Education

Thomas Sowell has always been a clear thinker. He is a brilliant economist who also applied his skills to social and ethnic issues which he has written on both domestically and internationally. His work is heavily empirical with findings that usually contradict convenient political myths.

In this piece Dr. Sowell attacks “the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups.” Much of the rationale for welfare programs depends upon what Sowell refers to as this “big hoax.” One of the major parties in this country has parlayed these falsities into a constituent base who have been made ever more dependent upon government handouts.

Good politics perhaps, but despicable abuse of the dependents themselves.

The Big Hoax

By Thomas Sowell

There have been many frauds of historic proportions — for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff’s hoax has made headlines.

But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong — namely, the hoax that

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