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.
Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.
I hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude.... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.
If it's true that every seven years each cell in your body dies and is replaced, then I have truly inherited my life from a dead man; and the misdeeds of those times have been forgiven, and are buried with his bones.
Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha.
When we are at the end of life, to die means to go away; when we are at the beginning, to go away means to die.
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
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