Income Inequality and Institutional Racism
Legendary economist Thomas Sowell is as impressed with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton’s ideas as he is with Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates’ — which is to say, not much.
Sowell, currently a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is out with a new book, “Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective.” Last week, he opened up about his new book and topics related to it in an interview on the “Hugh Hewitt Show,” guest-hosted by this writer.
Asked about in-vogue author Ta-Nehisi Coates and his theory that black America’s plight can be blamed on institutional racism, Sowell said, “It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.”
“What bothers me is that when he says things like that there is no need to produce one spec of evidence to back that up,” he elaborated. “You simply make the assertion and it’s repeated enough — it’s the old formula by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, that the people will believe any lie if it’s big enough and told loud enough, often enough. And that’s the basis of so many of these things that are said. Once you start getting into facts, then all of this stuff crumbles. But the problem is neither the media nor a good share of academia feel like testing these fashionable notions.”
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