficult and terrible behavior where their loot burns down the property and how wrong ideas can filter through Siskin so change behavior over a period so brief of At that time, well, I mean, these ideas weren't invented in the 1960s, right, but, but the number of people progressively moving towards those ideas increased enormously and the whole political and intellectual scene was very different .

A lot of time on discrimination and disparities about the African American experience in this country mm-hmm and in particular you spend time presenting what could almost be called a century of hidden history hidden abroad but shown in this book that I'm going to quote . you, the clear fact is that the black poverty rate decreased, excuse me, I should say the hidden century from the end of the Civil War to the enactment of the Great Society, yes, it is more or less a hundred years, yes, and in a measure after measure you argue African Americans are progressing, yes, their incomes are increasing.

The educational level begins to take off. The family structure remains intact, by some measures, more intact than that of white Americans and now, to quote you, the obvious fact is that the black poverty rate decreased from 87 percent in 1942. 47 percent in 1960, before the great expansion of the welfare state that began in the 1960s under the Johnson administration and by 1969, two-thirds of all black children were living with black parents and then the Great Society was re-enacted. There was a much more modest decline in the poverty rate among blacks after the Johnson administration's massive war on poverty and in 1995 only one-third of black children lived with both parents and among black families in poverty 85 children of the children had no father president a century of intact African American families and economic and educational progress and then everything starts to fade things start to get worse what happened well, the welfare state itself happened, but more than that it is the vision of the state of welfare what the world owes them something they take it all and it happens to have happened in Britain, where the lower class is white.

It is striking that the detective represents parallels and, similarly, the note of the nation with schools and in Britain children and then in low-income neighborhoods who want to learn are beaten by their classmates because that's where you get out of this class betrayal there your class that's the big problem here is race but the real net result is Tom himself, you should have been a good student when you were a little kid growing up in Harlem, what reaction do you remember someone saying? No, no, no, no, don't be too much, don't be too much, don't be too good a student, you'll make everyone else look bad. in the family or what it was like in your generation when people were starting to discover that little Tommy Sol was a pretty smart kid, well, actually, when I first came to Harlem they didn't consider me a good SWOT, yeah, because I come out of the down south and in those days southern education was so inferior to any other education you guys were behind when y'all, my goodness, I was in North Carolina, I was among the top students in the class and in my freshman year in New York it was behind. who was the second worst student in the class, how old were you when you moved from North Carolina to Harlem nine-nine?

Well, but at some point you get a library card and you start reading and, oh, you become a good student and what is it? the reaction of your family and your neighbors, etc., as you start to become a good student, well, the neighborhoods didn't really know, oh, the family was there, they were very happy and I still remember what to do. When I was promoted to seventh grade I asked myself why and someone told me: now you've come further than any of us. Wow, you just explained that we have a century of progress, a setback, as you call us, and then the economy.

That was not the reason, I mean, there is no doubt that blacks in the 1960s had a higher standard of living than blacks in 1940. about African American progress during that century of progress and I have to reread them because they go very Contrary to what I think I understand, which is that the legacy of slavery is so deeply imprinted on African Americans and it is the Great Society that is beginning to make some progress, how is it possible that an entire century of American history has simply disappeared? ? It's not talked about, that's not the only thing I know about one of the other chapters.

There are people who talk, look, talk about the 1920s, the history of the 1920s is. taught included in a history book written by a Stanford professor sells for a hundred and sixteen dollars that I bought recently, you know, he tells you what happened, what Andrew Mellon said and how they were tax cuts for the rich and everything what you have to do. What you have to do is pick up the melon book and you'll find out what dream L said and all you have to do is go in and that and yet the IRS data from tonight and the twenties makes you realize that It's nothing like what's said in this history book because a hundred and sixty dollars, so ideologies, Trump's historical understanding, I mean, I have, I have the IRS data for every year of the 1920s in my file and it's just a farce and these are not stupid people and I don't believe it at all.

They were lying. I think they heard what other people said and repeated it and didn't bother checking the facts to the African American experience. The greatest internal creation in American history takes place as an African. Americans move from the South to the cities of the North and there is almost again a kind of two snapshots again. I am citing discrimination and disparities as blacks in northern cities are the first to arrive in northern cities and become more acculturated to the norms of larger cities. society racial barriers begin to erode this is in the 19th century, just in Illinois, restrictions on access to public places for blacks are eliminated in Detroit, blacks had been denied the right to vote in 1850, but already They voted in the 1880s and then in the 1890s.

Upon being elected to state offices in Michigan, the 1880 census showed that in Detroit it was not uncommon for blacks and whites to live next to each other. Well, African Americans move north and all kinds of racial progress happens, but again and again I quote. However, a significant setback occurred in northern cities with the arrival of large masses of black immigrants from the South at the beginning of the 20th century. Describe that setback, what is starting to go wrong in Washington DC, for example, black people had been able to go. to restaurants, theaters and so on before the mass migrations that began at the beginning of the 20th century, when I first came to Washington, black people couldn't go to those things and then, under 19, in 1950, things had gotten worse , oh yeah, I mean, it's not that much. the movement of blacks to the north and then in the 19th century it was blacks in the north, which are very small populations and are surrounded by a much larger white population and with other similar groups and situations you get a culture. by the smaller group to the standards and a larger group over a period of time, so they were not large migrations, but blacks, for example, in the late 19th century, New York, the majority of blacks in New York had been born in New York in the late 1970s, so it had a very different population than it had when it had a large number of people.

Granted, neither the era of progress in race relations nor the era of regression were simply inexplicable. mood swings among whites, the behavior of blacks themselves had changed, yes, explain that well, the South is a different culture and, again, to some extent, it was an example of that. What I did, my education just wasn't the same as the education of the kids that I've been in Harlem all the time, so it took me, you know, a year or two to catch up. I see, I see well, so it's okay. I'm trying to think about this if I refer, for example, to the story I've told.

So many times that my family found the boy, a black boy in Harlem who had a very good education and so on, and they proposed that he should meet me and show me to the rascals and he took me to a public library at the age of nine I had no idea of what was a public library and only with great reluctance was I convinced to get a library card and borrow a couple of books, but of course, that was a turning point in social justice. Today, social justice is the idea of ​​correcting unequal outcomes, particularly the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, so you've already argued that we've already discussed this, that the very notion is historical and misguided, but you argue that there is something more.

A crucial question is whether wealth income redistribution can really be done in a comprehensive and sustainable sense. What do you mean? Well, I have used the example of the world. They say we have to send a telegram to Alexandria. Alright. your Cortes zero I think it would be a huge waste of money, but so far I've used the example of the Cubans, you know, the East Asians, but they're everywhere and then in the 15th century, at the end. In the 15th century, Spain decided to expel all the Jews and it often happens that in each era they are not allowed to take any wealth with them, so they go to various places, including the Netherlands, and over time they again reach the prosperity in the Netherlands helped increase the economy of the Netherlands.

The Huguenots in France were being persecuted. They fled toEngland and Switzerland and took his skills. Now before that time, France was big there. There was no watch industry in England before the arrival of. Huguenots, so now the British could buy their watches in London rather than France and, furthermore, London watch makers could compete on the international market with French watchmakers and, in Switzerland, this is what helped Switzerland became and remains to this day a dominant watch. breaking up a country in the world and you can't confiscate the source of its wealth, you can talk about security and you and I did, although I didn't go into that in this book, this is true for people who wanted to do this. at the local community level, I mean, you know Detroit was once a prosperous place, they followed policies that drove out prosperous people and price and then of course we had to leave all their businesses and stuff in Detroit, that didn't help you are welcome.

Without the people who knew how to operate it, those people, I'm sure I would have done a lot better. Detroit has never fully recovered from that mm-hmm, so the idea here is that you can confiscate wealth that already exists and that you can confidently erode. goods yes, but what's the point? So again I'm going to quote the book one more time. Physical wealth is a product of human capital, the knowledge, skills, talents and other qualities that exist inside people's heads, where they cannot exist. Confiscated in closed quotes, so the central question I'm being asked , correct me if I'm wrong because I have the feeling that I'm going to be slapped for what I'm going to say, the central issue not only of economic growth but of social justice is not the distribution of wealth, it's access to the human cat, it's the access to education is really what depends on you and says yes it covers education becomes no it is not, but it is not limited to that, because it is also the store, well, where if you have social pathologies, if it is very difficult, I'm just making this up to see how you respond, it's very difficult, for example, the figure I cited before where African American children who live in poverty, 85% of them grow up with only one parent present that makes it more difficult for those no, there are no two ways to acquire human capital, so access to education I'm awkwardly here access to education in some way is it the role of government to foster certain types of social stability or skills well, you, you , all you can do, you can't give anybody an education, you can give them an education, you can show them where the public library is, that's right, but that, but that, that, that, okay, okay, and now something further. so social justice is a real impediment to acquiring human capital because if you are what it tells you is that the reason you have less is because people have maliciously prevented you from having access to the tool for all the good things in life and that, and if that's the case, why should you knock yourself out, learn a whole new culture to develop entire skill sets, etc., sacrificed in the present for the future when it won't mean anything?

One of the two stories I've heard that really hurts a couple of young black men, are two different guys in two different sets of stories expressing a desire to become a pilot and saying I thought about joining the Air Force, but I realize that white people don't? They are going to let me become a pilot and they say this after there was a whole squadron of black fighter pilots in World War II and after they were black generals in the Air Force, but this view that they are that they are that they are te bombard tells them that this is not possible that something that has already happened is not possible so then the social fits with the notion that you have made a mistake yes it has the effect of what of encouraging passivity no resentment resentment yes but no but no but no because social mobility is not an easy thing I don't know if you read the book about the hillbilly elegy oh yes he always moved forward if that's the way it is and he's doing well what a trauma it is for him to come out of his background and achieve something in the world, why the hell Would you put yourself through that if you thought that at the end of it all they would say no, we won't let you fly any of our planes, damn it? okay, okay and also, if so, if you think you're done, if you think you've been wronged, your recourse might also be more likely to be the policy to try to redirect all of this review attribution, oh yeah, in Instead of following the books, acquire. the skills are obtained well and with the other thing, one of them affected my favorite statistic is that the poverty rate among blacks as a whole was 22% mmm-hmm among whites as a whole it is 11% and among the married black couples. it's 7.5%, so it's been a and black married couples have never had a poverty rate as high as 10% in any year since 1994, okay, so to crime, what should be done? , tom, so all the answers are fact, continue with education, maintain merit, get married, have children after getting married, that's the answer, well yes, and the things that worked for other people were 10 10 that worked Overall, good, good, repairs, oh, I knew you would. like this New York Times columnist David Brooks in a column last month and titled the case for reparations quote we are in a moment of decisive racial reckoning we are a nation that is falling apart a nation in which each tribe has its own narrative and narratives are generally narratives of resentment, the need now is to consolidate all the different narratives and turn them into narratives of reconciliation and possibility.

Reparations are a drastic policy and difficult to execute, but the very act of talking about them and designing them. Repair policies heal. a wound oh, it's one of the many reasons I don't read David Brooks heals the wound and opens a new story close quote can you imagine someone whose parents, great-grandparents, came here in the 1880s after the Civil War and He asked them to pay reparations. for the people, yes, yes, even in the antebellum south, most whites did not own slaves, the cost of one adult male slave was more than what the average white person made all year long, so that not everyone lived in terror if there were plantations and everything else is crazy the other thing I have a slight sidebar and them about the history of slavery mmm-hmm the history of slavery slavery existed throughout the world for thousands of years among all types of people since the history of the human species is one of the many evils that the left tries to localize when in reality it is, it is a universal evil, so it is this overly strong statement that what sets America apart Isn't that at least slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries, but so many efforts have been needed to overcome the legacy of slavery, no, that is part of it, but more than that, no matter how much slavery is repudiated all over the world today before the 18th century, as far as I know.

There is no serious effort to abolish the institution anywhere, anywhere, not in Africa, not in Arabia, not in Africa in the 21st century. Hmmm, what Adam Smith wrote in 1776 that the only place in the world where slavery had been completely abolished was Western Europe, so this was as late as the year this country was founded, yeah, and that's why the idea that this is something that the United States had, no one else had it or in all the other countries that didn't have it, it is estimated that there are more slaves in India than in the entire Western Hemisphere and that is quite a lot and that is before and after Columbus arrived here the last questions Tom, a statistic in 2015, this is the most recent year I could find in 2015, black households in the 20th and 40th percentile of Household income earned an average of 55 percent more that white households in those same 20th and 40th percentiles and that 19th figure is a larger share and that 2015 figure is exactly the same as the 1967 figure, so you can imagine people of good will looking Also, I say only 55 percent more than white households and has not changed since 1967, dr.

Sol, I grant all these arguments, but even then something has to be done and Tom, so everyone responds that one way would be to get rid of the welfare state, but also those kinds of numbers that they have in mind, I don't think. Perhaps there is no other problem with these types of numbers, which I will talk about in another chapter on numbers, and that is that household and family income statistics have many problems and do not reflect, for example, transfers in kind. TRUE? and in-kind transfers don't just come from government welfare payments, yes, that kind of thing, but more than that, in-kind transfers are one of the reasons why people don't have to earn more money, OK?, once again, discrimination and disparities.

The most spectacularly successful political doctrine of the 20th century was Marxism; However, if the wealth of rich capitalists came from the exploitation of poor workers, then we might expect to find that where there are greater concentrations of rich capitalists we would find correspondingly greater concentrations of poverty. The facts point in the opposite direction, explain what you mean by this: The United States has five times as many billionaires as there are in the entire Middle East and Africa combined, so by the logic of Marxism, Americans should have an ordinary society. They have a lower standard of living than the standard of living of people in the Middle East and Africa, it is simply the opposite.

I mean, Americans on welfare have a higher standard of living than the average person in Africa in the Middle East, so Marxism is just wrong, wrong, demonstrable, wrong, yes, obviously, wrong, well, obvious for some people, okay, obvious for you now. I love you in a trap. A recent YouGov poll found that 19 percent of Millennials, one in five young Americans, have a favorable view of communism. I quote one of these young Millennials, a new member of Congress, Alejandría Okz de Cortez, who represents the Bronx, not far from where you grew up. Quote me, capitalism is irredeemable.

Close appointment. Tom Soul responds: Maybe they're in the movie, but for Okay, so let's leave Lilith aside Alexandria Kzo Cortez: One in five young Americans has a favorable view of communism. How can this be what is happening? I think the education system has a lot to do with it when I was quite young, 20 years old, I read a book called China Shakes the World about how the communists took power in China and in the last chapter he tries to explain it and says that the educational system had a lot to do with the moment it hit.

It seems like a very difficult explanation to me now that I have been in the American educational system for more or less half a century, it doesn't seem strange to me at all, right, Tom? Could you finish by reading a passage from your book in this new edition? of discrimination and disparities the last Western nation to end slavery Brazil did so in 1888 and the first totalitarian dictatorship emerged in Russia in 1917 there was barely a generation between the suppression of a monumentally brutal form of subjugation of human beings and the creation On the other hand, these dehumanizing dictatorships were often based on stirring rhetoric and heightened divisions that resonated with many prominent intellectuals in countries around the world;

There could hardly be a clearer example of the need for historical warning: eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty Tom, the sole author of this new edition of discrimination and disparities thank you, thank you for your rare insight, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson, you