In recent years, Thomas Sowell has been a staunch advocate of stricter immigration policies. Which is ironic, because this passage from his Compassion Versus Guilt has stuck with me for thirty years:
When I travel through California’s vast agricultural areas, the people I see working in the fields under the hot sun are usually Mexicans. So are many of the people who clean the hotels. But when I have been approached by a panhandler in San Francisco or Los Angeles, it has never been a Mexican.
Almost invariably, the panhandlers have been young, healthy-looking whites with middle-class accents. These men remind me of the old English expression, “sturdy beggars.”
One nicely dressed young woman with a well-modulated voice looked so different from the image of the panhandler that I was already past her before I realized that that was what she was. But I have seen her again. She works one of the better business districts of San Francisco.
All I can do is walk past such people. To give them money would be to say that they are somehow better than the Mexicans who have to earn their living by helping to feed the rest of society and by keeping hotels and offices clean. How these young, middle-class people get the nerve to ask a black man (whose mother was a maid) for money is beyond me.
Many, probably most, of the Mexicans Sowell is talking about would have entered the U.S. illegally. But back in the 1980s, he didn’t care about their immigration status. He looked past our oppressive regulations to judge people on their merits. And it wasn’t a hard call, either.
I’m just starting my next book, Poverty: Who To Blame. But when the book finally comes out, you should definitely expect Sowell’s wise words contained therein.
READER COMMENTS
R Richard Schweitzer
Oct 18 2018 at 10:44am
While Thomas Sowell expresses his thinking concisely, clearly and without mitigations, what is more striking is that he also conveys why he thinks as he does on any subject.
HispanicPundit
Oct 18 2018 at 12:53pm
Very excited for your new book, much needed in todays political climate. IMHO, that should have been the FIRST book you did…it will probably be your most controversial too. Good luck!
Wade
Oct 18 2018 at 3:23pm
Please title it “Poverty: Whom To Blame” unless you are addressing the question of who should be doing the blaming.Â
R Richard Schweitzer
Oct 19 2018 at 9:49am
Looking at your proposal for a “work” on POVERTY, there seems to be a suggestion (implication?) in the indicated “title” that Poverty is caused (similar to the Catholic Bishops conference a few years back on “The Structural Causes of Poverty”), as opposed to its being a natural condition of the beginning of human subsistence in which humans remain, or from which they arise (each in varying degrees), by reason of responses, motivations, resources and capacities (Amartya Sen). Why do some societies fail to develop facilities or instrumentalities (Carroll Quigley) to mitigate conditions of Poverty; fail to develop information into knowledge and innovate? Can we find those answers in observing those that do?
Thaomas
Oct 19 2018 at 11:58am
“Natural conditions” do not have causes? Interesting metaphysical assumption there. 🙂
I see nothing wrong in asking if there are laws that could be passed, repealed or modified in ways that directly or indirectly reduce poverty. Increasing immigration of skilled and well educated workers would certainly be high on the list as would changing from sort of progressive income taxation to progressive consumption taxation.
R Richard Schweitzer
Oct 19 2018 at 7:19pm
If the subject is relative or comparative Poverty within a social grouping (where various levels above subsistence are observed) that is one case of study; even so, examining the reasons for the existence of those other level observed will probably yield more useful information than looking for “causes” of Poverty or for relationships responsible for various levels of Poverty.
A “natural condition at the beginning of human subsistence” does not imply or infer anything about “natural conditions” in general.
John Fembup
Oct 23 2018 at 1:45pm
Is it always ironic when someone changes their opinion from decades ago?
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