… is the final paragraph, on page 424, of the 2016 second edition of Thomas Sowell’s excellent volume Wealth, Poverty and Politics:
Does it not matter if the hungry are fed, if slums are replaced by decent and air-conditioned housing, if infant mortality rates are reduced to less than a tenth of what they were before? Are invidious “gaps” and “disparities” all that matter? In a world where we are all beneficiaries of enormous windfall gains that our forebears never had, are we to tear apart the society that created all this, because some people’s windfall gains are greater or less than some other people’s windfall gains?
DBx: Sowell’s perspective is the adult, correct one, and his questions are apt. But, of course, combining people who can be duped into believing in miracles with other people skilled at doing such duping propels this second group of people into positions of political influence and power.
So very much politicking and political commentary today consists, first, of complaints that the earthly condition of this deserving person and that righteous group is less than heavenly, and, second, of whackadoodle proposals to create for these tormented victims of oppression and neglect the paradise that they so richly deserve but until now – or since the closing of a lost Golden Age – have been denied to them by devils.
