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With all the talk about "disparities" in innumerable contexts, there is one very important disparity that gets remarkably little attention -- disparities in the ability to create wealth. People who are preoccupied, or even obsessed, with disparities in income are seldom interested much, or at all, in the disparities in the ability to create wealth, which are often the reasons for the disparities in income.
In a market economy, people pay us for benefiting them in some way -- whether we are sweeping their floors, selling them diamonds or anything in between. Disparities in our ability to create benefits for which others will pay us are huge, and the skills required can develop early -- or sometimes not at all.
A recent national competition among high school students who create their own technological advances turned up an especially high share of such students winning recognition in the San Francisco Bay Area. A closer look showed that the great majority of these Bay Area students had Asian names.
Asian Americans are a substantial presence in this region but they are by no means a majority, much less such an overwhelming majority as they are among those winning high tech awards.
This pattern of disproportionate representation of particular groups among those with special skills and achievements is not confined to Asian Americans or even to the United States.
It is a phenomenon among particular racial, ethnic or other groups in countries around the world -- the Ibos in Nigeria, the Parsees in India, the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Germans in Brazil, Chinese in Malaysia, Lebanese in West Africa, Tamils in Sri Lanka. The list goes on and on.
Gross inequalities in skills and achievements have been the rule, not the exception, on every inhabited continent and for centuries on end. Yet our laws and government policies act as if any significant statistical difference between racial or ethnic groups in employment or income can only be a result of their being treated differently by others.
Nor is this simply an opinion. Businesses have been sued by the government when the representation of different groups among their employees differs substantially from their proportions in the population at large. But, no matter how the human race is broken down into its components -- whether by race, sex, geographic region or whatever -- glaring disparities in achievements have been the rule, not the exception.
Anyone who watches professional basketball games knows that the star players are by no means a representative sample of the population at large. The book "Human Accomplishment" by Charles Murray is a huge compendium of the top achievements around the world in the arts and sciences, as well as in sports and other fields.
Nowhere have these achievements been random or representative of the demographic proportions of the population of a country or of the world. Nor have they been the same from one century to the next. China was once far more advanced technologically than any country in Europe, but then it fell behind and more recently is gaining ground.
Most professional golfers who participate in PGA tournaments have never won a single tournament, but Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods have each won dozens of tournaments.
Yet these and numerous other disparities in achievement are resolutely ignored by those whose shrill voices denounce disparities in rewards, as if these disparities are somehow suspicious at best and sinister at worst.
Higher achieving groups -- whether classes, races or whatever -- are often blamed for the failure of other groups to achieve. Politicians and intellectuals, especially, tend to conceive of social questions in terms that allow them to take on the role of being on the side of the angels against the forces of evil.
This can be a huge disservice to those individuals and groups who are lagging behind, for it leads them to focus on a sense of grievance and victimhood, rather than on how they can lift themselves up instead of trying to pull other people down.
Again, this is a worldwide phenomenon -- a sad commentary on the down side of the brotherhood of man.
---
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
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January 17, 2012 @ 8:46 am
Some are destined to lead, others are destined and designed to follow. If all the brains, talent and money were equally distributed at noon on Friday, by 12:01 someone would have more talent, more money and more brains than everyone else. It’s called the human condition of competition which is essential to the creative process, whether it be creation of ideas, wealth or man’s inherent drive to create and mimic he who created mankind and everything else. The reason secular Socialism ALWAYS fails, is because it refutes both God and these laws of nature in an attempt to create false equal outcomes in a race of human beings who were destined to conquer nature and not submit to it, to conquer our worst animal instincts and to conquer our selves first before we could conquer others. The secular Socialist would have us submit to our own worst passions which enslave us and the delusions that it is we who are the Gods of Self and the creators rather than just the discoverers of what the real creator and hand of Providence has created. This is why Secular Socialism ALWAYS fails, because it refutes these laws of nature and operates from the false premise of man’s edification and pre-eminence over these laws which only leads to failure and our own destruction and the culling out of the human race from the very nature from which it sprang, by making leaders out of those designed to be followers and followers out of those destined to be leaders.
It is basic human nature to seek to become more than what you are and it is this very God created human nature which separates us from the animals. Humans from the dawn of time when God first whispered into our ears and awakened our consciousness, have sought him out and sought to emulate his perfection to find our true God-Selves and escape our animal origins, to emulate and become our Giant selves rather than your Pigmy selves. That was until the Self God Democrat Party of moral and intellectual Pygmies was born and our worst animal instincts and fears were again the things to be elevated as the things to be sought after, while the laws of nature began to be refuted in favor of the laws of men and their imaginary power to manipulate the earth and other people in order to redistribute our wealth and talent to the advantage of their collective evil which refutes natural behavior in both the realms of rational thinking and sexual expression. By consistently fighting the laws of nature by pounding down man’s natural inclination for excellence,,,,,by redistributing equally the very human pursuits of perfection and accomplishment that elevated man from the slime, they only succeed in causing men and society to keep sliding back into the Socialist Slime of their failed ideology which has always refuted God and his laws of nature. Their Socialism has always failed when in competition against Gods elevating plan for mankind, and is destined to keep failing as God sits back and laughs at their folly and any who attempt to refute him and his excellent designed destiny for man to seek and acquire his God inspired perfection and return to the very edifying source from which we sprang.
January 17, 2012 @ 9:55 am
Competition between man and man, man and woman, and inside a person’s mind breeds innovation. You are right, this has been the case since Adam and Eve. Agency, means the power to choose, the consequences which follow teach experience, experience will either breed better decisions or destroy the individual.
This formula has been and will always be the immutable law. Government and whiners will not change this law.
January 17, 2012 @ 1:21 pm
Well, inluminatuo, it would come as a great surprise to Germany, France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and many other countries that their ”secular socialism ‘slime’” was a failure. Economics is not a religious art or science, it’s a secular one. While capitalism is the better system for this country, socialism works for other countries and that you have the temerity to determine what God wants as an economic system, religion or what makes “God sit back and laugh”, makes me wonder if your pious mouthings aren’t the words of the devil and pure blasphemy.
January 17, 2012 @ 10:02 pm
Hey Preogi, It might come as a surprise to you, but American Capitalists out produce Europeans per capita by 50% and still cover them under our military umbrella of protection which would cost their Socialist economies and productivity 20% of what they now otherwise use in failed social experimentation. In other words the American taxpayer is subsidizing their failed socialism with our defense dollars that THEY turn around and use to bury themselves more into failed socialism.
Let them defend themselves and pay the cost, ,,,the see how fast their socialism goes down the tubes,,,, even faster than it already is.
Yes God laughs at secular socialists who think their two dimensional wisdom of living only in the body and mind and ignoring their spiritual essence by denying God as the source of whom all infinite blessings flow. Socialists try to play God themselves by substituting their finite fallible secular God- Government as the source of our blessings and the source of our freedoms. Whenever it is the government from whom our freedoms and blessing flow, then it is the government who can take them away. Enter Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Chavez, Mao,,,,,now Obama. Our founders wisely understood the power and authority that the divine hand of providence played in the meaningful lives of men. The more we abandon these principles, the more meaningless and powerless we and our government becomes.
You cannot call yourself a Christian and vote these secular socialist demons into office who seek to drive the universal truths and laws of nature from the political scene, only to substitute the power of their failed socialist ideology propagated by their collective of losers. Worship at the altar of the socialist God at your peril. Katrina victims learned their lesson on how dependable that God is in crisis.
Economics is a religion when you fail to understand “It’s NOT THE ECONOMY STUPID’ It’s the stupid secular socialist people running the economy who create the real problem of “ITS THE DISHONESTY STUPID!” FIX THE DISHONESTLY AND THE ECONOMY FIXES ITSELF. Ever hear of that nasty inconvenient religious economic truth like ‘THOU SHALT NOT STEAL OR COVET???’
Only when you socialist fools understand that who and what you turn to in times of crisis actually defines who and what you worship, then and only then will you understand that the true God is a jealous God who wants no other Gods before him, and is particularly offended when you turn to Government fools, naves and dishonest thieves in times of your crisis and turn your back on he who created you,,,and you wonder why we continue to fail as a society? “ All we like sheep have gone astray, each and every one to his own way.”
January 18, 2012 @ 1:05 am
As the saying goes Inluminatuo: Touché,
January 17, 2012 @ 9:30 am
Wisdom and understanding are a gift from God, and all your articles are validation that you were obviously in line when these gifts were distributed.
If we had more men like yourself running for office, we the people, would not have to spend all our time worrying about the potential demise of a country we love.
January 17, 2012 @ 11:18 am
While it is true; leaders do rise to the top, can someone please explain to me how Ron Paul ever made it to a presidential debate stage?
January 19, 2012 @ 12:08 am
In response to the academic success of Asian Americans I suspect there would be an inverse relationship between commitment to sports and other social activities and academic success by both blacks and whites. About 25 years ago a Miami Herald byline writer called Bill Maxwell wrote blacks should get real about sports where only one in 800,000 made a living in pro football, but by concentrating on sports most ignored all those academic opportunities that could lead them success in later life. I suspected this Bill Maxwell might have been the Bill Maxwell who was the student body VP of Oregon State U, was a NROTC cadet and graduated about 1951. He was of course black, but as a cadet Maxwell had passed successfully a four hour test that selected only the brightest to be cadets.