Sowell: Are Facts Obsolete?

A great question by Thomas Sowell. Facts have never mattered to Democrats, it is not that they are obsolete, they are simply irrelevant.

Sowell himself makes the case for factual irrelvance:

Perhaps a defining moment in showing Senator Obama's priorities was his declaring, in answer to a question from Charles Gibson, that he was for raising the capital gains tax rate. When Gibson reminded him of the well-documented fact that lower tax rates on capital gains had produced more actual revenue collected from that tax than the higher tax rates had, Obama was unmoved.

Obama is for higher minimum wage rates. Does anyone care what actually happens in countries with higher minimum wage rates? Of course not.

Economists may point to studies done in countries around the world, showing that higher minimum wage rates usually mean higher unemployment rates among lower skilled and less experienced workers.

That's their problem. A politician's problem is how to look like he is for "the poor" and against those who are "exploiting" them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image.

Obama and the Democratic left much prefer the class warfare of rich vs. poor (or middle class) rather than acknowledging that their policies are rehashed, but not revamped.

Obama claims to be a pragmatic kind of guy, but really he is neither pragmatic nor particularly visionary.

On a related note, this is why Congressmen and Senators need a crash course in Economics 101 and more than a few history lessons.