Sowell Sept 17^th

Sowell’s nose has come badly out of joint as a result of someone criticizing his most recent book. The comment was, “there is apparently no level of inequality of income or opportunity that Thomas Sowell would find unacceptable.” Sowell maintains that the reviewer has “missed the whole point of the book.” The book, “Wealth, Poverty and Politics” is listed on Amazon; it has five reviews so far (It’s very recent) and every single one of these reviewers gives the book five stars, the highest rating possible. Not only that, but there is not one single negative comment about any of these glowing five star reviews. Normally there are at least a few on the opposite side politically who will disagree with hagiographic reviews such as these.

Sowell has interesting ideas about just what constitutes opportunity. He points out that children raised in homes where they are not given “parental care and attention” are less able to take advantage of opportunities when these opportunities are subsequently presented. He says that “this is so obvious that you would have to be an intellectual to misconstrue it. Yet many among the intelligentsia equate differences in outcome with differences in opportunity.” Well yeah!

Sowell completely misses the point that he, himself, has just made; the child not given attention and conversation does not have an equal ability to take advantage of opportunity when it is presented. He is right about one thing: as an intellectual he did misconstrue it.

Later he says. “But when people with low credit scores are not approved for loans as often as people with high credit scores, is that a failure of opportunity or a failure to meet standards.” Apparently second order causality is beyond the comprehension of this “intellectual;” it is the failure of opportunity to meet standards. What are your opportunities if you are not even a high school graduate and you earn a wage of 9 dollars an hour, or 18 thousand dollars a year, if your credit cards are maxed out and you struggle to find food and clothing for your two kids. There is clearly a failure of opportunity here to meet the credit standards required for a loan to buy even a used mobile home.

Sowell must believe that everyone has the opportunity to do anything if they would just buckle down and try hard. Most high school graduates will not get into Harvard as Sowell did no matter how hard they try. Unless of course they are legacies, that is the child of a Harvard graduate. I suppose Sowell believes that anyone can be the child of a Harvard graduate and therefore get into Harvard if they just try hard enough.