Sowell, Social Justice and Wealth Redistribution

One can never get enough of the great Thomas Sowell:

I happen to own 35 books by the world-renowned Black American economist and social commentator Thomas Sowell. And he has written many more volumes than that. I also happen to have 145 articles on this site devoted fully or partially to the man and his work. So I have a very high regard indeed for Thomas Sowell.

Just yesterday I discussed his important book Discrimination and Disparities (Basic Books, 2018, 2019). In that piece I offered some key quotes from the volume. You can find it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/05/23/sowell-on-discrimination-and-disparities/

I want to revisit that book again, this time looking at his closing chapter and one section in it about “Social Justice”. It is such a crucial part of his book and offers so much common sense as well as hard facts, that I will share all of it here. Sowell starts it this way:

Much of what is said in the name of “social justice” implicitly assumes three things: (1) the seemingly invincible fallacy that various groups would be equally successful in the absence of biased treatment by others, (2) the cause of disparate outcomes can be determined by where statistics showing the unequal outcomes were collected, and (3) if the more fortunate people were not completely responsible for their own good fortune, then the government—politicians, bureaucrats and judges—will produce either efficiently better or morally superior outcomes by intervening.

 

When we look at facts in the real world, we repeatedly find skewed distributions of outcomes, whether among human beings or in nature. But, when we look at social visions or political agendas, we find equal outcomes to be the prevailing presumption, and the norm to be imposed by government policies when that presumption is not met. If some social categories of people are not equally represented in particular occupations, institutions or income brackets, that is regarded as someone’s fault that the supposedly natural equality of outcomes has been thwarted. This is the seemingly invincible fallacy behind much that is said and done. (pp. 215, 216)

He continues:

There is a fundamental asymmetry in burdens of proof. No matter how much empirical evidence of skewed distribution of outcomes is presented as evidence against the invincible fallacy, there is no corresponding burden of proof to present even a single example of the equal representation of various social groups in any given endeavor. In what country, or in what kind of endeavor, or in what century out of the vast millennia of human history, has there ever been a proportional representation of various groups in any activity where people have been free to compete? One can read reams of arguments that statistical disparities imply biased treatment without finding a single empirical example of the even distribution of social groups in any endeavor, in any country or in any period of history.

 

Equally missing in most “social justice” arguments for a redistribution of wealth is the question of the extent to which such a redistribution is actually possible, in any comprehensive, long-term sense. Certainly there have been many examples of times and places where money or other physical wealth has been confiscated by governments or looted by mobs. But physical wealth is a product of human capital— the knowledge, skills, talents and other qualities that exist inside the heads of people— where it cannot be confiscated.

 

Confiscating physical wealth for the purpose of redistribution is confiscating something that will be used up over time, and cannot be replaced without the human capital that created it. Nor is human capital itself easily created by third-party decision-makers. While it is possible to hire teachers and buy books, it is not possible to purchase a cultural past that will prepare and orient all people toward the acquisition of the skills, habits and attitudes that are decisive for human capital. (p. 216)

He reminds us of some basic truths:

Over the centuries, many countries have confiscated the physical wealth created by the human capital of productive people. Where the confiscated physical wealth was owned by foreign investors, this process has often been called “nationalization” and celebrated as a patriotic triumph over foreign “exploitation”. Where the confiscated physical capital belonged to productive domestic groups, similar rationales have been used, often leading to an exit of many such people from the country, whether fleeing from aroused mobs or as a result of adverse actions by governments– sometimes including mass expulsions.

 

In any case, the net result has often been such people’s arrival as destitute refugees in some other country. Meanwhile, the consequences in their country of origin have often included economic decline after people with much human capital were gone. Examples would include the collapse of Uganda’s economy after Asians were expelled in the 1970s and the economic rise of the Asian refugees in Britain, where many of them fled. Refugees who fled Cuba after the Communist takeover in the mid-twentieth century likewise arrived in the United States destitute and survived by taking low-level, poorly paid jobs. But, in later years, the total revenue of Cuban-owned businesses in the United States exceeded the total revenue of the nation of Cuba.

 

Variations on this theme can be found in many times and places. These would include the Jews expelled from Spain in the late fifteenth century, and forced to leave their physical wealth behind, but who rose again to prosperity in the Netherlands, contributing in the process to the economy of the Netherlands. Huguenot refugees, fleeing France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, made Switzerland the leading watch-making country in the world. Expelling the vast majority of Germans from Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II left the Sudetenland region where they had been concentrated still economically stricken, decades later. Similar or worse devastations followed the driving of white farmers out of Zimbabwe, in the late twentieth century. (pp. 216-217)

He concludes this section of the book as follows:

Despite how persuasive the words of John Rawls and other “social justice” advocates may be in the world of words, demonstrated facts in the world of reality raise the crucial question as to whether the redistribution of income or wealth can actually be done, in any comprehensive and sustainable sense. Where, instead, there is simply a humanitarian desire to see the less fortunate have better prospects for a better life, the “social justice” argument is both unnecessary and an impediment to joining forces toward that end with others who do not happen to share the implicit assumptions of that particular social vision.

 

The undeniable fact that life has never been remotely “fair”— in the sense of presenting equal likelihoods of achieving economic prosperity or other benefits— has led many people to conclude that human biases are the reason. There is no question that human biases have contributed to unfair prospects. But it is a complete non sequitur to say that human biases are the sole, or even primary, causes of unequal prospects, without hard evidence to support that conclusion.

 

When there are major disparities in outcomes among men who are all in the top one percent in IQ, and among siblings raised under the same roof, as well as discriminated-against minorities being more economically successful than those discriminating against them— as has happened in the Ottoman Empire, many Southeast Asian countries, and much of Eastern Europe, for example— the insistence on believing that human biases are the primary cause of disparities in outcomes ignores a vast range of evidence to the contrary.

 

This is not to say that nothing can be done to offer more people more opportunities. Much has already been done, and much can and will be done. But how it is done can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how well we understand and deal with the world as it is, rather than according to some vision that might seem more attractive, for whatever reason.

 

Despite the inability to confiscate and redistribute human capital, nevertheless human capital— ironically— one of the few things that can be spread to others without those with it having any less remaining for themselves. But one of the biggest obstacles to this happening is the “social justice” vision, in which the fundamental problem of the less fortunate is not an absence of sufficient human capital, but the presence of other people’s malevolence. For some, abandoning that vision would mean abandoning a moral melodrama, starring themselves as crusaders against the forces of evil. How many are prepared to give up all that— with all its psychic, political and other rewards— is an open question. (p. 218)

A major aim of quoting all this is to spur you on to get this book, and many others of his as well. He clearly is a national treasure, and at age 95, I am not sure how much longer he will be with us. Thank you Thomas Sowell.

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