The fault may not be in our Stars!

                      

        Interesting column in today's newspaper. The eminent (and now well into his dotage and a bit odd)  Thomas Sowell, a Far Right African American and PhD economist ( you thought Clarence Thomas was the only one?) announced that he knew why young African American males have a relatively hard time finding jobs. He also knows why so many homes were lost in the recent recession.  After reading the headline I was wondering to myself what piece of brilliant theoretical economic brilliance was about to be revealed .  He blames the "Liberal Left" for high unemployment among young Black males in the same breath that he blames them for the loss of homes during the recession, which in an incredibly false implication he infers were disproportionally Black .

       As an economist, Dr Sowell should be ashamed of himself. His theory goes something like this: Liberals encouraged banks to make more money available so more Americans could afford homes. Period!  This was an effort to reverse a long standing policy which generally  required blacks to actually be better qualified that whites (on national average) for home financing.  Per the good Doctor, this was a conscious effort to get people to buy homes they couldn't afford and force banks to lend them money they couldn't pay back. Of course, this was the Liberal Left, doing a "feel good" to get Black votes. The huge, as in Exxon Valdez sized, hole in this argument is that in blaming the Clinton administration for trying to put more qualified buyers in their own homes, he ignores the actual villains here, the banking houses which did two irredeemable things.

        First, their personal banking branches and independent mortgage brokers using their commercial lenders engaged in shamelessly predatory lending practices, encouraging far more than just minority borrowers to buy far more house than they can afford on the premise that the market value would continue inflating, ergo building equity. Sowell portrays this "over optimistic, under- secured  lending as somehow the fault of some other entity than big banking and financial houses, and implies that it hurt the poorer Black community disproportionately. This isn't an exaggeration, it is an outright falsehood! The middle class, regardless of color, were the real victims in the 2008 housing bubble collapse, with the average family losing about 55% of the pre-bubble value of their home.      Far from being poor minorities, many of those suddenly "upside down" in mortgage debt  were two earner families who had been given mortgages in some cases amounting to a monthly debt service obligation of over 30% of gross income. These house poor couples were devastated by one partner's job loss or income reduction when the ship went down.

       Continuing the blame game, Sowell ignores the fact that the wider banking collapse was due to these super risky mortgages being "bundled"  (again by rich banking houses) and treated as if they were real money with the real value of the mortgaged property as assurance of that value. When the housing market tapered off and lenders began to smell signs of trouble it was too late, as the commercial banks and investment houses ("Too big to fail", remember?)  realized their bundled mortgages were barely worth half of their alleged value. The rest , as they say, is history. Sowell is well off the rails here in blaming  the LL for what was actually banking houses predatory lending practices, an attitude  rather more Far Rightist than Liberal Leftish! He also ignores the economic predations of commercial banks who simply lied and said "Oh sure, these under secured mortgages are just like cash!"  In neither case is there  a Liberal Left conspiracy of blame to be had. On the contrary, the persons most responsible for the fiasco are the same persons who resisted and continue to resist reasonable financial market regulation, and they aren't liberals!

       In like manner, Dr.  Sowell has sussed out the real reason for so many unemployed Black youths.  You're not gonna believe this, but the real reason that young men who made little or no effort in school , and in many cases failed to either attend and consequently, to  graduate, who show up for a job interview with their pants at their knees with no command of  or ability to use standard English, don't get hired because the minimum wage is too high! I know, right? Who'd have ever guessed that? Of course this is all the Liberal Left's  fault, as I knew, knowing Dr. Sowell's leanings, that it would be. 

     His logic is that back when the minimum wage was very low (in his childhood, and he's 85!) young Black unemployment was in single digits, therefore there must be an inversely proportional cause and effect relationship between young Black male unemployment and the minimum wage.  There are only about a gazillion reasons that his comparison is so poorly expressed or based. Start with Sowell in his teens being a lad in a farm based economy, where hand labor done by young poorly paid men was available to many. Then consider that he began  working as a boy at a time when more that 6 million American males were involved in WWII! Hell yes there were jobs. Add to that the post war employment as the GI Bill channeled many returning GIs into college vice the workforce (brilliant!)  Also consider the post war housing boom, much of which was manual labor driven.  Also consider the jobs now available in the American steel and automotive industries as many "Rosie the Riveters"  left the workforce to become Harriet the housewife again. Moreover, the demand for new cars provided good paying jobs in Detroit and environs, as the American Auto industry hadn't given away its world dominance yet.

        In subsequent years this post war well of employment was drawn down by multiple factors: first, the huge loss of auto industry jobs and concomitant  requirement for more technical skills by those lucky enough to retain  their jobs. Second, as farming continued apace in its march to agribusiness and the economy of scale placed small farms more and more at risk, cheap low paid manual labor jobs declined. Third, the construction boom eventually tapered off to a steady, but slower pace. Additionally, the American steel and shipbuilding industries began their steep decline, to the point that Chinese steel threatens to take business from what already  reduced production there is in the US.  

       And in what I am sure Professor Sowell sees as a Liberal Left  assault on America, the nature of work changed radically from 1950 (when he was 20) to 2015. Modernization, computerization and moving of jobs offshore have combined to all but eliminate  low or non skilled opportunities in the workforce. None of these is a "liberal plot," in fact, many of the corporate profiteers (Walmart, Trump, Every clothing store in America, etc.) responsible for the flooding of US markets with foreign made goods are anything but liberal. Pity - such an inconvenient truth!

        How, you say does this relate to minimum wage?  As it turns out, as tech savviness and , in many cases advanced post secondary training , becomes critical to obtaining employment which pays well, those who lack it are relegated to service industry  or what few manual labor jobs are left. Unfortunately, for those of  the Gen Xers who lack such  training or skills, it means fewer low tech jobs and more low tech employees. It's not the minimum wage that's the problem here, it's the skill set.

       So, instead of whining about the Liberal Left's conspiracy to raise the minimum wage so that those so employed can actually earn a living, Dr. Sowell should direct his comments at those young persons, regardless of race or gender, who choose to leave high school (should they attend) with no appreciable skills because, for whatever reason, they (at least some of the Black ones, the group Dr Sowell references in this apollogia) have confused studying, learning, and becoming employable with "acting white" and made that accusation a pejorative. Of course the alternative for any young person who sees education as something to be avoided, is exactly as Dr. Sowell describes it, high unemployment in that sector of the population.  Where Dr. Sowell gets it diametrically wrong is in attempting to remove responsibility from the individual and placing it at the feet of those who would help those who help themselves, by increasing the minimum wage for those who work hard for too little income.  

       Shakespeare had the appropriate response to Dr Sowell regarding Black youth underemployment, when he had Cassius tell Brutus,  "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."