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
All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting 'the rich' to pay 'their fair share' is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that debates about the wealthy contributing equitably are more about political motives than genuine economic concerns.
Thomas Sowell's quote emphasizes that discussions surrounding the taxation of the rich often disguise a political agenda rather than focusing on economic principles. He argues that the calls for the wealthy to pay 'their fair share' are not rooted in a sound economic framework but rather serve as a means to maneuver political power and influence.
In practice
In a debate on fiscal responsibility among candidates, one might invoke this quote to question their motives.
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.
At the turn of the last century, extremists were forced back to the political fringes while younger politicians resurrected the vitality of the original Republican vision. They recognized that the nation could only develop and grow by protecting equality of opportunity for hardworking Americans at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Politically speaking, it's always easier to shell out money for a disaster that has already happened, with clearly identifiable victims, than to invest money in protecting against something that may or may not happen in the future.
The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
I recognize the Republican Party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.
I believe that Brazil was prepared to elect a woman. Why? Because Brazilian women achieved that. I didn't come here by myself, by my own merits. We are a majority here in this country.
'Scandal' has always lived in this dark place with this idea that Washington is filled with this underbelly of monsters, that if the real world understood how dark, twisted and corrupt it really was, they would never agree with our government or want to be part of it. It's been kind of fun to live in that world. It felt like a fictional world.
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