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Nov. 29, 2005 Walter Williams, economics professor at George Mason University, syndicated columnist, and irregular guest host of the Rush Limbaugh show, is an African-American pundit popular with the subtle racists of the republican party because he knows how to write and say things that conservatives want to hear from a black man. His knowledge and opinions should not be respected. The columns he writes are filled with misleading statistics from conservative think tanks, sources that are not reliable or subject to academic peer review. I can demonstrate how his columns are nothing but dishonest tripe that he randomly copies from these think tank websites. Before I dissect one of his recent columns, it should be noted that Mr. Williams favors giving more voting power to people who have more wealth. If this came to pass, rich people would have a greater number of votes as if they didn't alreadly wield more power and influence through bribery and campaign contributions. This means his mindset is not too different from feudal age landlords and colonial age imperialists. He definitely opposes an egalitarian society--an unusual point of view for an African-American. The vast majority of African-Americans are working class (both of my neighbors are black and they work multiple jobs to make ends meet), and they would suffer severely under the kinds of economic and political policies Mr. Williams favors. So I write this column with a great deal of motivation because I am defending the values of hard working middle class America against the misinformation published by the likes of Mr. Williams. The column I'm using as an example of Mr. Williams' dishonesty is entitled, U.S. Stacks up Well against Europe. (All of the statistics he used came from conservative think tanks.) Here is the most misleading statistic: "Europe's portion of the GDP dropped from 34% to 20% from 1913-1998, while the U.S. stayed steady at 22%." Any student of history can see why this such a bogus statistic. In 1913 Europe owned the third world and much of their wealth came from Africa and Asia. Now, that wealth rightly stays in those former colonies. Vietnam is no longer raped by France. India is no longer raped by England. Nigeria keeps its oil profits. Etc., etc. The decline in Europe's portion of the GDP has nothing to do with differences in economic policies as Mr. Williams falsely leads his readers to believe. Here is a second misleading statistic" "In France, Italy, Germany, and Belgium approximately a quarter of all workers under the age of 25 are unemployed." Mr. Williams writes this in defense of a low minimum wage. He omits this fact: In the U.S. teenage black unemployment is roughly 32%. The U.S. has a low minimum wage, yet has a high unemployment among young workers too. Another dishonest statistic he uses is this: "Since the 1970's America has created 57 million new jobs compared to just 4 million in Europe." What Mr. Williams doesn't say is America's population has increased about 50 or 60 million (or more) since the 1970's, while Europe's population has remained stagnant and in some countries they have zero population growth. Furthermore, Mr. Williams referred to something Paul Krugman wrote in a recent column as nonsensical, but he gave no reasons why. Mr. Krugman was explaining why Europe's productivity was lower than America's. Mr. Krugman wrote that Europeans have different lifestyle values; they take longer vacations and spend more time with their families. I happen to agree--many Americans can be materialist workaholics. So I wondered why Mr. Williams thought this was nonsensical and asked him in an email. I'll give his response later. I had some statistics of my own that show the standard of living in the U.S. does not stack up well compared to Europe. The following facts are from the book, Where We Stand, by Wolff, Ratter, and Bayers. 1. The U.S. ranks behind ten European countries in home ownership. 2. The U.S. has by far a higher household debt than any European country. 3. The U.S. ranks behind nine European countries in average household savings. 4. The U.S. ranks second only to the U.K. in average credit card debt. 5. The U.S. ranks second only to Belgium in government debt per person. 6. The U.S. ranks behind ten European countries (including Sweden) in investment rates. 7. The U.S. has far and away a greater income inequality than any European country. 8. The U.S. ranks behind six European countries in size of the middle class as a percentage of the population. 9. The U.S. leads the industrialized world in rates of poverty, children in poverty, and deaths from starvation. 10. The U.S. spends the most on health care, but according to JAMA ranks behind nine European countries in the quality of health care. I sent this information to Mr. Williams in an email. The response he sent back was astonishingly Neanderthal, like the kind of feedback I get from ignorant hicks on internet message boards. It was bigoted, uneducated, and irrelevant to any of the points I brought up. This is what he wrote: "For the most part, all of what you say is incorrect. But fret not. As America saved Europe from the Kaiser, then Hitler, then Stalin and his successors, we'll probably have to save Europe from the Arabs. If Europe would just depend its ownself, maybe we'd have more money to take care of the alleged shortcomings you mention. Cheers. Notice that he made a blanket statement dismissing all of my facts, but he could not give a single specific example. So I suppose, Europe didn't drain wealth from the third world, black teenaged unemployment is not high, and the U.S. doesn't rank low in the above numbered comparisons of standard of living. Instead, Mr. Williams changed the subject to, "how the U.S. saved Europe's butt," as if the Red Army, Great Britain, and the French resistance had nothing to do with Hitler's defeat. Mr. Williams' bigotry is apparent when mentioning, "saving Europe from Arabs." Europe hasn't been threatened by Arabs since the Moors invaded Spain over a thousand years ago. We know what Mr. Williams really means; he reveals an ugly prejudice against Arabs. The last sentence in his email response is just stupid. There is no such word as "ownself", and Europe does not depend on the U.S. for anything. One could call his last sentence...nonsensical. Every year, only one in a thousand aspiring new political columnists is able to get syndicated. I wonder how Walter Williams made it because his column are always so sloppily researched and dependent on dishonest statistics that he cuts and pastes together from intellectually fraudulent conservative think thanks. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. www.mark-gelbart.com Email: agelbart@aol.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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