Galt's Gulch
13

This is what passes for enlightened thinking?

Posted by AmericanGreatness 9 years, 7 months ago to Politics
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It's hard to know where to even start with this inane piece. At one point they cite a study stating that the wealth gap affects 10-15 generations out (I'm sure deadbeat kids of successful parents would be surprised at that assertion), but then uses Loretta Lynch as an example, because her great great grandfather was a slave... what??? From slave to attorney general of US in four generations nukes his own argument.

I reject the entire premise of this article. Income and wealth are NOT distributed. They are earned. Except for misery in state-run economies, what is ever evenly distributed?
SOURCE URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcelwee/the-supreme-court-and-the_5_b_7153208.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 9 years, 6 months ago
    Interesting that the Asian minority is so conspicuously absent from the statistics. Why? because they are the highest earning ethnic group in the US. Hard work, discipline and education paid off for the, and it will pay off for blacks and hispanics (and american indians for that matter). Some of them need to stop blaming their position on the system, and all of us need to just stop talking about race altogether, and it will soon be forgotten.
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    • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 6 months ago
      You could have stopped reading when you read that a house has more impact on outcomes than education, workforce participation and other self managed behaviors. Booker T. Washington and George W. Carver were both born slaves, and built one of the best universities in the US, along with hundreds of inventions. Their houses had nothing at all to do with their success. The appalling level of "scholarship" shown by some of these "researchers" should lead to a condemnation of the institutions that certified that they're qualified to do anything higher than flipping burgers.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 9 years, 6 months ago
    What unfounded conclusions. This guy needs to study economics. Funny, how the American Indian does not matter at all, just the blacks. Also notice how the Community Reinvestment Act, which started the whole black mortgage disaster was not cited. Blacks could not hold onto homes any better than any other race when granted a mortgage they could not afford in the first place. Yet politicians, including Obama, had ACORN (now SEIU) burst into bank boardrooms to threaten racial discrimination charges if they did not grant loans to those who could not afford them, some of whom had no jobs. Once again, blacks have been used, by politicians for their votes, and fed the something for nothing entitlement crap. How many rich white kids have gone into poverty because they bought into this idea and lost everything also. Ignorance has no racial barriers, when indotrirnation starts in the public schools and is used to political advantage.
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  • Posted by Technocracy 9 years, 6 months ago
    This is the argument they will use for the next stage of "social justice" looting.

    An inverted reality argument, but the one they will use.

    The housing bubble came about through "equal opportunity lending". When you lend money without regard to ability to repay, default rates go up. Then they had to repackage and spread out that bad debt as "mortgage backed securities"...effectively wastepaper.
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    • Posted by dnr 9 years, 6 months ago
      Having been personally very involved in the "housing crisis" of 2007, et al, I know that it was not caused by "greedy banks, et al" but by our wonderful US Congress who kept pushing and pushing lenders to grant loans to people who were not qualified. I was shocked that these people could get loans. Well, given the flood of bad mortgages on the market, banks did the only thing that they could, i.e., package them up and sell them. It is true that two things were going on. First, the "not so smart" managers and brokers were selling these as Grade AAA instruments. This analysis was based on the Gaussian copula function that assumes to sets of funds have high correlation, which was not true. Second, smart traders saw this and traded against it. Bottom line - congress pulls a fast one, banks respond in the wrong way, housing market collapse, banks get blamed. Blame your ditzy congressional representative. Oh, and guess what? They are doing it again. Trade CDOs.
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    • Posted by kevinw 9 years, 6 months ago
      I'm liking that term as well. "Inverted reality argument".

      Take an action, when that action utterly fails or otherwise causes disaster, blame your opponent for the action and therefore pin the blame on your opponent.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 9 years, 7 months ago
    The plan is to equalize home ownership by stealing the homes of all those with lighter skin.
    Drag everyone down to an inferior standard of living.
    The perfect example is what has happened in public schools since 1970.
    Mustn't spend any more on advanced classes because that will only expand the gap between the intelligent and the less than average.
    Now they are doing it with property.
    It is the opposite of the American way.
    What this country has become is disgusting.
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  • Posted by SaltyDog 9 years, 7 months ago
    Ivory tower academia at its finest! In the immortal word of Ren Hoek, "But what does it mean, man?" How is all of this my fault and why does it fall to me to do something about it?

    Marxism didn't work in the Soviet Union; it was in all the papers. And it won't work this time either.
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    • Posted by MinorLiberator 9 years, 6 months ago
      C'mon Salty, all those failures were one-offs (ok, maybe 1000-offs). These guys are so much smarter, this "study" so much more perfect, they'll get it right THIS time, really.

      Did they mention housing? Hey, why don't we force banks to lend to under-qualified minority people at sub-prime rates and...what? Tried that? Didn't work out too well? Darn.

      And I have to say that one "fact" in particular jumped out at me as, well, highly questionable: "Consider also that most people on Social Security today went to segregated schools." Seriously? OK, I lived in the Midwest, no segregated schools. Northeast, anyone? The West? I just can't accept that statistic UNLESS, and here's my theory: they define "segregated" as "effectively segregated"...not legally by the State mind you, it's just where blacks happened to live made their schools segregated. You see, after awhile you can see how these people "think", and no it's not enlightened.

      And I always wondered, but was pretty sure. so I looked it up: The HuffPo was found by Arianna Huffington. As I recall, in her early days of grabbing the spotlight, she was conservative. Does that make her the female David Brock? Or maybe he's done a Bruce Jenner, and she IS David Brock.

      What...utter...trash.

      PS: Sorry, Salty. You had one fact wrong: Marxism's failure was not in ALL the papers: it failed to make Pravda, and probably the NYT...
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      • Posted by $ puzzlelady 9 years, 6 months ago
        Thanks, ML, for the six good laughs all out of one comment. And I do remember the year schools were desegregated, because a few black students showed up in my classes. As a recent immigrant I had no notions of prejudice, being on the receiving end myself. One black girl explained to me that she was "Portuguese". No one had thought of "African American" labels yet.
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        • Posted by MinorLiberator 9 years, 6 months ago
          Your quite welcome. Some things are just so ridiculous, I get on a roll...

          And I was thinking about it after I wrote the comment about Social Security: How could I forget? Of course "they" really did see segregation everywhere back in the 60's, and they were busing kids all over the place in a whole lot of cities everywhere. It still doesn't make "them" right about State-sponsored segregation vs. "it just happens to be where people live" segregation. The latter, isn't.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 9 years, 6 months ago
    The biggest thing the idiot in this article completely and epicly fails to mention is what has been accurately accounted for in other economic studies: the presence of the father in the home.

    If you look at the black community up to the late '50's, they had similar family composition and similar earning as other ethnic groups. What happened in the '60's especially is that the black community started de-emphasizing fathers in the home, and education suffered, incomes dropped, and lawlessness increased to the point at which we see it today.

    The income disparity isn't caused by race, but by policy.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 6 months ago
    If Libs think that coming from a stable family and getting a good education will happen overnight, they are bound to be disappointed. It will take a generation to narrow the income gap and still another to close it. But it can be done, and has been done by people from the time this country started to the present day. When you are given the solution to a problem, but complain that it requires too much effort to implement, you deserve what you get.
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    • Posted by blackswan 9 years, 6 months ago
      The model for eliminating the "gaps" has been around for over 150 years. It began in Japan and was picked up by Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, even Communist China, India, Israel, Botswana, Brazil, etc. Don't tell me that those are countries and minorities are helpless waifs. The same principles apply.
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      • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 6 months ago
        I didn't say anything about "helpless waifs." I was saying that education and a stable family can close the income gap, but not overnight, or even in a single generation. If that requires too much effort, then -- well, too bad.
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  • Posted by RonC 9 years, 6 months ago
    the whole argument of wealth gap is bogus. Before the robber barons and reconstruction most of the nation was agrarian. If you ate, you worked.

    Yes, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Scranton, Ford, J.P. Morgan, and Rockefeller all got crazy rich. Additionally, the people that worked for them enjoyed improved lives. I would argue most of America, maybe the world, enjoy improved lives because of these people.

    To believe government would have eventually figured it out is naïve and biased. In my experience the only thing government can figure out is how to take from it's citizens. If we count gov't salaries as an expense, rather than giving back, what percentage is redistributed? My guess is not much, because in any business, labor and the associated taxes and compliance costs are the greatest expense.
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  • Posted by NealS 9 years, 6 months ago
    "Except for misery in state-run economies, what is ever evenly distributed?" I can only come up with, distributed by God perhaps, AIR. And of course perhaps things like ocean water, if you can get to the ocean. Rain might be on the list, but not evenly, we get more than our share up here.
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