THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502010470
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J01 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
LENGTH: Long : 139 lines
You think Newt Gingrich champions a smaller federal government? Ha. He's a piker next to Walter E. Williams.
Williams, 58, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, has a vision of the federal government shrinking far more than Gingrich has ever proposed.
Williams grew up in Philadelphia, received a bachelor's degree in economics from California State University and a master's and doctorate in economics from UCLA. He has written several books, including ``America: A Minority Viewpoint'' and ``South Africa's War Against Capitalism.'' He is a regular guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio show and has appeared on ``Nightline,'' ``Firing Line,'' ``Face the Nation,'' ``Crossfire,'' ``MacNeil/Lehrer,'' and ``Wall Street Week.'' He also writes a syndicated weekly column.
This fall, he will become the chairman of the department of economics at George Mason.
Staff writer Tony Wharton interviewed Williams by telephone from his office in Valley Forge, Pa. Below are excerpts from that interview.
Q. ``OK, what is the role of government in a free society?''
A. Simply put, the role is to protect you and I from international thugs violating our rights, thus supervising national defense. At some level it's the provision of police services to protect us from domestic thugs . . . .
There's also the provision of certain public goods, as an economist might define them. If you look in the Constitution, it says promote the general welfare. For instance, typhoid eradication is clearly in the general welfare.
Q. How do you feel about many of the federal government's routine subsidies, such as the farm program?
A. Subsidies is a very nice name to give it. Let's say you're a farmer and you're in difficulty. Let's say I, Walter Williams, walked up to another person and took their money and gave it to you. We'd call that theft, even if it's a wonderful thing, for a wonderful purpose. It still involves taking what rightfully belongs to one American and giving it to another.
Q. Should we cut those subsidies entirely?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. Don't any of those subsidies have value?
A. Of course, they all have value. But when you're pursuing an end, you want to ask questions about the means as well. If there's a lady sleeping on a grate in Norfolk, and I take money from you and give it to her, it's a very nice end, but the means is still theft.
Q. What about the lady on the grate, then? How do we help her out?
A. We use charity as opposed to theft. Private charity is very effective, and Americans are very giving people. Americans are very charitable people. We do 85 percent of all world giving.
Q. Let's imagine Congress says, hey, Walter Williams has a point, and eliminates all those subsidies. If that happens, where should that money go, instead?
A. It should go for a reduction in taxes. Two-thirds of the federal budget goes for things that could be considered legalized theft, and I might add, unconstitutional.
Q. What about Social Security?
A. That's legalized theft too, in the following fashion. Look at someone who retired in 1980 or 1985. On average they withdraw, in four years, all the money they put in.
A person who comes into the work force now is subsidizing the people who already have retired.
Social Security started out actuarially unsound. It's an intergenerational transfer of money from young people to old people. I mean, look at what many people retired now (have) put in. It started out at $60 a week.
Today, the Social Security tax for the median income worker is higher than the federal income tax.
Yet there's no way in the world a person entering the work force now can put in enough money to get any of it back when they retire. I doubt the Social Security system will even be in existence by the time you retire.
Q. It sounds as though you're willing to go even farther than the new Republican majority in Congress.
A. On many things I'm willing to go much farther than they are. But I have an advantage, I don't have to run for office.
Q. Assuming it's unlikely that Congress will, all at once, eliminate these subsidies, is there a realistic way any of what you're suggesting could happen?
A. Yes, I think we surely can do it. One thing the Republicans can do is pass a law that says that any person or corporation whose combined worth is over $1 million shall not receive one dime from the federal government. That's a beginning.
Heck, Pillsbury and McDonald's get $90 million from an Agriculture Department subsidy to fund their advertising overseas.
Upper income citizens receive all kinds of subsidies we don't think about. Look at the kids going to the University of Virginia, getting a subsidized education. That's a perverse system. Look at some poor guy working at McDonald's, his kid is probably going to go to a crap school, and yet the state and federal governments are taking money from his paycheck to subsidize the son of a dentist going to U.Va.
Q. What do you think is the state of race relations in America?
A. It's tragic, what has happened. Any person who was around at the time of Brown vs. Board of Education, or any of the great advances in civil rights, I think they had every legitimate expectation that 40 years from then the country's racial problems would have been resolved.
Yet look at what we see on many university campuses. The sons and daughters of fathers and mothers who may have worked arm in arm for racial harmony, we find these students at each other's throats . . . . And it's because of public policy. Things like quota programs, that naturally produce racial resentment.
At Penn State, when black students come to college and get a C grade point average or above, they get a $500 or $1,000 award.
And then there's some poor white boy from Appalachia, he goes to college, he doesn't get crap. He may have been perfectly neutral about black people.
You create racial resentment where none existed. It exists at all levels.
University of California, Berkeley, turns away 2,000 straight-A white and Asian students a year so they have room to admit lesser qualified black and Hispanic students, 70 percent of whom will flunk out.
Q. What's the alternative policy?
A. To admit students based on merit.
Q. In the State of the Union address, President Clinton spoke at some length on the dangers to American democracy from the inside - people participating less and looking out more for their self-interest than the common good. Do you think that's true?
A. I always worry about people talking about looking out for the common interest.
It's the individual pursuit of individual achievement that makes for the common good of society.
Let's say you're sitting there, typing on a computer, looking at the Windows program. You and millions of others don't have that Windows program because Bill Gates cared about you. He was looking out for himself . . . .
Then, if you turn the tables a little, and look at programs motivated by the common interest, they're disasters. Look at public education. It's a disaster. Look at the post office. Compared to UPS and FedEx, it's a disaster.
Q. When you talk about people being motivated solely by self-interest, it begins to sound kind of grim. What about what you said earlier about charity? How do those things fit together?
A. They work very nicely together. I give out four scholarships every year. Why do I do that? It makes me feel good. Why do I buy a good wine? It makes me feel good. The pursuit of self interest is not the same as selfishness . . . ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Walter E. Williams of George Mason University.
by CNB