Discrimination and Disparities Read online

  22. Internal Revenue Service, “The 400 Individual Income Tax Returns Reporting the Highest Adjusted Gross Incomes Each Year, 1992–2000,” Statistics of Income Bulletin, Spring 2003, Publication 1136 (Revised 6–03), p. 7.

  23. With nine people who are transients in the higher bracket for just one year out of a decade, that means that 90 transients will be in that bracket during that decade. The one person who is in that higher income bracket in every year of the decade brings the total number of people in the income bracket at some point during the decade to 91. The transients’ total income for that decade, which was $12.6 million for the initial 9 transients, adds up to $126 million for all 90 transients who spent a year each in the higher bracket. When the $5 million earned by the one person who was in the higher bracket for all ten years of the decade is added, that makes $131 million for all 91 people who were in the higher bracket at some point during the course of the decade. These 91 people thus have an average annual income of $143,956.04—which is less than three times the average annual income of the 10 people who earned $50,000 a year.

  24. See data and documentation in Thomas Sowell, Wealth, Poverty and Politics, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Basic Books, 2016), pp. 321–322.

  25. William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), p. xix.

  26. Ibid., p. 67.

  27. Ibid., p. 140.

  28. Ibid., pp. 178, 179.

  29. David Caplovitz, The Poor Pay More: Consumer Practices of Low-Income Families (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 94–95.

  30. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), p. 93.

  31. Ibid., p. 57.

  32. Ibid.

  33. John U. Ogbu, Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), pp. 15, 17, 21, 28, 240.

  34. Richard Lynn, The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide (Augusta, Georgia: Washington Summit Publishers, 2008), p. 51.

  35. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations (Washington: The Cato Institute, 2016), pp. 104–106.

  36. Michael A. Fletcher and Jonathan Weisman, “Bush Supports Democrats’ Minimum Wage Hike Plan,” Washington Post, December 21, 2006, p. A14.

  37. “Labours Lost,” The Economist, July 15, 2000, pp. 64–65; Robert W. Van Giezen, “Occupational Wages in the Fast-Food Restaurant Industry,” Monthly Labor Review, August 1994, pp. 24–30.

  38. “Labours Lost,” The Economist, July 15, 2000, pp. 64–65.

  39. Richard A. Lester, “Shortcomings of Marginal Analysis for Wage-Employment Problems,” American Economic Review, Vol. 36, No. 1 (March 1946), pp. 63–82.

  40. David Card and Alan B. Krueger, “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” American Economic Review, Vol. 84, No. 4 (September 1994), pp. 772–793; David Card and Alan B. Krueger, Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Douglas K. Adie, Book Review, “Myth and Measurement: The New Economics of the Minimum Wage,” Cato Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 1995), pp. 137–140.

  41. Richard B. Berman, “Dog Bites Man: Minimum Wage Hikes Still Hurt,” Wall Street Journal, March 29, 1995, p. A12; “Testimony of Richard B. Berman,” Evidence Against a Higher Minimum Wage, Hearing Before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, April 5, 1995, Part II, pp. 12–13; Gary S. Becker, “It’s Simple: Hike the Minimum Wage, and You Put People Out of Work,” BusinessWeek, March 6, 1995, p. 22; Paul Craig Roberts, “A Minimum-Wage Study with Minimum Credibility,” BusinessWeek, April 24, 1995, p. 22.

  42. Dara Lee Luca and Michael Luca, “Survival of the Fittest: The Impact of the Minimum Wage on Firm Exit,” Harvard Business School, Working Paper 17–088, 2017, pp. 1, 2, 3, 10.

  43. Don Watkins and Yaron Brook, Equal Is Unfair: America’s Misguided Fight Against Income Inequality (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016), p. 125.

  44. Ekaterina Jardim, et al., “Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle,” Working Paper Number 23532, “Abstract” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2017).

  45. “Economic and Financial Indicators,” The Economist, March 15, 2003, p. 100.

  46. “Economic and Financial Indicators,” The Economist, March 2, 2013, p. 88.

  47. “Economic and Financial Indicators,” The Economist, September 7, 2013, p. 92.

  48. “Hong Kong’s Jobless Rate Falls,” Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1991, p. C16.

  49. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), Part 1, p. 126.

  50. Burton W. Fulsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America, sixth edition (Herndon, Virginia: Young America’s Foundation, 2010), pp. 108, 109, 115, 116.

  51. Ibid., p. 116.

  52. Alan Reynolds, “Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2011, p. A19; Stephen Moore, “Real Tax Cuts Have Curves,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2005, p. A13.

  53. Edmund L. Andrews, “Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Curbs U.S. Deficit,” New York Times, July 9, 2006, p. A1.

  54. Ekaterina Jardim, et al., “Minimum Wage Increases, Wages, and Low-Wage Employment: Evidence from Seattle,” Working Paper Number 23532, “Abstract” (Cambridge, Massachusetts: National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2017).

  Chapter 5: Social Visions and Human Consequences

  1. Gabriel Tortella, “Patterns of Economic Retardation and Recovery in South-Western Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Economic History Review, Vol. 47, No. 1 (February 1994), p. 2.

  2. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011), pp. 85–87, 93–104.

  3. Darrel Hess, McKnight’s Physical Geography: A Landscape Appreciation, eleventh edition (Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2014), p. 198.

  4. T. Scott Bryan, The Geysers of Yellowstone, fourth edition (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2008), pp. 9–10, 406–407.

  5. The World Almanac and Book of Facts: 2017 (New York: World Almanac Books, 2017), pp. 687, 688.

  6. Documented examples can be found in my The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pp. 35–37 and Intellectuals and Society, second edition (New York: Basic Books, 2012), pp. 116–119. Isolated examples have appeared in my Conquests and Cultures: An International History (New York: Basic Books, 1998), pp. 125, 210, 217 and Migrations and Cultures: A World View (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. 4, 17, 31, 57, 123, 130, 135, 152, 154, 157, 176, 179, 193, 196, 211, 265, 277, 278, 289, 297, 298, 300, 320, 345–346, 353–354, 355, 358, 366, 372–373.

  7. The Economist, Pocket World in Figures: 2017 edition (London: Profile Books, 2016), p. 18.

  8. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Survey of State Prison Inmates, 1991 (Washington: U.S. Department of Justice, 1993), p. 9.

  9. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008), pp. 111–113.

  10. Oliver MacDonagh, “The Irish Famine Emigration to the United States,” Perspectives in American History, Vol. X (1976), p. 405; Thomas Bartlett, Ireland: A History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 284.

  11. W.E. Vaughan and A.J. Fitzpatrick, editors, Irish Historical Statistics: Population, 1821–1971 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1978), pp. 260–261.

  12. Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), p. 127.

  13. See, for example, Jason L. Riley, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (New York: Encounter Books, 2014), pp
. 42–43; “Now D.C. Bans Suspensions as Racist,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 18, 2014, p. A14; “Classrooms Run by the Unsuspended,” Investor’s Business Daily, July 3, 2014, p. A14; Paul Sperry, “AG Holder Urges Schools to Go Easy on Discipline,” Investor’s Business Daily, January 9, 2014, p. A1; Eva S. Moskowitz, “Turning Schools Into Fight Clubs,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2015, p. A15. See also Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), pp. 68–69; James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations (Washington: The Cato Institute, 2016), p. 103.

  14. Nina Easton, “Class, Reimagined,” Fortune, March 15, 2015, p. 34; Daniel Bergner, “Class Warfare,” New York Times Magazine, September 7, 2014, pp. 60–68; Jay Mathews, “KIPP Continues to Break the Mold and Garner Excellent Results,” Washington Post, February 3, 2014, p. B2; Jay Mathews, “Five-Year Study Concludes that KIPP Student Gains Are Substantial,” Washington Post, March 2, 2013, p. B2; KIPP: 2014 Report Card (San Francisco: KIPP Foundation, 2014), pp. 10, 19.

  15. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, p. 103.

  16. Ibid., p. 92.

  17. “The World’s Billionaires,” Forbes, March 28, 2017, pp. 84–85. V.I. Lenin tried to rescue Marxist theory by claiming that rich countries exploited poor countries, and shared some of their “super-profits” with their own working classes, in order to stave off revolution. But in fact most rich countries’ international investments are concentrated in other rich countries, with their investments in poor countries being a very small fraction of their foreign investments and their incomes from these investments in poor countries being a very small fraction of their total income from foreign investments. See my Wealth, Poverty and Politics, revised and enlarged edition (New York: Basic Books, 2016) pp. 245–247.

  18. For documented specifics, see my Wealth, Poverty and Politics, revised and enlarged edition, p. 136.

  19. See, for example, hostile responses to empirical data from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, James S. Coleman, Jay Belsky and Heather Mac Donald in Jean M. White, “Moynihan Report Criticized as ‘Racist,’” Washington Post, November 22, 1965, p. A3; William Ryan, “Savage Discovery: The Moynihan Report,” The Nation, November 22, 1965, pp. 380–384; Diane Ravitch, “The Coleman Reports and American Education,” Social Theory and Social Policy: Essays in Honor of James S. Coleman, edited by Aage B. Sorenson and Seymour Spilerman (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1993), pp. 129–141; James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, pp. 174–175; Tim Lynch, “There Is No War on Cops,” Reason, August/September 2016, pp. 58–61; William McGurn, “The Silencing of Heather Mac Donald,” Wall Street Journal, April 11, 2017, p. A15.

  20. “Bicker Warning,” The Economist, April 1, 2017, p. 23.

  21. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, p. 6.

  22. Barry Latzer, The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America (New York: Encounter Books, 2016), p. 19; Today’s VD Control Problem: Joint Statement by The American Public Health Association, The American Social Health Association, The American Venereal Disease Association, The Association of State and Territorial Health Officers in co-operation with The American Medical Association, February 1966, p. 20; Hearings Before the Select Committee on Population, Ninety-Fifth Congress, Second Session, Fertility and Contraception in America: Adolescent and Pre-Adolescent Pregnancy (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), Volume II, p. 625; Jacqueline R. Kasun, The War Against Population: The Economics and Ideology of World Population Control (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), pp. 142, 143, 144; Sally Curtin, et al., “2010 Pregnancy Rates Among U.S. Women,” National Center for Health Statistics, December 2015, p. 6.

  23. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1975), Part I, p. 414.

  24. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), p. 262.

  25. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, pp. 106–107.

  26. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Selected Letters of John Kenneth Galbraith, edited by Richard P.F. Holt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 47.

  27. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, pp. 187–189.

  28. Joyce Lee Malcolm, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 168.

  29. See, for example, Sean O’Neill and Fiona Hamilton, “Mobs Rule as Police Surrender Streets,” The Times (London), August 9, 2011, pp. 1, 5; Martin Beckford, et al., “Carry On Looting,” The Daily Telegraph (London), August 8, 2011, pp. 1, 2; Philip Johnston, “The Long Retreat of Order,” The Daily Telegraph (London), August 10, 2011, p. 19; Alistair MacDonald and Guy Chazan, “World News: Britain Tallies Damage and Sets Out Anti-Riot Steps,” Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2011, p. A6.

  30. Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, pp. 136–139; James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, p. 203.

  31. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White, p. 238.

  32. Ibid., p. 237.

  33. Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America: 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), pp. 160, 161.

  34. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, p. 164.

  35. For documentation, see Thomas Sowell, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas (New York: Free Press, 1993), Chapter 1.

  36. E.W. Kenworthy, “Action by Senate: Revised Measure Now Goes Back to House for Concurrence,” New York Times, June 20, 1964, p. 1; “House Civil Rights Vote,” New York Times, July 3, 1964, p. 9; E.W. Kenworthy, “Voting Measure Passed by House,” New York Times, August 4, 1965, pp. 1, 17; “Vote Rights Bill: Senate Sends Measure to LBJ,” Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1965, p. 1.

  37. Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, pp. 106–116. In addition to statistical evidence, eye-witness accounts show the same degeneration on both sides of the Atlantic. See, for example, Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom, pp. x, xi, 45, 67, 72, 139, 153, 166, 181, 188, 223–225; J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), pp. 20–22, 49–50, 51; Charles Murray, Coming Apart, pp. 167, 210–220, 271–272. These accounts of trends among the white underclass show a great similarity to many well-known trends among the black underclass.

  38. Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006), p. 123.

  39. Ibid., p. 124.

  40. Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White, pp. 233–234.

  41. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, p. 195.

  42. David Cole, “Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?” New York Review of Books, November 19, 2009, p. 41.

  43. James Bartholomew, The Welfare of Nations, p. 195.

  44. John McWhorter, Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America’s Lingua Franca (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2017), p. 11.

  45. Ibid., pp. 98–101.

  46. Ibid., p. 12.

  47. Ibid., p. 13.

  48. Ibid., p. 12.

  49. His book, Talking Back, Talking Black includes this dedication:

  For Vanessa Hamilton McWhorter, who came into this world, born reflective, while I was writing this book.

  I hope that she will read this as soon as she is old enough to take it in, to make sure she never for a second thinks black people’s speech is full of mistakes.

  And for my cousin Octavia Thompson, who speaks what I think of as the perfect Black English, which I dare anybody to diss.

  50. Derek Sayer, The Coasts of Bohemia: A Czech History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 90.

  51. Melanie Kirkpatrick, “Business in a Common Tongue,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2017, p. A15.

  52. David Deterding, Singapore English (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007),
pp. 4–5; Sandra L. Suárez, “Does English Rule? Language Instruction and Economic Strategies in Singapore, Ireland, and Puerto Rico,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 37, No. 4 (July 2005), pp. 465, 467–468.

  53. Lawrence E. Harrison, The Pan-American Dream: Do Latin America’s Cultural Values Discourage True Partnership with the United States and Canada? (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 207.

  54. Jeffrey D. Sachs, The Age of Sustainable Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), p. 56.

  55. Aaron E. Carroll, “Limiting Food Stamp Choices Can Help Fight Obesity,” New York Times, September 27, 2016, p. A3; Robert Paarlberg, “Obesity: The New Hunger,” Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2016, p. A11; James A. Levine, “Poverty and Obesity in the U.S.,” Diabetes, Vol. 60 (November 2011), pp. 2667–2668; Sabrina Tavernise, “Study Finds Modest Declines in Obesity Rates Among Young Children from Poor Families,” New York Times, December 26, 2012, p. A18; Associated Press, “Obesity Grows Among the Affluent,” Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2005, p. D4.

  56. Annie Sciacca, “6-Figure Earnings Now ‘Low Income’ in Marin and SF,” Marin Independent Journal, April 23, 2017, p. 1.

  57. E. Franklin Frazier, “Negro Harlem: An Ecological Study,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 43, No. 1 (July 1937), pp. 72–88; reprinted in E. Franklin Frazier on Race Relations: Selected Writings, edited by G. Franklin Edwards (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 142–160.

  58. G. Franklin Edwards, editor, E. Franklin Frazier on Race Relations, pp. 148, 149, 152, 157, 158.

  59. “Going Global,” The Economist, December 19, 2015, p. 107.

  60. Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (New York: The Penguin Press, 2014), p. 39.

  61. Warren C. Scoville, The Persecution of Huguenots and French Economic Development: 1680–1720 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), Chapters VI–X.

  62. Kevin D. Williamson, What Doomed Detroit?, Encounter Broadside No. 37 (New York: Encounter Books, 2013).