… is from page 407 of the 2016 second edition of Thomas Sowell’s excellent volume Wealth, Poverty and Politics:
Monstrously appalling things done by some peoples to others darken the history of every region on the planet, but descendants of peoples guilty of the worst or most extensive villainies of the past are by no means always the most prosperous peoples today. Conversely, few peoples have been persecuted for so many centuries, in so many parts of the world as the Jews, who today prosper and achieve. None of this suggests that persecution has no economic effects, but only that how much is an empirical question, not a foregone conclusion.
DBx: Yes.
If the ‘logic’ (such as it is) were valid of those persons who today argue that justice requires white Americans to be taxed more in order to pay reparations to the descendants of American slaves, then it follows that gentiles in most parts of the world should be taxed more in order to pay reparations to Jews.
I, of course, would oppose any proposal to pay reparations to Jews – and my opposition comes from the same logical, empirical and ethical place that produces my opposition to pay reparations to blacks.
