Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the concern over political solutions to economic issues, suggesting that politics often creates more problems than it solves.
In this quote, Thomas Sowell expresses his belief that while economic problems are significant, he is more concerned about the political solutions proposed to address these problems. Sowell implies that the history of political interventions has often resulted in ineffective or harmful outcomes, making him skeptical of relying on politics to resolve economic issues.
In practice
During a debate on economic policy, I might quote Sowell to emphasize the importance of scrutinizing political proposals.
Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
Pakistan's key leaders have succumbed to the assassin's bullet or bomb or the hangman's noose, and the country has seen four military coups since its birth in 1947. Yet the Pakistani polity has limped on.
I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.
A statesman is an easy man, he tells his lies by rote._x000D_ _x000D_ A journalist invents his lies, and rams them down your throat._x000D_ _x000D_ So stay at home and drink your beer and let the neighbors vote.
We used to play marbles for keeps. If you lost, you lost. It is the same way with politics, but not everybody knows this.
What is interesting is that, although it is framed as a war between the elites and Main Street, the Tea Party is actually really good for the elites.
Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it: 'Not a heaven on earth but a better earth on earth.' This is not at all a timid agenda, far from it. The work ahead of us is enormous!
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