Social mobility ends racism


Poverty isn't the problem
Jack Kelly makes some of the same points I did a few days ago. He is nicer about it though.

This gives liberals an excuse to blame the rioting in France -- which has finally died down after two weeks -- on the standard liberal villains, poverty and racism.

But if racism is a cause of the rioting, poverty isn't. As Theodore Dalrymple noted in a prescient article in the City Journal three years ago ("The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris"), those whom the media choose to describe as "French youths" have cell phones, cars, boom boxes, gold chains around their necks. "They enjoy a far higher standard of living than they would in the countries of their parents' or grandparents' origin, even if they labored there 14 hours a day."

The economic part of the problem is a lack of social mobility, compounded by idleness. An idle mind is indeed the devil's playground.

Since the lack of social mobility is a product of the welfare state, the standard liberal "solutions" -- appeasement, coupled with great gobs of taxpayer money -- are unlikely to be effective.

There is no social mobility in France because the economy is stagnant. Unemployment is high. If French scientists have to emigrate to find work, what chance do those with few job skills have of grabbing a rung on the shrinking corporate ladder, much less of climbing it?

The more I think about it, the more I believe that a certain variety of modern liberal has to have people who can be victims, and they can't be allowed to be anything else.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - November 14, 2005 at 05:13 AM  Tag


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