About ten years ago Dr. Sherry Turkle wrote and important book called “Alone Toghether”. Its subtitle was why we expect more from technology and less from each other, It was on point then and it is still applicable today, perhaps even more so. She pointed out how more and more people, particularly young people, were no longer comfortable with person to person conversations and preferred to communicate on cellphones, primarily on social media. This problem persists today and the current lockdowns have not helped. In previous blogs I have mentioned the importance of person to person communications and how seldom it happens. People just want to send a text and consider that adequate.
I believe a similar problem is happening with persons who still read books for both enjoyment and information. I am one of those persons and if you looked at my background material it stated one of my hobbies was reading. But unless you are in a book club it is difficult to find persons who want to share opinions on books. It would seem that the lockdowns would have caused more people to read but the lockdown also closed libraries and bookstores. To me a great day is to spend time in Barnes & Noble (or a library) getting a cup of coffee and checking out all the new additions (many of which I windup buying). I must admit I am generally a non-fiction reader but that’s what you would expect from a nerdy engineer.
So what I thought I would do is share the thoughts and ideas of some of the books I have read and post that on my avoicecryingoutforfreedom website. Since persons can comment on those blogs perhaps it will start some interesting exchanges. I have read some really great books and would like to share some of them with you.
The first book I have chosen was one published in 2015 by one of my favorite authors, Thomas Sowell. I have mentioned one of his other books in my blog, K-12. This book is called, “Wealth, Poverty and Politics”, and by that title you can see it is also important today.
The book, Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective, is a scholarly book addressing why some groups lag economically from others. I will try to summarize the book but it will be difficult because each page seems to have another gem of wisdom and I recommend that you acquire the book and read it. Sowell’s premise is that the lagging depends on numerous factors, mainly geographic, cultural, social and political. In developing his premise he frequently refers to literature on the subject. He also quotes Peter Bauer of London’s School of Economics (LSE) and references British physician, Theodore Dalrymple’s book, “Life at the Bottom” about lower-class whites in England as well as other international references. I think his international approach is important so that the reader does not think this problem is unique to the United States or is simply a question of race. I believe his conclusions are universal.
Two notable things he mentions are, I believe, important to his approach are that production is the primary difference between leading and lagging groups, not income. He quotes Henry Hazlitt who stated that the poor are poor not because something is being withheld from them but because, for whatever reason, they are not producing enough. Human capital is what enables groups to produce and it is usually undeveloped in lagging groups.
The second, and probably the most important contribution, is he points out that the wrong statistics are used in comparing groups. He states that there are two fundamentally different kinds of statistics used to show income trends over time –and these different kinds of statistics produce diametrically opposite conclusions. This is an important distinction when comparing the income gap of individuals and groups.
The first set of statistics are for identical individuals, whose incomes are tabulated throughout the years covered by a given study. A very different kind of statistics – and the kind most often cited in the media, in politics and in academia – is based on tabulating the incomes of whatever mix of people happen to be in such categories as the top fifth, the bottom fifth and other rackets in between in any given year. The upper brackets are generally referred to as the “rich” and the lower brackets as the “poor” and when the upper appears to be gaining more than the lower it is claimed that the gap is getting greater between the rich and poor. The problem is that the groups are forever changing (income changing for individuals causing them to move up or down the brackets) so the statistics are not comparing the same actual groups of individuals. Frequently these statistics indicate that the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider.
Following individuals statistically gives the opposite result. A study at the University of Michigan followed specific individuals – working Americans from 1975 to 1991 found that those individuals who were initially in the bottom 20 percent in income had their real incomes rise over the years, not only at a higher rate but in a several times larger total amount than the real incomes of those individuals whose incomes were initially in the top 20 percent. He offers several other cases to indicate that tracking individuals is the proper method to determine if the gap between the upper and lower groups are changing, rather than tracking brackets when comparing progress.
He points out that another source of confusion in discussions of peoples’ economic differences is a failure to distinguish income from wealth. Income and wealth are too fundamentally different from each other to make confident inferences about one from statistics about the other. Use of the term “the rich” to describe people in higher income brackets is just one sign of the confusion between income and wealth, since being rich means having an accumulation of wealth, rather than simply a high income in a given year. Hence trying to tax the rich based on income is an exercise in futility since income taxes do not touch wealth. Hence billionaires who say that they are in favor of higher income tax rates is completely misplaced, since the taxes will not touch the billions they have already accumulated. It should be noted that some countries have initiated wealth taxes but most have been abandoned because they apparently are not effective. The United States is presently considering a wealth tax. We will have to wait to see how it is presented.
The Geographic Factor
This is a factor because some areas are more isolated (mountain villages, islands, etc.) and some areas have more fertile soil and better water resources (water is needed for survival but is also vital for transportation which can lesson isolation). The more a group is isolated the more likely it will represent a lagging group.
The Cultural Factor
Sowell quotes David Landes to make this point, Landes said “If we learn anything from the history of economic development, it is that culture makes almost all of the difference”. Sowell follows up on this by noting that groups that had good work ethics and respect for building human capital through education and training frequently outperform other groups. That gap in performance is often resented and as we shall see under the political factor, native groups frequently develop laws favoring the locals over the expatriate minorities who are often more successful. He mentions expatriate minorities such as the Chinese, the Lebanese and the Jews as examples. In the United States we also see this with the Vietnamese.
The Social Factor
He addresses and debunks the theory that population would grow to exceed the number for which there was adequate food. Most modern famines occur in sparsely populated places and advanced transportation and improved farming techniques have mostly eliminated the concept that population can grow too large to support themselves and thus become lagging groups. Like transportation for food, social mobility is important and greatly diminishes isolation.
Sowell points out however that we cannot determine social mobility – that is the opportunity to move upward – in a given society has by how much upward movement actually takes place. That depends also to a greater or lesser degree, on the behavior of individuals and groups, rather than being solely a question of how much opportunity a given society offers. The behavior of individuals and groups is important in upward mobility and can help or impede progress. Knowing the language of the country in which you reside helps mobility (in fact it is essential). The Scots decided if they wanted to make progress they had to learn English (and they did!). Today blacks are being held back because they resist assimilating into the larger society by criticizing those who do as “acting white”. This is a real problem because by not becoming part of the larger society you diminish the chance to develop human capital which allows you to produce more and move up the economic ladder.
The Political Factor
Sowell starts this chapter with the following quote from Freeman Dyson:
The worst political blunder in the history of civilization was probably the decision of the emperor of China in the year 1433 to stop exploring the oceans and to destroy the ships capable of exploration and the written records of their voyages. The decision was the result of powerful people pursuing partisan squabbles and neglecting the long-range interests of the empire. This is a disease to which governments of all kinds, including democracies, are fatally susceptible.
When expatriate minorities enter countries and do better than the indigent people, their leaders (politicians) often enact policies and laws (welfare, social justice, affirmative action, quotas, etc.) which often have unintended consequences that frequently do more harm to the persons it intends to help and further causes them to lag the leading groups (frequently the expatriates). Black Americans, a group often identified as beneficiaries of the welfare state, made considerable economic progress in the twentieth century but much, if not all was prior to the massive expansion of the American welfare state, beginning with the “war on poverty” programs beginning in the 1960s.
Politicians often indoctrinate their constituents (often the indigent people) that their problem is caused by others (usually the expatriates). In the most varied conditions in countries around the world – whether in Third World countries or in economically more advanced countries, and whether in countries where the majority or the minority has the higher skills – those seeking either the leadership or the votes of lagging groups tend to offer them four things:
- Assurance that their lags are not their fault.
- Assurance that their lags are the fault of some advanced group that they already envy and resent.
- Assurance that the lagging group and their culture are just as good as anybody else’s, if not better.
- Assurance that what the lagging group needs and deserves is a demographically defined “fair share” of the economic and other benefits of society, sometimes supplement with some kind of reparations for past injustices or some special reward for being indigenous “sons of the soil”.
He also goes into detail about such things as the one percent, social justice, welfare state, and others. He even addresses the myth of the “legacy of slavery” by using Theodore Dalrymple’s book, “Life at the Bottom” about lower-class whites in England as well as other international references. He also points out that only England and the United States took steps to end slavery while other countries and groups continue to practice slavery even today.
Sowell ends with a chapter, Implications and Prospects about the future and possible solutions or at least in a clear understanding of why the differences occur worldwide. He notes that the promotion of economic equality and the alleviation of poverty are distinct and often conflicting.
I have to attempted to mention what are some of the important points of this book in this summary but I am certain that I missed many. I hope I have at least wetted your curiosity and you will read the book yourself.
Will Lannes