Walter Williams Explodes the Reasons to Tax the Rich, Again

In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It's not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that's delivered us to where we are. It's about how we pay for it — namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.

Immoral Beyond Redemption || Walter Williams

Video: The State Against Blacks

Conservative Heavyweights William F. Buckley, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams are against the Drug War

William F. Buckley, pretty much the founder of the conservative movement, spoke about "emancipating ourselves from the superstition that that which is legal is for that reason something we approve of" in a 1988 ABC TV special, publicly debated liberal Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) in 1991 on drug legalization, then he argued before the New York Bar Association in favor of drug legalization, and then again in 2004 wrote for the National Review on marijuana legalization.

We have, at the very least, a span of 16 years of Mr. Buckley on record questioning the status quo in regards to the drug war.

Thomas Sowell, no conservative lightweight and quite the opposite, has argued in favor of drug legalization.

And finally, Walter Williams, another conservative intellectual, has argued in favor of the very same thing in The Freeman magazine.

All of these men are conservative giants.

And while people tend to place Thomas Sowell (he called himself a libertarian in a Salon interview) and Walter Williams (he said he's a Jeffersonian Liberal) in the libertarian tradition, which may be rightly deserved, no one can say that William F. Buckley is a libertarian (Well, except for Buckley himself).

*Skim over sentences for sources

Video: Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell on Poverty

This is the video I was referring to in the second paragraph of this blog post.

Video: Tom Woods Interviews Walter Williams on Peter Schiff Radio

One of the guys who helped me get into economics got interviewed by the guy who is keeping me in it. (Really, my own desire to understand what is going on around me is keeping me interested. But hey, it sounded nice!)

Update 2/18/12:

In the first paragraph below, I accidentally wrote Thomas Sowell instead of Walter Williams. The error has been corrected. I think I wrote Sowell instead of Williams because I was listening to this interview before I updated the page on 2/8/12.

Update 2/8/12:

In the above interview, Walter Williams mentions a report or paper that one of his colleagues wrote about Jim Crow laws in New Orleans. If I remember correctly, he said that private industry was actually pushing back against those laws which were being forced upon them by the government.

After doing some digging, I found out today that Thomas Sowell wrote about Rosa Parks a few days after her death in 2005. The column "Rosa Parks and History" is worth the read and piggybacks on the report mentioned above. Secondly, it shows that free-market's solutions to racism aren't just academic theories, they reflect something that happened in the real world.

As Walter Williams wrote, "When white solidarity is confronted by the specter of higher profits by serving blacks, it's likely that profits will win."

Upon some further digging, it didn't hit me until now--because I read the column when it first appeared in 2010--that one of my other favorite economists, Walter Williams, wrote about this exact topic then, and it may indeed reference the paper that Thomas Sowell was talking about (although he doesn't mention New Orleans so there is a chance it isn't).

For more reading into this topic, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (which is one of the first books on capitalism I read a few years ago) by Mises scholar Robert P. Murphy has a section dedicated to the free market and racism.

George Reisman, who studied under Ludwig Von Mises himself, has a paper taking a slightly different angle called "Capitalism: The Cure for Racism" and it is pretty short.

Video: Walter E Williams - Minimum Wage as a Racist Tool

Walter Williams on the Racist Origins of the Davis-Bacon Act

In the context of the 2012 presidential campaign, Ron Paul should explain the racist origins of American minimum wage legislation and add a repeal of minimum wage laws to his platform since in an earlier debate he said he advocates the repeal of minimum wage laws.

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 is a law with racist origins and broad congressional support. During the 1931 legislative debate over the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates super-minimum (mostly union) wages on federally financed or assisted construction projects, racist intents were obvious. Rep. John Cochran, D-Mo., supported the bill, saying he had "received numerous complaints … about Southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South." Rep. Clayton Allgood, D-Ala., complained: "Reference has been made to a contractor from Alabama who went to New York with bootleg labor. … That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." Rep. William Upshaw, D-Ga., spoke of the "superabundance or large aggregation of Negro labor." American Federation of Labor President William Green said, "Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates." The Davis-Bacon Act remains law. Modern rhetoric in support of it has changed, but its effects haven't. It continues to discriminate against nonunion construction labor. Most black construction workers are in the nonunion sector.

Walter Williams, Economic Fairness

Blacks and Politics by Walter E. Williams

Japanese- and Chinese-Americans faced gross discrimination in our country, but when's the last time you heard them worrying about how many mayors and congressmen they have? Are they in a tizzy over the tea party's call for constitutional government, reduced spending and a balanced budget? By the way, Japanese- and Chinese-Americans have median family incomes higher than white Americans despite having no political power, even in areas where they are most numerous

Blacks and Politics by Walter E. Williams

Let's Blame Speculators by Walter E. Williams

Some politicians pooh-pooh calls for drilling, saying it would take five or 10 years to recover the oil and won't solve today's problems. Nonsense! I guarantee you that if permits were granted to all of our oil sources, we would see a reduction in today's prices.

Why? Put yourself in the place of an OPEC member knowing there's going to be a greater supply of U.S. oil in five or 10 years, which might drive oil prices to a permanent $20 or $30 per barrel. What will you want to do now while oil is $120 per barrel? You would want to sell.

Let's Blame Speculators by Walter E. Williams

The State Against Blacks: In Honor of Black History Month

Since it is Black History Month, I thought it would be important for African Americans (and non-African Americans) to know the effects of certain economic policies designed to help Blacks and how they have inadvertently kept blacks out of work and impoverished. So much of Black Media portrays (or at least it did in the past) capitalism as an economic system of evil. However, there is no other economic system where more impoverished people accumulated wealth and prosperity, and this is despite race. Socialism, mercantilism, communism, nor any other ism has led as many people out of poverty and to prosperity.

If that is the case then why is the Black Poverty rate inching upward?

I have already argued in a previous blog that minimum wage laws don't work. I hope to revise and expand that essay more since I recently learned that those laws have even more detrimental effects than the ones I've mentioned. However, if you watch the following playlist the answer to the aforementioned question is there.

Sowell and Williams are some of the brightest men I have ever encountered, at least online. I hope to meet both of them one day, but for right now I have their books to keep me interested and informed. In the meantime, I will be watching this playlist and I hope you will too.

Happy Black History Month!



You can share this playlist by clicking the link below or copying the link below and pasting it wherever you like.

The State Against Blacks: A Youtube Playlist featuring African-American economists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell

Bonus Link: What the Founding Fathers Said About Slavery?