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Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective QUOTES

Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective QUOTES

1 " Slippery use of the word “privilege” is part of a vogue of calling achievements “privileges”—a vogue which extends far beyond educational issues, spreading a toxic confusion in many other aspects of life. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

2 " isolation is a recurring factor in poverty and backwardness around the world, whether that is physical isolation or cultural isolation, for any number of particular reasons "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

3 " Differences in habits and attitudes are differences in human capital, just as much as differences in knowledge and skills—and such differences create differences in economic outcomes. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

4 " languages as Asians, who outnumber them nearly four to one.121 Linguistic diversity is not only a sign of cultural isolation and fragmentation, it contributes to the barriers "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

5 " Piketty’s crucial misstep is verbally converting a fluid process over time into a rigid structure, with a more or less permanent top one percent living isolated from the rest of society that is supposedly subjected to their control or influence. It is a vision divorced from demonstrable facts, however consonant it may be with prevailing preconceptions. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

6 " People who have acquired academic degrees, without acquiring many economically meaningful skills, not only face personal disappointment and disaffection with society, but also have often become negative factors in the economy and even sources of danger, especially when they lash out at economically successful minorities and ethnically polarize the whole society they live in. . . . . In many places and times, soft-subject students and intellectuals have inflamed hostility, and sometimes violence, against many other successful groups. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

7 " Today, poverty in America means whatever government statisticians in Washington say it means. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

8 " The welfare state contributes to this disparity by (1) reducing the need for people at the bottom to earn income and (2) by penalizing their earning of income, since higher income leads to a reduction in eligibility for government benefits. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

9 " The ideal of freedom behind the American Revolution had its effect in freeing thousands of people from slavery in the newly formed United States, something that was happening nowhere else in the world at that time. To call slavery “America’s original sin” is to turn reality upside down. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

10 " When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. People with careers as ethnic leaders usually tell their followers what they want to hear. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

11 " People who have acquired academic degrees, without acquiring many economically meaningful skills, not only face personal disappointment and disaffection with society, but also have often become negative factors in the economy and even sources of danger, especially when they lash out at economically successful minorities and ethnically polarize the whole society they live in. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

12 " In contemporary America, many colleges and universities have whole departments devoted to promoting a sense of racial and ethnic grievances against others, while celebrating the isolation of group identities, epitomized by ethnically separate residences on campus and sometimes even ethnically separate graduation ceremonies. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

13 " To refer to Stuyvesant High School as a “privileged little ivory tower” may be clever, but cleverness is not wisdom. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

14 " Whether the elite public high schools of New York were overwhelmingly Jewish in one era or overwhelmingly Asian in a later era, their lack of demographic “diversity” seems not to have adversely affected their educational performances or their graduates’ achievements in later life. And that is what such schools are there for, not to present a tableau that matches fashionable preconceptions. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

15 " After the Dunbar alumni lost in the courts, the original Dunbar High School building was demolished. It was one of many triumphs of the ghetto culture across the country in the second half of the twentieth century, with consequences that spread far beyond educational institutions. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

16 " Political incentives are for government officials to supply public schools with things that are in demand from organized constituencies such as teachers’ unions that want smaller classes, better facilities and job protection. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

17 " Individuals’ values and choices have more correlation with outcomes than various tangible factors within the scope of government, not only as regards educational outcomes but other outcomes as well. Despite the prevalence of poverty in many black communities, the poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits every year since 1994.53 In other words, those blacks whose behavior put them outside the pattern of the spreading ghetto culture escaped poverty to a far greater extent than other blacks. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

18 " Students mismatched with institutions whose standards they did not meet would either fail to graduate as often as others or would manage to graduate only by avoiding difficult subjects like science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

19 " In other words, the loss of freedom as the reach and power of the government are increasingly extended is an issue kept off the agenda by redefining words. Moreover, government-provided benefits are not net benefits to society, because the government simply transfers wealth, rather than creating it. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective

20 " In contrast to times past when low-income people lived packed into overcrowded housing, Americans living below the official poverty level today have more housing space per person than the average European— not poor Europeans, but the average European. "

― Thomas Sowell , Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective