unoriginal sources

Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek ... and ...?
It took me the longest time to realize that the guy with the afro is Thomas Sowell.

Here's his latest:

Some years back, there was a great flurry in the liberal media because a study showed that

1. black pregnant women received prenatal care less often than white pregnant women and that
2. infant mortality rates were higher among blacks.

There were indignant editorials in the New York Times and the Washington Post blaming the government for not providing greater access to prenatal care in order to stop preventable deaths of infants.

After getting a copy of the original study, I discovered that in the same study -- on the very same page -- statistics showed that

1. Mexican American women received even less prenatal care than black women and that
2. infant mortality rates among Mexican Americans were no higher than among whites.

A few pages further on, statistics showed that American women of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino ancestry also received less prenatal care than white women -- and had lower infant mortality rates than whites.

Apparently prenatal care was not the answer, though it was the kind of answer that suited the mindset of the liberal media and provided an occasion for them to wax indignant.

- Thomas Sowell, "Studies Prove"
read it | digg it

This reminds me of the study that comes out early every year reporting that on average, women earn less than men ... which is supposed to prove somehow that there is, in the market, a cultural bias against women that prevents labor competition from bidding their wages and salaries up to their marginal revenue product (not that the commentators would understand my summary of their silly position).

Never mentioned are studies that show gays earning more than straights, or even better: lesbians in general earning more than men in general.

Anyway, I'm not as big a fan of Sowell as I initially was, but he's pretty good on economics and social science.


Here are my earlier Sowell posts:

1. dreams can be deceiving
2. Thomas Sowell
3. best Sowell quote so far
4. social responsibility
5. never trust a conservative

And since his latest piece ends up talking about the "scientific consensus" on "global warming" I guess I'll list those posts, too:

1. political science
2. climate agnosticism
3. damn data