Walter E. Williams from Creators Syndicate

Is College Worth It? for 08/27/2008

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Over-rated Product: Higher Education (www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539)."

The U.S. Depart ...

Updated: Wed Aug 27, 2008

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Academic Mismatch I for 09/03/2008

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Which serves the interests of the black community better: a black student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student admitted to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his white peers, graduates and passes the bar? I, and hopefull ...

Updated: Wed Sep 03, 2008

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Academic Mismatch II for 09/10/2008

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Last week's column demonstrated the harm, suffered by black students, that results from law school race-based admission policies. The bottom line was that black students who might have done well at lower-tier law schools were recruited to more highly competitive law schools and turned into failures. One might be tempted to place the full blame for such callousness on deans of law schools, but t ...

Updated: Wed Sep 10, 2008

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Stubborn Ignorance for 09/17/2008

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Here's what the U.S. Constitution says: "All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." How many times have we heard politicians, pundits and guardians of our news media say that President Bush cut taxes, or Obama is going to raise taxes? The fact of the matter is that presidents h ...

Updated: Wed Sep 17, 2008

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Scaring Us to Death for 09/24/2008

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

There is a H.L. Mencken quotation that captures the essence of this year's politics: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." The media, economic "experts" and both presidential candidates are making bad-talking our economy key fe ...

Updated: Wed Sep 24, 2008

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Destroying Liberty for 10/01/2008

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own ...

Updated: Wed Oct 01, 2008

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Lessons From the Bailout for 10/08/2008

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

In my more cynical moments, I think that we Americans deserve what we get from our politicians, many of whom can be generally described as nothing less than loathsome. You say, "Williams, that's a pretty heavy putdown." My question to you is how else would you describe these congressmen who are now blaming the financial mess on the failure of the free market? Starting with the Communi ...

Updated: Wed Oct 08, 2008

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Political Monopoly Power for 10/15/2008

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

The Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, is the document most frequently referred to when trying to get a feel for the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. One such intention is found in Federalist 56 where Madison says, "...it seems to give the fullest assurance, that a representative for every thirty thousand inhabitants will render ...

Updated: Wed Oct 15, 2008

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Affordable Health Care for 10/22/2008

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

One of the campaign themes this election cycle is "affordable" health care. Shouldn't we ask ourselves whether we want the politicians who brought us the "affordable" housing, that created the current financial debacle, to now deliver us affordable health care? Shouldn't we also ask how things turned out in countries where there is socialized medicine?

The Vancouver, ...

Updated: Wed Oct 22, 2008

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Wackonomics for 10/29/2008

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

For the U.S. Congress, news media, pundits and much of the American public, a lot of economic phenomena can be explained by what people want, human greed and what seems plausible. I'm going to name this branch of economic "science" wackonomics and apply it to some of today's observations and issues.

Since July this year, crude oil prices have fallen from $147 to $64 a barrel. S ...

Updated: Wed Oct 29, 2008

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Capitalism and the Financial Crisis for 11/05/2008

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

There has always been contempt for economic liberty. Historically, our nation was an important, not complete, exception. It took the calamity of the Great Depression to bring about today's level of restrictions on economic liberty. Now we have another government-created calamity that has the prospect of moving us even further away from economic liberty with the news media and pundits creating t ...

Updated: Wed Nov 05, 2008

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Getting Beyond Race for 11/12/2008

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Despite the fact that President-elect Barack Obama's vision for our nation leaves a lot to be desired, the fact that he was elected represents a remarkable national achievement. When the War of 1861 ended, neither a former slave nor slave owner would have believed it possible for a black to be elected president in a mere century and a half, if ever. I'm sure that my grandparents, born in the 18 ...

Updated: Wed Nov 12, 2008

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Evil Concealed by Money for 11/19/2008

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Evil acts can be given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution or caring for the less fortunate. Let's think about socialism.

Imagine there's an elderly widow down the street from you. She has neither the strength to mow her lawn nor enough money to hire someone to do it. Here's my question to you that I'm ...

Updated: Wed Nov 19, 2008

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Trade versus Protectionism for 11/26/2008

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

There's a growing anti-trade sentiment in our country. Much of the dialogue is grossly misinformed. Let's try to untangle it a bit with a few questions and observations. First, does the U.S. trade with Japan and England? Put another way, is it members of the U.S. Congress trading with their counterparts in the Japanese Diet or the English Parliament? An affirmative answer is pure nonsense. When ...

Updated: Wed Nov 26, 2008

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Ignorance Reigns Supreme for 12/03/2008

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

How about a few civics questions? Name the three branches of government. If you answered the executive, legislative and judicial, you are more informed than 50 percent of Americans. The Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) recently released the results of their national survey titled "Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions." ...

Updated: Wed Dec 03, 2008

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Bailouts and Bankruptcy for 12/10/2008

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Let's not allow Congress and members of the bailout parade panic us into allowing them to do things, as was done in the 1930s, that would convert a mild economic downturn into a true calamity. Right now the Big Three auto companies, and their unions, are asking Congress for a $25 billion bailout to avoid bankruptcy. Let's think about that a bit.

What happens when a company goes bankrupt? ...

Updated: Wed Dec 10, 2008

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Counterfeiting versus Monetary Policy for 12/17/2008

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Congress is on a spending binge. With all the calls for bailouts, economic stimulus and other assorted handouts, there is a real risk of inflation in our future. If we do have a rapid inflation, it's likely that Congress, as they did in the financial meltdown, will blame it on everybody except themselves. Before Congress begins to shirk their responsibility, let's understand what an inflation i ...

Updated: Wed Dec 17, 2008

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Global Warming Rope-A-Dope for 12/24/2008

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy our planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil. The Washington Post asserted on May 28, 2006 that there were only "a handful of skeptics" of manmade climate fears. Bill Blakemore on Aug. 30, 2006 said, "After exte ...

Updated: Wed Dec 24, 2008

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Teaching Economics for 12/31/2008

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Many professors, mostly on the liberal side of the political spectrum, use their classrooms to proselytize students. I have taught economics for the past 40 years and challenge anyone to find even one student, among the thousands who went through my classes, who can say, "Professor Williams used his class to proselytize students." While acceptable at most universities, it is nothing l ...

Updated: Wed Dec 31, 2008

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Rich People Versus Politicians for 01/07/2009

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Sometimes I wish there were a humane way to get rid of the rich. Without the rich for whipping boys, we might be able to concentrate on what's best for the 99 and a half percent of the rest of us.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that ...

Updated: Wed Jan 07, 2009

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