bobbyw24
08-01-2010, 06:11 AM
Walter Williams on the Tyranny of the Majority, the US Federal Budget and Free-Market Thinking
Sunday, August 01, 2010 – with Ron Holland
Walter Williams
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Walter Williams (left).
Introduction: Dr. Walter E. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, and More Liberty Means Less Government. Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.
Daily Bell: Please answer these questions as if readers were not aware of your books, articles or frequently quoted opinions. How did you become interested in free-market thinking instead of socialism?
Walter Williams: Well, I think that free-market thinking is just an extension of having a respect for basic principals of individual liberty. Individual liberty means that I can negotiate, I can engage in peaceful voluntary exchange with anybody I wish to whether they are Americans or whether they are from Europe, Mexico, Africa or anywhere in the world. So, my free market ideas come from individual liberty.
Daily Bell: Can you give us some background? What were your childhood and young adult influences regarding economics and classical liberalism? Were you influenced by the American Austrian school, Murray Rothbard and others?
Walter Williams: No I was not. And if I can identify anybody it was Thomas Payne who wrote Common Sense, which I have read a number of times. If you are not familiar with Common Sense, it is what Thomas Payne wrote to rally the American Colonies to rebel against the Crown.
Daily Bell: How did you arrive at your current position? A little more background on your academic success if you don't mind.
Walter Williams: I got married in 1960 but I was drafted in the army in 1959. I was in Korea in 1961 and had a lot of time by myself because I had a lot of problems in the army. I concluded that if I didn't get started, I was never going to be anything. I told my wife that as soon as I get out of the army and we save $700, we are going to leave Philadelphia and we are going to Los Angeles where I can go to college. So I got out of the army July 3, got my old job back with Yellow Cab taxi and by December 1 we were on the road to LA where I went to school at Los Angeles State College, now LA State University, and I went to school continuously. I got a BA in three years and then I transferred to UCLA with the intention of making my Masters Degree my terminal degree. While I was there I received a lot of encouragement to pursue my Doctorate. The encouragement I received made me think, "I know just as much as anybody else here." So I went on and received my Doctorate in 1972.
Daily Bell: What has motivated you to write so well and sensibly? You seem to have a kind of righteous anger about you when it comes to ideas and how people ought to relate to each other. Where does this come from?
Walter Williams: Again, it goes back to my ideas on liberty and my respect for individual rights. I try to write so that economics is understandable to the ordinary person. I have had a lot of encouragement to do this and I had a very tenacious mentor at UCLA. He used to pick on me; his name is Armen Alchian, a very distinguished economist. We were in the hallway one day and he said to me, "You know Williams, the true test of whether somebody understands his subject comes when he can explain it to someone who doesn't know a darn thing about it." I take pride in knowing I can explain economics to the ordinary person. At the same time I try to convince my fellow Americans, my fellow citizens of the world, on the moral superiority of individual liberty. The main ingredient for individual liberty is limited government.
Daily Bell: Have you fought against racism in your career? Has it been a big concern for you? How so?
Walter Williams: I guess my first encounter with open racial discrimination would have been in the army on my way to a post assignment that I had in Fort Stewart, Georgia. I woke up on the bus in the middle of the night and on the route that they were traveling, one of the places that they stopped was a rest station where they could buy food and things. There, I saw a sign saying, "Colored waiting room" and "White waiting room," and this was the first time I had seen this. At Fort Stewart, I encountered gross racial discrimination. I just made life very hard for those who were discriminating against black soldiers, hard in the sense of just being a troublemaker, going out of my way to start trouble. I have a new book coming out this Fall, an autobiography. I go into great detail about my life in the military and my life with racial discrimination. But the best thing one can do in terms of fighting discrimination of any type, is try to be the best that you can possibly be as opposed to getting on a soap box and trying to lead people.
Daily Bell: Do matters of race in America concern you?
Walter Williams: I think that black Americans made the greatest gains over the shortest period of time than any other racial group has made. In 1865 neither slave nor slave owner would have believed that the black people would have made the progress that we have made. If you look among black Americans, some of them are among the world's most famous people; black Americans are among some of the wealthiest people. If you add up all the money that black Americans earned each year and you thought of it as a nation, our GDP would be the 16th or the 17th largest in the world. And now we have a black president. In 1865, no black American would believe we would have made this progress in a century and a half, if ever. And this kind of progress speaks well of the intestinal fortitude of a people and also of the nation in which these kinds of gains are possible. These kinds of gains would have been impossible anywhere else in the world – other than in the United States – so it speaks very well of our country. Now that is not saying that our racial problems are over, but there have been large gains.
Daily Bell: Does the black community support Barack Obama in your view, even today? If so, why?
Walter Williams: Oh yes, I think they support Barack Obama because I think black Americans are unfortunately are a one-party people. They just support whoever is the Democrat; they supported Bill Clinton; they supported Jimmy Carter. It is very unfortunate that black people are a one-party people in a two-party system. That's an very unfortunate set of circumstances because it means that one party, namely the Democrats, will take their vote for granted and the Republicans won't even try to get their vote. So it's not the most enviable position to be in.
Daily Bell: How have you seen economics change during your career?
http://www.thedailybell.com/1259/Walter-Williams-on-the-Tyranny-of-the-Majority-the-US-Federal-Budget-and-Free-Market-Thinking.html
Sunday, August 01, 2010 – with Ron Holland
Walter Williams
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Walter Williams (left).
Introduction: Dr. Walter E. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored six books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, and More Liberty Means Less Government. Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.
Daily Bell: Please answer these questions as if readers were not aware of your books, articles or frequently quoted opinions. How did you become interested in free-market thinking instead of socialism?
Walter Williams: Well, I think that free-market thinking is just an extension of having a respect for basic principals of individual liberty. Individual liberty means that I can negotiate, I can engage in peaceful voluntary exchange with anybody I wish to whether they are Americans or whether they are from Europe, Mexico, Africa or anywhere in the world. So, my free market ideas come from individual liberty.
Daily Bell: Can you give us some background? What were your childhood and young adult influences regarding economics and classical liberalism? Were you influenced by the American Austrian school, Murray Rothbard and others?
Walter Williams: No I was not. And if I can identify anybody it was Thomas Payne who wrote Common Sense, which I have read a number of times. If you are not familiar with Common Sense, it is what Thomas Payne wrote to rally the American Colonies to rebel against the Crown.
Daily Bell: How did you arrive at your current position? A little more background on your academic success if you don't mind.
Walter Williams: I got married in 1960 but I was drafted in the army in 1959. I was in Korea in 1961 and had a lot of time by myself because I had a lot of problems in the army. I concluded that if I didn't get started, I was never going to be anything. I told my wife that as soon as I get out of the army and we save $700, we are going to leave Philadelphia and we are going to Los Angeles where I can go to college. So I got out of the army July 3, got my old job back with Yellow Cab taxi and by December 1 we were on the road to LA where I went to school at Los Angeles State College, now LA State University, and I went to school continuously. I got a BA in three years and then I transferred to UCLA with the intention of making my Masters Degree my terminal degree. While I was there I received a lot of encouragement to pursue my Doctorate. The encouragement I received made me think, "I know just as much as anybody else here." So I went on and received my Doctorate in 1972.
Daily Bell: What has motivated you to write so well and sensibly? You seem to have a kind of righteous anger about you when it comes to ideas and how people ought to relate to each other. Where does this come from?
Walter Williams: Again, it goes back to my ideas on liberty and my respect for individual rights. I try to write so that economics is understandable to the ordinary person. I have had a lot of encouragement to do this and I had a very tenacious mentor at UCLA. He used to pick on me; his name is Armen Alchian, a very distinguished economist. We were in the hallway one day and he said to me, "You know Williams, the true test of whether somebody understands his subject comes when he can explain it to someone who doesn't know a darn thing about it." I take pride in knowing I can explain economics to the ordinary person. At the same time I try to convince my fellow Americans, my fellow citizens of the world, on the moral superiority of individual liberty. The main ingredient for individual liberty is limited government.
Daily Bell: Have you fought against racism in your career? Has it been a big concern for you? How so?
Walter Williams: I guess my first encounter with open racial discrimination would have been in the army on my way to a post assignment that I had in Fort Stewart, Georgia. I woke up on the bus in the middle of the night and on the route that they were traveling, one of the places that they stopped was a rest station where they could buy food and things. There, I saw a sign saying, "Colored waiting room" and "White waiting room," and this was the first time I had seen this. At Fort Stewart, I encountered gross racial discrimination. I just made life very hard for those who were discriminating against black soldiers, hard in the sense of just being a troublemaker, going out of my way to start trouble. I have a new book coming out this Fall, an autobiography. I go into great detail about my life in the military and my life with racial discrimination. But the best thing one can do in terms of fighting discrimination of any type, is try to be the best that you can possibly be as opposed to getting on a soap box and trying to lead people.
Daily Bell: Do matters of race in America concern you?
Walter Williams: I think that black Americans made the greatest gains over the shortest period of time than any other racial group has made. In 1865 neither slave nor slave owner would have believed that the black people would have made the progress that we have made. If you look among black Americans, some of them are among the world's most famous people; black Americans are among some of the wealthiest people. If you add up all the money that black Americans earned each year and you thought of it as a nation, our GDP would be the 16th or the 17th largest in the world. And now we have a black president. In 1865, no black American would believe we would have made this progress in a century and a half, if ever. And this kind of progress speaks well of the intestinal fortitude of a people and also of the nation in which these kinds of gains are possible. These kinds of gains would have been impossible anywhere else in the world – other than in the United States – so it speaks very well of our country. Now that is not saying that our racial problems are over, but there have been large gains.
Daily Bell: Does the black community support Barack Obama in your view, even today? If so, why?
Walter Williams: Oh yes, I think they support Barack Obama because I think black Americans are unfortunately are a one-party people. They just support whoever is the Democrat; they supported Bill Clinton; they supported Jimmy Carter. It is very unfortunate that black people are a one-party people in a two-party system. That's an very unfortunate set of circumstances because it means that one party, namely the Democrats, will take their vote for granted and the Republicans won't even try to get their vote. So it's not the most enviable position to be in.
Daily Bell: How have you seen economics change during your career?
http://www.thedailybell.com/1259/Walter-Williams-on-the-Tyranny-of-the-Majority-the-US-Federal-Budget-and-Free-Market-Thinking.html