Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that welfare systems serve the self-interests of the powerful rather than genuinely benefiting the public.
In this quote, Thomas Sowell critiques the welfare state by arguing that it is less about aiding the general populace and more about satisfying the desires and egos of those in positions of power. He implies that the intentions of the elites who design and maintain these systems often prioritize their own status and control rather than the actual well-being of the people they claim to serve.
In practice
In a debate about social policies, this quote could be used to emphasize concerns about the motivations behind welfare programs.
Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
The judgment: You are now before Yama, King of the Dead. In vain will you try to...deny or conceal the evil deeds you have done. ... the mirror in which Yama seems to read your past is your own memory, and also his judgment is your own. It is you yourself who pronounce your own judgment.
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
Real hunger is when one man regards another man as something to eat.
Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.
The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.
People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.
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