Thanks, I see the light. Let me rephrase that, "dirty air is (still) free and evenly distributed".

Ok, stealing that one. Of course I hardly ever go to Marxist rallys anymore...but I do know a lot of teens and slightly older kids with a bad case of "entitleitis"...

Your quite welcome. Some things are just so ridiculous, I get on a roll...

And I was thinking about it after I wrote the comment about Social Security: How could I forget? Of course "they" really did see segregation everywhere back in the 60's, and they were busing kids all over the place in a whole lot of cities everywhere. It still doesn't make "them" right about State-sponsored segregation vs. "it just happens to be where people live" segregation. The latter, isn't.

Not even air, Neal. Some places are filled with smog, or too windy, or dusty, or polluted with carbon monoxide or landfill stench. Fresh air is mostly made indoors anymore, with mechanical devices.

Thanks, ML, for the six good laughs all out of one comment. And I do remember the year schools were desegregated, because a few black students showed up in my classes. As a recent immigrant I had no notions of prejudice, being on the receiving end myself. One black girl explained to me that she was "Portuguese". No one had thought of "African American" labels yet.

Yes! A pity. His early indiscretions should not wipe out all the merits of his later years.

The Huffington post.. citing Demos, an ultra left wing "think tank"... time to back away slowly but deliberately.. nothing but sophistry.

I'll see if I can find the exact study, but Sowell noted that up to the 1950's, black family structure mirrored that of whites - and unsurprisingly so did income levels, education levels, and lawlessness. While the white family structure has slightly deteriorated, the black family structure has completely disintegrated, with 4 in 5 blacks being born to single mothers and their 15% population comprising more than 50% of all crime.

Here are a few of his studies, simplified in column format:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/39...

http://www.worldmag.com/2014/12/thomas_s...

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/36...

All provide slightly different takes on the matter, but all bring up the fallacy of a racial divide.

Interesting. I don't doubt it, but which one is the independent variable?

Yup. This has all been presented before, but Thomas Sowell did a much more credible analysis IMHO. And he shows a very causal link to the wage gap - the disintegration of the traditional family. Want to know what one single statistic best corresponds to wage gap? Births out of wedlock.

The biggest thing the idiot in this article completely and epicly fails to mention is what has been accurately accounted for in other economic studies: the presence of the father in the home.

If you look at the black community up to the late '50's, they had similar family composition and similar earning as other ethnic groups. What happened in the '60's especially is that the black community started de-emphasizing fathers in the home, and education suffered, incomes dropped, and lawlessness increased to the point at which we see it today.

The income disparity isn't caused by race, but by policy.

Excellent point. +1

...and then Jimmy Carter stole G. W. Carver's limelight as the peanut man ;)

I didn't say anything about "helpless waifs." I was saying that education and a stable family can close the income gap, but not overnight, or even in a single generation. If that requires too much effort, then -- well, too bad.

The model for eliminating the "gaps" has been around for over 150 years. It began in Japan and was picked up by Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, even Communist China, India, Israel, Botswana, Brazil, etc. Don't tell me that those are countries and minorities are helpless waifs. The same principles apply.

You could have stopped reading when you read that a house has more impact on outcomes than education, workforce participation and other self managed behaviors. Booker T. Washington and George W. Carver were both born slaves, and built one of the best universities in the US, along with hundreds of inventions. Their houses had nothing at all to do with their success. The appalling level of "scholarship" shown by some of these "researchers" should lead to a condemnation of the institutions that certified that they're qualified to do anything higher than flipping burgers.

Amazing how fast someone can disappear these days.

I'm liking that term as well. "Inverted reality argument".

Take an action, when that action utterly fails or otherwise causes disaster, blame your opponent for the action and therefore pin the blame on your opponent.

Too bad Bill Cosby lost his credibility. He had a good message.

Asians? What Asians? You wealthy people all look alike.

Now... Focus on the Wage Gap. It's all about the Wage Gap. Waaaaaggggeeee GGGaaappp.

Having been personally very involved in the "housing crisis" of 2007, et al, I know that it was not caused by "greedy banks, et al" but by our wonderful US Congress who kept pushing and pushing lenders to grant loans to people who were not qualified. I was shocked that these people could get loans. Well, given the flood of bad mortgages on the market, banks did the only thing that they could, i.e., package them up and sell them. It is true that two things were going on. First, the "not so smart" managers and brokers were selling these as Grade AAA instruments. This analysis was based on the Gaussian copula function that assumes to sets of funds have high correlation, which was not true. Second, smart traders saw this and traded against it. Bottom line - congress pulls a fast one, banks respond in the wrong way, housing market collapse, banks get blamed. Blame your ditzy congressional representative. Oh, and guess what? They are doing it again. Trade CDOs.

If Libs think that coming from a stable family and getting a good education will happen overnight, they are bound to be disappointed. It will take a generation to narrow the income gap and still another to close it. But it can be done, and has been done by people from the time this country started to the present day. When you are given the solution to a problem, but complain that it requires too much effort to implement, you deserve what you get.

"Except for misery in state-run economies, what is ever evenly distributed?" I can only come up with, distributed by God perhaps, AIR. And of course perhaps things like ocean water, if you can get to the ocean. Rain might be on the list, but not evenly, we get more than our share up here.

I think this has come up before, but still confounds me. What is a Latino?

What unfounded conclusions. This guy needs to study economics. Funny, how the American Indian does not matter at all, just the blacks. Also notice how the Community Reinvestment Act, which started the whole black mortgage disaster was not cited. Blacks could not hold onto homes any better than any other race when granted a mortgage they could not afford in the first place. Yet politicians, including Obama, had ACORN (now SEIU) burst into bank boardrooms to threaten racial discrimination charges if they did not grant loans to those who could not afford them, some of whom had no jobs. Once again, blacks have been used, by politicians for their votes, and fed the something for nothing entitlement crap. How many rich white kids have gone into poverty because they bought into this idea and lost everything also. Ignorance has no racial barriers, when indotrirnation starts in the public schools and is used to political advantage.

Wow! I didn't think to go looking for myself.
I enjoyed a good long laugh when I saw where the Asians are on that chart.
I now feel moved to opine that "just not complete" was very likely deliberate
Thanks.