The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive - such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income.
Thomas SowellOne of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with the time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances.
Thomas SowellEach day, as I take various pills, I realize that without those pills I might not be alive -- and, if I were, life would not be worth living. Yet those who produce these medications are under constant attack from people who produce nothing.
Thomas SowellSomeone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama's style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots - the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world's largest banana republic?
Thomas SowellFour things have almost invariably followed the imposition of controls to keep prices below the level they would reach under supply and demand in a free market: (1) increased use of the product or service whose price is controlled, (2) Reduced supply of the same product or service, (3) quality deterioration, (4) black markets.
Thomas SowellNot since the days of the Hitler Youth have young people been subjected to more propaganda on more politically correct issues. At one time, educators boasted that their role was not to teach students what to think but how to think. Today, their role is far too often to teach students what to think on everything from immigration to global warming to the new sacred trinity of 'race, class and gender.'
Thomas Sowell