Disparity of Force

"Cameron Poe, you have pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree. With your military skills, you are a deadly weapon, and are not subject to the same laws as other people that are provoked--because you can respond with deadly force. It is the order of this court that you be remanded to a federal penetentiary, where you will remain incarcerated for a term not less than seven to ten years."
--Sentencing Judge (Con Air)

Some people seem to believe that there is no justification for an individual to shoot someone who is 'unarmed.' These people ignore the legal principle of disparity of force.

In the eyes of the law, a gun is not a magical source of power. It is one of myriad ways of exerting deadly force. Disparity of force recognizes that even without a gun, knife, or other ostensible weapon, a violent attacker may possess a physical advantage over the intended victim that, if the assault is permitted to continue, the totality of circumstances suggest that the victim is likely to badly hurt or killed. This situation authorizes the victim to use lethal force (a.k.a. proportionality of force), including use of a gun, against the attacker.

Factors that establish disparity of force conditions include:

Age. Young attacking old (man in 20s attacking man in 70s), or old attacking young (man in 20s attacking young teen).

Size. Big attacking small.

Fitness. Highly fit attacking weak or unfit.

Numbers. Many attacking few.

Fighting skill. Highly skilled hand-to-hand fighter attacking someone with low unarmed fighting skill.

Position of advantage. Attacker has freedom of movement and leverage while the victim does not.

Furtive movement. As part of attack or credible threat of attack, attacker reaches into concealed area for what appears to be a gun or other lethal weapon.

Attempt to gain control of victim's weapon. Attacker seeks to gain control of victim's gun or other lethal weapon.

Impaired victim. Attacker assaults previously injured or handicapped victim, or during the fight an attacker impairs victim's ability to fight back, escape, or evade continuing blows.

Being armed does not require a weapon. Being without a weapon does not make one unarmed.

Principled self-defense requires thorough understandinging of disparity of force.

Gun Bans and Disparity of Force

Daniel LaRusso: You really think I can beat that guy?
Miyagi: No matter. Wacko teacher attitude rest in fist. Stupid, but fact of life. Win, lose, no matter. You make good fight...earn respect. Then nobody bother.
--The Karate Kid

When they are challenged, gun grabbers sometimes dial back their claims from "banning guns would eliminate shooting-related crime" to "banning guns would reduce the likelihood of crime." At first glance, the latter claim seems more reasoned and valid. But upon further scrutiny, is it really?

Suppose we have two people, A and B. Both of them carry guns. However, their motivations for carrying guns differ. A carries a gun to facilitate acts of aggression on others (e.g, theft, murder, etc.). B carries a gun to protect his interests from unwanted, violent intrusion by others.

As an aggressor or potential aggressor, A has a general preference for picking targets that allow him to exploit disparity of force. Disparity of force means that, in a violent altercation involving two of more parties, one party possesses capacity for bringing significantly more force to bear on the situation than the other(s). Greater force implies higher likelihood of victory in the altercation.

Like many criminals, A realizes that a gun gives him great disparity of force--assuming, of course, that his target does not carry a firearm as well. Therefore, A will tend to steer clear of people like B, preferring instead to prey on unarmed victims.

B's gun serves as a deterrent to crime. It decreases, rather than increases, the likelihood of crime--at least that of A on B.

Now, consider the situation where guns are banned by law. B, being a law-abiding citizen, surrenders his weapon to authorities. On the other hand, A, having little regard for the law, keeps his.

It doesn't take A long to realize that disparity of force has tilted more in his favor. Many people who were previously carrying weapons are now walking the streets unarmed. This emboldens B to commit more crime.

Moreover, this situation likely incentivizes more people to pursue criminal careers as it appears that likelihood of successful criminal acts has gone up. Black markets for guns will also surely intensify, along with their criminal potential.

Rather than decreasing the likelihood of crime, banning guns is likely to increase crime.

Indeed, this is precisely what empirical evidence suggests (e.g., here, here).

Monetary Policy and Wealth Disparity

"It's the story of the greatest wealth transfer in the history of the world."
--Jake Moore (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)

Stock markets are marking all time highs with over 75% of days in the last month and nearly 2/3 of days in 2013 finishing in the green.

It has been Fed chair Ben Bernanke's stated goal to goose equity prices higher and thus far he is succeeding. He is printing another bubble.

I am amazed at the intellectual dishonesty of people who are concerned about growing wealth disparity in this country yet remain silent about the effects of monetary policy on exacerbating that gap. As of 2007, the wealthiest 1% in this country owned nearly 40% of US stocks by value. The top 10% owned over 80%.

Since 2007, we can be sure of two things. Equity ownership among the top few percent has become even more concentrated. And the chasm between the rich and poor has grown wider thanks to government force in the form of monetary policy.

position in SPX

Widening Divide

Now we're back on the train, yeah
Oh, back on the chain gang
--The Pretenders

Peter Atwater shows a nice graph in this article that pictures the widening chasm between the haves and have nots.

The Bloomber Consumer Comfort Index is used as a proxy for social mood. I knew little about this index prior to Peter's piece but upon examining the methodology it appears to garner reasonable face validity as a social mood proxy.

His point is that if you take approx 2003 as a frame of reference, then the CCI has since been consistently lower than movements in the S&P 500. Moreover the gap between the CCI and the SPX has been widening. In particular, uptrends in the SPX are not being mirrored by uptrends in the CCI.

If we accept the assumption that the SPX is a reasonable proxy for the welfare of the well-to-do, then this graph portrays the growing disparity between the rich and the rest. Government policies, particularly those of the Federal Reserve, have clearly targeted higher stock market prices as a path to broad economic recovery. These policies have indeed jacked stocks higher, but these higher stock prices are not trickling down to improve the condition of the masses.

The next time President Obama or someone in his administration blames someone else about the widening chasm between rich and poor, don't be duped by the rhethoric. This administration is playing a direct role in exacerbating income disparity in this country.

position in SPX 

Income Inequality by Force

"Hey, Cyn, guess where I am?"
--Tess McGill (Working Girl)

Spot on observation that although President Obama calls growing income inequality 'morally wrong,' income disparity has grown more on his watch than in other recent administration. These pages have frequently discussed the effects of government policy, and this administration's efforts in particular, on the distribution of income and wealth (examples here, here, here, here).

Income inequality itself is not morally wrong. In fact, it is an essential feature of a thriving market economy, as it empowers consumers to motivate producers to better meet marketplace needs. Those producers who do so are compensated well; those who do not do so are paid less.

Although it gets less attention, an even more important feature of a market economy is income mobility, defined as the extent to which people can move (up or down) in income. In unhampered markets, people who better serve the needs of the market move to higher income brackets; those who do not do so drop to lower levels.

Distributions of income and wealth therefore have natural shapes and variances to them, reflecting voluntary cooperation among people seeking to improve their circumstances.

The problem occurs when force is applied to unnaturally alter the distributions. When people use force on their own to alter income or wealth distributions, it is called robbery, fraud, slavery, etc.

When people employ government agents to forcefully alter income or wealth patterns, the associated policies go by many names: welfare, war, fiscal policy, monetary policy, et al. Some of these policies force the distribution tighter while others serve to widen it.

Currently, the policies enacted by the Obama administration are, on the net, serving to force the distribution wider.

If this president is serious about reducing income inequality then he should not apply even more force to the system in hopes of reducing the spread between rich and poor.

The correct response is to remove force from the system.

Origins of the American Welfare State

"Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have."
--Wizard of Oz

Interesting article by Rothbard (1996) tracing the origins of the welfare state in the US. He dismisses poverty (general standard of living increased), growing income disparity (income spreads narrower here than in 3rd world), alienization from industrialization and urbanization (cities tended to facilitate local community in 1800s/early 1900s; no correlations found between industrialization and social insurance programs), unionization (max penetration was 5-6% of workforce) as primary factors.

As Rothbard is prone to do, he first identifies groups whose economic interests were promoted by growing the welfare state, and then works his way backwards. Two groups in particular gained from the movement. One was a growing legion of intellectuals, technocrats, and the 'helping professions' that sought power, prestige, subsidies, jobs as well barriers to entry in their fields in the form of licensing. The other group was big business who, having failed to gain monopoly power in the free market, turned to government for subsidies, contracts, and, especially, forced cartelization.

At the turn of the 1900s, Rothbard observes, the interests of these two groups coalesced and overlapped, thereby creating a powerful coalition of weath and opinion-making that accelerated growth of the welfare state in the US.

Heading back to the beginning, then, Rothbard proposes these primary factors in the run up:

Post millenial pietism (PMP). A primarily Protestant movement in the early 1800s that scorned formal church organization and, particularly in the North, encouraged believers to devote their energies toward establishing the perfect society in American thru social and political means. Early initiatives to inculcate civic virtue and obedience included prohibition laws and the first American public schools.

Unlike today, the Democrat Party was the champion of free markets, limited government, and separation of church and state at the time (it was so until being overthrown in the late 1890s by the William Jennings Bryan crowd). As the PMP movement ensured, the Democrats saw a huge influx of religious groups opposed to Yankee theocracy.

Where did the PMP folks head? Why, they ultimately gravitated to the Republican Party, promoting it as the 'party of great moral ideas.'

Big Business. In the mid-late 1800s, big business began jumping on the bandwagon of state privilege and joined the Republican coalition. Early supporters were the railroads who were dependent on government coercion for expansion and lugging a mountain of debt, and iron and steel who were chronically inefficient and dependent on tariffs to shield them from competition.

Feminist movement. What began as an offshoot of the PMP movement among mid- to upper-class women, particularly in the North, led to 'Woman's Crusades' for suffrage, prohibition, and statist programs for government intervention and social welfare. By the 1880s, feminist groups were pushing mandatory work rules, government shelters for the children and poor, federal aid for education--particularly for mothers, and government vocational training for women.

Progressive movement. Driven by a cohort born around 1860, the PMP movement was losing its religious undertow and becoming secularized by the late 19th century. Rothbard suggests that emphasis shifted 'more and more toward a Social Gospel, with government correcting, organizing, and eventually planning the perfect society.' (p. 205) Mix in the socialist ideas eminating out of Europe at the time, and you have a powerful cocktail that became the Progressive movement.

Instrumental in the Progressive movement were academics who obtained their doctorates in socialist Germany (PhD programs were rare here until after 1900) and then returned here to teach. One of Rothbard's real strengths as a historian of political economy is his ability to trace out 'supply chains' of political influence. German trained professors and their offspring populated institutes in higher learning. The Elys, the Commons, the Deweys trained future government officials as well as rising to positions of power themselves.

Women progressives. By the late 19th century, female activism became professionalized and was expressed largely by social work. This movement particularly attracted unmarried women from wealthy backgrounds who had both time and resources to bring to the cause. A primary expression of the movement were settlement house initiatives which became magnets for government programs for social reform and change.

Rothbard traces the movement of many of these women thru the welfare supply chain built by Progressives from the early 1900s thru the New Deal. I also found it interesting how many of these people came from Rockeller, Morgan, Harriman, and other industrialist lineage.

New Deal. After the runup in welfare activities over the previous 100 yrs, the New Deal seems almost an afterthought. Rothbard demonstrates the extent to which New Deal programs were populated by individuals who had essentially been in training for State posts for many years. By this time, men were following in the footsteps of the women pioneers in welfare and social work organizations.

Social Security and big business. While Social Security was a New Deal program, coming on line in 1938, Rothbard highlights it due to its interesting assembly. In the early 1930s, big business, especially those under the Rockefeller umbrella, got behind the idea of a social insurance program. At the time, most large businesses were lugging around pension and other benefit programs for their employees. Smaller, more entrepreneurial organizations had not committed to such obligations and opposed social insurance. Big business was particularly adamant that no business escape social security tax obligations.

Hopefully you see what went on here. Big business used their support of social insurance to gain ground on the superior cost structure of smaller and  nimbler competitors. Corporatism at its finest.

Reference

Rothbard, M.N. 1996. Origins of the welfare state in America. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 12(2): 193-232.

Ditch Zero

Stretched by fewer thoughts that leave me
Chasing after my dreams disown me
Loaded with danger
--The Fixx

Bill Gross argues that central bankers should ditch zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) but quick. Why? "Because zero bound interest rates destroy the savings function of capitalism."

Indeed, it should be obvious that without savings to provide capital for investment, there is no capitalism.

ZIRP is hurting mainstream Americans. People are less prone to save and invest in their future when interest rates are low. As Gross observes, "They are not so much in a pickle barrel as they are on a revolving spit, being slowly cooked alive while central bankers focus on their Taylor models and fight non-existent inflation."

Gross is wrong about inflation. Thru ZIRP policies, central banks have increased money supply by trillions--the essence of inflation. This inflation has increased wealth disparity as it has promoted higher security prices while slowly devaluing dollars in the wallets of the masses.

Ditching ZIRP increases savings and economic growth and reduces inflation.

One Hundred Days to Nowhere

Been away so long I hardly knew the place
Gee it's good to be back home
Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case
Honey disconnect the phone
--The Beatles

Today's news that the US government will take over Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) is a watershed, but not unexpected, event. Indeed, if you've been reading Minyanville, then this announcement should not surprise you much. MV has been elaborating the F-Troop situation for years.

I have no doubt that many mainstream media commentators, as well as political pundits, will portray this situation as a 'market failure' and that government intervention was necessary to preserve social welfare.

Critical thinkers likely won't drink that kool aid. Fannie and Freddie are 'government sponsored entities (GSEs)' which, by definition, are vehicles of bureaucratic intervention in market functioning. Fannie, for example, was born from FDR's New Deal programs in 1938 with the goal of boosting home ownership above what free markets would have permitted alone.

There is nothing 'market failure' related about the F-Troop case. Instead, this situation is the product of potential energy turned kinetic from pressures building over years of bureaucratic market distortion.

Claims that placing FNM and FRE in government receivership are necessary to preserve social welfare are contestable as well. Consider those likely to benefit from this bail out, including holders of GSE debt and mortgage backed securities (including bond firms like PIMCO), politicians promoting housing market preservation and housing for the poor, mortgage holders who borrowed more than they should have, lenders who lent more than they should have, among others.

Who gets hurt? Those who were prudent. People who didn't reap reckless rewards during the preceding housing boom, but who will pay for the recklessness of others as the boom inevitably busts.

As such, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. For those concerned about increasing disparity in class wealth, look not on 'free markets' as the cause of this phenomenon. Consider instead the consequences of government intervention that distorts markets, and of our ongoing willingness to privatize gains and socialize losses.

no positions

Sentimental Journey

'Cause, you're emotion in motion
My magical potion
You're emotion in motion
To me
--Ric Ocasek

Anyone looking at a chart of stock prices can see that markets move in ebb-and-flow cycle patterns. In fractal-like fashion, cyclical patterns reveals themselves across various time frames--from granular minute-to-minute action to secular decade-long swings.

The nascent field of socionomics equates cycles with changes in 'social mood'--alternating periods of collective optimism and pessimism that cause investors to run with the pack (a.k.a. 'herd behavior').

Here is an interesting diagram that reflects various emotional states as a market cycle progresses. Note that extreme optimism is associated high risk. This is because euphoria has driven investors to bid up prices. At some point, extreme optimism reverses as do prices.

This model suggests that best value is obtained at lows in the sentimental cycle. Extreme pessimism drives investors to sell and to stay away from assets marked way down.

I personally find it useful to overlay these concepts on my fundamental analyses. For example, a question that I've been asking myself over the past couple of weeks is where on the diagram is general stock market sentiment currently?

We entered a bullish uptrend off the March 2009 lows. Since then, markets have been rising on increasing optimism. This has been a strong bull run, with major indexes like the S&P 500 (SPX) up nearly 100% off the lows. Now, however, the uptrend is more than 24 months old and general market valuations are extremely rich. Technically, we're approaching a level (SPX 1250) which, if decisively pierced, would reflect a trend change.

From where I sit, collective sentiment may have topped out at 'Euphoria' at the end of April (approx SPX 1370). Investors are currently at 'Anxiety' after a 7% decline from the highs. If correct, then we have more work to do on the downside. Stages of fear, panic, capitulation (e.g., 'forced selling') lie somewhere ahead. I have been trying to position accordlingly.

I'm not totally pessimistic, however, as some individual names have been beaten down to the point where the negative sentiment coupled with interesting fundamentals suggests value. Cisco Systems (CSCO) is one of those names.

Over the past few months, CSCO has reversed nearly all of its gains off the 2009 lows as recent quarters have fallen short of expectations. Sentiment in this name is horrid, and portfolio managers have been busy unwinding positions in CSCO as prices go down.

Our diagram, of course, suggests that extremely negative sentiment is likely to wring risk out of a security. Pessimism encourages selling over buying. All else equal, the lower the price of a security, the better the value.

I happen to believe that CSCO's competitive advantage is still intact and durable. Using similar reasoning to my entry into this name, I now think I can buy a large multinational company with a durable franchise, strong balance sheet, and $9 billion in free cash flow, that I conservatively value at $90 billion, for a market price of about $60 billion.

The risk, of course, is that the fundamentals of the company have been permanently impaired, and markets are in the process of revaluing the franchise.

Could be, but the current disparity (market says it's worth $60 billion; I think it's worth $90 billion), gives me a decent margin for error in my assessment.

position in CSCO, SPX

Reducing Income Inequality

If I told you what it takes to reach the highest high
You'd laugh and say nothing's that simple
--The Who

Interesting article in the most recent Journal of Finance by Beck, Levine, and Levkov (2010). The researchers assess the impact of banking deregulation from 1976 to 1994 on income distribution.

Common wisdom is that industry regulation is necessary to improve social welfare. Otherwise the rich get richer at the expense of the poor.

The researchers found the opposite. After controlling for various economic and sociodemographic variables, income disparity actually narrowed during the study period. Social welfare, as reflected by income inequality, improved with bank deregulation.

While surprising to some, these findings should actually be expected. Regulation squelches competition and raises barriers to entry in an industry--effectively protecting the franchises of incumbents. A mountain of research suggests that innovation and efficiency gains are most often achieved by new enterprises rather than by the entreched establishment.

Cutting regs encourages Schumpeter's (1942) capitalistic 'process of creative destruction.' This process pushes general standards of living higher, not lower.

We're doing the opposite currently--saddling economic environments with ever more interventionary action by government. And the chasm between rich and poor widens...

Another laughably sad situation.

position in XLF

Reference

Beck, T., Levine, R., & Levkov, A. 2010. Big bad banks? The winners and losers from bank deregulation in the United States. Journal of Finance, 65: 1637-1667.

Schumpeter, J.A. 1942. Capitalism, socialism & democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Wrong Rights and Real Bubbles

"Who's the more foolish? The fool, or the fool that follows him?"
--Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars)

This president has made some laughable comments, but some recent ones are among his most ludicrous. He appears to be engaging in the classic propaganda tactic of linking terms that garner people's sympathies with wrong meanings in hope that, over time, people will reassign the wrong meaning to the term.

For example, in his weekly radio address last weekend that featured comments on his floundering Affordable Care Act, he proclaimed that "in the United States of America, health insurance isn't a privilege - it is your right."

Correctly defined, a right is something that simultaneously exists among all people and imposes no obligation on another - except that of non-interference. Americans are particularly sympathetic to the concept of rights through the writings of Jefferson and others who observed that rights come from our Creators or from nature rather than from government, and that government cannot legitimately revoke these rights (i.e., they are inalienable).

The 'right' that the president speaks of is not a right but indeed a privilege - a privilege that only government can provide by forcibly take resources from some for the benefit of others. People are treated unequally under the law in order to achieve some faction's vision of equally of condition. There is nothing natural or durable about this privilege as it could, as the president correctly observed in his speech, be revoked by a different regime that manages to get control of government's strong arm.

The president has also been voicing concern about financial bubbles in his recent speeches. On the surface, this is commendable. Once again, however, he appears to be appealing to people's capacity for fast rather than slow thinking in order to push an agenda.

For example, in a recent speech, he noted, "When wealth concentrates at the very top, it can inflate unstable bubbles that threaten the economy." He coupled this with comments that narrowing the gap between rich and poor is "my highest priority."

As these pages have observed many times, income inequality, while being an essential feature of a thriving economic system, is driven to unnatural extremes by interventionary policy. This president has overseen policies that have widened, not narrowed, the divide.

Concentration of wealth does not inflate financial bubbles. But wealth can become more concentrated as a consequence of government policies that do blow bubble.

Mr Obama is presiding over policies that are and always have been at the root of bubble creation.

This president wants you to believe that he opposes financial bubbles and income disparity while in reality he has been a major architect of both.

Massive Fight?

Suddenly now it seems
I'm sleeping with the enemy
--Kylie Minogue

In response to recent criticisms that a proposed trade deal would reverse effects of financial regulations implemented since the 2008 credit meltdown, President Obama responded in part with this one:

"Think about the logic of that, right? The notion that I had this massive fight with Wall Street to make sure that we don't repeat what happened in 2007, 2008, and then I sign a provision that would unravel it? I'd have to be pretty stupid."

The actual 'logic' of trade deal effects, particularly this one, on regulated markets is fodder for another day. Here let's consider the president's claim that he has engaged in a 'massive fight' with Wall Street to eliminate risk of a repeat market meltdown.

The president is almost surely referring to the Dodd Frank legislation and other regulation which does nothing to eliminate the root cause of the 2008 collapse: leverage many times in excess of what would be possible in unhampered markets.

Not only has that root cause not been eliminated but policies enacted under the Obama administration have increased leverage to levels far above where they stood before the 07-08 wipeout.

Add to that a couple of additional tidbits. Like all regulation, the supposed burden of Dodd Frank et al regulation is actually a boon to established players as it raises barriers to entry against innovative entrepreneurs who would otherwise enter the industry and chop down inefficient incumbents.

Moreover, the Obama administration has supported various policies that bailed out the supposed 'enemies' that this president has warred with. Wall Street profits, salaries, and bonuses are way up. Income disparity has widened. Many of Obama's Wall Street enemies have been large campaign donors.

With enemies like this, who needs friends?

Hussman's Hard Negative

I keep looking for something I can't get
Broken hearts lie all around me
And I don't see an easy way to get out of this
--Cutting Crew

Another weekly letter by John Hussman that contains several nuggets of insight. Right off the bat, he makes it clear that conditions have turned decisively negative, in his view.

The current situation is "characterized by an extremely unfavorable ensemble of conditions across valuations, sentiment, economic factors, and other conditions. Current conditions cluster with periods such as May 1962, October 1973, July 2001, and December 2007, all of which produced 10-20% market losses in extremely short order."

Dr J notes the increasing disparity between the leading indicators that his firm and ECRI tracks, which now signal an extremely high probability of US recession, and the prognostications of mainstream forecasters and pundits.

He notes some exchange between a Bloomber interviewer and ECRI's, Lakshman Achuthan:

Bloomber interviewer: [ECRI recently made] a recession call. What happened?
Achuthan: It's happening.

Suggests some serious cognitive dissonance out there regarding recession chances.

He also notes that the EU summit last week did (and can do) little to avert the central condition of credit crisis: solvency. Solvency is a shortfall between money owed and the resources needed to credibly repay it. Emphasis on 'credibly.' Printing money to pay back debts in devalued currency is not a credible strategy--at least in the eyes of creditors...

John suggests that perhaps one credible means for relieving stress in the EU is for countries to issue convertible sovereign bonds as they roll debt. The bonds would be convertible into the currency of the issuer at the option of the issuing government. Those countries with shaky fiscal houses would be required to pay a significant premium in order to compensate bond buyers for the commensurate risk.

Over time, John suggests, convertible debt might relieve the acute pressure that has built in the EU system. EU members would need to achieve sufficient financial credibility to remain in the EU system, lest they be subject to huge premiums on debt issued. The need for questionable bureaucratic enforcement mechanisms would be reduced. John suggests, "If the system can be saved, it will be saved" under such an arrangement.

One problem, of course, is that the significant discount that many EU countries currently enjoy by issuing debt under the implicit backing of the EU umbrella would vanish. Those countries would be forced to pay up and/or get their fiscal houses in order.

Market forces hate moral hazard...

position in SPX

Capitalism, Socialism, and Wealth

"Look, what does a capitalist do? Let me ask you that, Mike. Huh? Tell me. I mean, what does he make, besides money? I don't know what he makes. The workers do all the work, don't they?"
--John Reed (Reds)

Not a bad sketch of socialists tend to view, or at least how they like to discuss, the two systems of economic organizing. The important feature of capitalism is that the rising tide of productivity improvement lifts all boats.

The only change I might make involves the upper right quadrant. With socialism, there is likely to be a large disparity of wealth between rich and poor. There may be less rich people, but those who are live high above the squalor of the masses.

Progressive Racism

Sometimes I think it's a sin
When I feel like I'm winning
When I'm losing again
--Gordon Lightfoot

In a timely follow-up to Prof Williams' data-driven challenge of the Progressive racism narrative, Prof Anderson presents a case that it has been Progressive policies that have increased socioeconomic disparity among blacks. Economic regulation imposed by Progressives created monopolies where none existed and Progressive polices created new and harmful barriers to entry that blocked groups from climbing the economic ladder.

Some of these policies were intentionally racist, as demonstrated by quotes from Progressive icons such as Margaret Sanger. Similar to Lincoln, many Progressives saw the black population as negative influences on American society and sought to eliminate blacks thru both overt and covert policies. The history of Progressive labor laws, including minimum wage laws, can be viewed as a blatant attempt by powerful white coalitions to protect their franchises from competitive black labor.

Like Williams, Anderson notes that the real spread between black and white unemployment rates became more noticeable in the 1950s--after Progressive policies had a generation or so to take hold.

The irony of it all is that many blacks and well meaning Progressives embrace the very political philosophies that have widened the socioeconomic inequality that they purport to oppose.