> The value of some places is the very fact that they're low density.
Exactly. Just look at a satellite image of Atherton, CA or Lexington MA; they're low-density residential places with plenty of greenery where each lot is sizable and crucially, near major economic centers with plenty of high-paying jobs. They're desirable precisely because they allow you more breathing room while being geographically close to the hustle and bustle of a big city.
Your society would be doomed to forever look back at historical grievances and never make progress.
As Ibram X. Kendi says: "The only remedy to past
discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Under your and his vision, there will never come a day when people aren't discriminated for things they had no control over.
> Or weren't given access to the same loans (including federally subsidized loans)
I'm not sure which time period you're talking about, but if it's the Boston Fed 1992 research on mortgage loans, then it has had legitimate academic challenges to its methodology.
> So as a white male, when you inherit your parent's house
The same advantage goes to a black male who inherits his parent's house, and the same disadvantage to anyone of any color who did not inherit a house.
> where most research has been done for white ethnicities
The US was nearly 90% white as recently as 1960, and was 75% white as of the 2000 census, so of course most research that has been done in the past was done with white research subjects.
Ultimately, nobody serious rejects the fact that there was past de jure racial discrimination against blacks in this country. What many people challenge is the notion that present de jure discrimination is the only way to remedy past de jure discrimination.
> Both are parts of who I am and neither deserves shame or uplifting.
This is a good point. I've always thought that my esteem of anybody should not change based on immutable characteristics of that person, or other factors that they had no material choice in being.
> if we follow the meritocratic ideology that everyone has the same opportunities available to them, it would be a natural conclusion
It's a natural-sounding conclusion that has no evidentiary basis in reality. Different cultural and ethnic groups value and specialize in different things, which over generations make for significant differences in the average member of those groups.
This is one of the biggest fallacies when it comes to policies that incorporate preferences based on racial, gender, or whatever other demographic basis you can think of: that absent biases (or "structures of oppression" or what have you), each and every subsection of society will reflect the composition of the whole more or less perfectly.
Asians are 6.3% of the US population yet comprise only 0.1% of the NFL (literally a handful of players among 1500+ in the active roster). Is it because football racially discriminates against Asians? No, it's because Asians as a whole are not very interested in being professional football players. There's nothing that stops the odd individual of Asian descent from making it to the NFL.
Women are roughly half of the population yet comprise only 13% of taxicab drivers. Is there a taxicab union that's preventing women from joining? No, on the whole women aren't very interested in being taxicab drivers. There's nothing that stops the odd woman from being one, though.
So on and so forth for literally every slice of life you can think of; you will never find anything that reflects the demographics of the underlying society. Hell, even the demographics of the 50 states don't reflect the demographics of the country as a whole. Vermont is only 1.5% black, whereas Alabama is nearly 30% black. By that metric, Vermont would be 20x as discriminatory against black people, wouldn't it?
> a more honest appraisal about what the real obstacles are for Black and Hispanic students
Different cultural and ethnic groups value different things. Virtually nobody who clamors for more black and Hispanic representation in Harvard's undergrad class, for example, also clamors for more Asian representation in the NFL, even though that disparity is much, much greater, with only a single-digit number of current players.
Ha, good one! One can only hope the Elbonian Parliament will have the sense to abolish this stupid Xtremesunshine time and observe one time zone year-round.
"Selflessly" insofar as everyone involved has no incentives, internal or external, that direct their behavior one way or another; which is to say, not selflessly at all.
The government isn't a machine that takes action for the good of the citizens with no feeling. It's a messy organization composed of people who are all looking out for their salaries, what makes their boss look good or their rivals look bad, whether they win the next election, and maybe sometimes the stated mission of the organization or the good of the citizens. And moreover, it does all that with the might of the law, the monopoly on violence.
If it's a similar amount of money for a similar level of outcome, I'd much rather the people use the money to better society and not government, for those reasons.
> Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault
What a demeaning way to describe a human being with an incredible personal story and his life's work. And it's wrong, too: if you simplify into a sentence or two what he says about minorities (and his body of work extends far beyond that), it's that well-meaning government policies often incentivize minorities into entering cycles of poverty, and that minorities should depend on themselves first and foremost and not the government to improve their lot.
Substantially equal in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? In equality before the law? In being judged not for the color of their skin, but the content of their character? Yes, and we should strive to make that even more so. Perfectly equal in all respects, including access to resources? Obviously not. If you define equality of opportunity as how many horseback riding lessons and unpaid internships a child is put through, then no, there is no such equality found in America or anywhere else in the world. Even the most egalitarian nations of the world in Scandinavia (the subject of this thread to begin with) have rich people and poor people.
A child of a poor single mother, Barack Obama, made his way to the highest office of the land (not to mention significant personal wealth), whereas a child of a billionaire, John du Pont, died in prison as a convicted murderer. Both had equal opportunities to make something of themselves in a cultural, legal, and economic framework that values the individual.
In this land of equality of opportunity, 93% of people born to parents in the bottom quintile of incomes ended up earning more than their parents, with 57% ending up in a higher quintile; and a full 60% of people born to parents in the top quintile of incomes ended up in a lower quintile[0].
Meanwhile, in Norway, famed for its egalitarian attitudes and highly redistributive policies, a higher percentage were able to climb out of the bottom quintile, but a similar percentage held on to their parents' top-quintile ranking[1]. The country has more billionaires per capita than the US, and still has a legally separate and privileged group of people, the monarchy, who by definition are unequal from the rest of the populace; and it's only a few generations removed from having legal privileges for the aristocracy.
According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but does not lead to job destruction either. That is to say, cutting the top tax rate has no correlation with any of those four items.
So if taking more or less taxes from the rich results in no meaningful difference in ordinary American lives, shouldn't the government then default to taking less? The other way would be just wasteful. And if your argument is that no, in fact the additional tax revenue from the rich is helpful because it funds various redistributive social programs, then my counterargument is that what those programs seem to be most effective at is incentivizing creating an unemployable underclass at the taxpayer's expense[0] while enriching politically connected players.
[0]: See Thomas Sowell's extensive body of research on the general welfare of black Americans before and after the Great Society programs of the 60s.
I'll own the snark (and point out that height is only non-transferable if you aren't trying hard enough, a la Harrison Bergeron), but my point stands. Life is full of situations where someone has it better off than someone else in whatever dimension you care to look at. I believe in equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome, which is what GP seemed to suggest in coveting the personal freedoms of a billionaire.
I'd love to be as tall and athletic as an NBA player. Perhaps a height tax is in order to more fairly redistribute people along the vertical dimension.
I did not make that assumption, with the idea that in countries with free (or freer, at any rate) market-based economies with little to no capital controls, the rising tide lifts all boats, including those of the proletariat without capital, to a standard of living higher than countries with unfree economies and significant capital controls.
In fact, in two of the countries that presently have significant capital controls (China and Russia), even your human capital is controlled with internal passports that limit where in your own country you can move to.
Of course, I likewise don't dispute that I don't know what your preferences are. My original statement ("you likely wouldn't want to") was intended to be a general statement, not for you in particular as an individual.
Exactly. Just look at a satellite image of Atherton, CA or Lexington MA; they're low-density residential places with plenty of greenery where each lot is sizable and crucially, near major economic centers with plenty of high-paying jobs. They're desirable precisely because they allow you more breathing room while being geographically close to the hustle and bustle of a big city.