Walter E. Williams
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This article is about the economist. For other persons of like name, see Walter Williams (disambiguation).
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Walter E. Williams (born 1936) is an American economist. He was born in Philadelphia and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972. He has been a Professor of Economics at George Mason University since 1980, and chairman of that University's Economic's department from 1995 to 2001. Previously, he has been on the faculty of Los Angeles City College, California State University - Los Angeles, Temple University, and Grove City College. Williams is known for his libertarian and sometimes conservative views. He is a syndicated columnist and author of books aimed at a general audience, and is a occasional guest host of Rush Limbaugh's radio program and Lawrence Kudlow's Kudlow & Company TV program.
Williams is a champion of black education, frequently indicting the educational systems of inner city schools for perpetuating, in his words, a fraud against African-American students and families by lowered standards. Dr. Williams is also a critic of the minimum wage and affirmative action, believing that both practices are detrimental to blacks. Dr. Williams especially emphasizes his belief that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community and do not adequately explain the situation blacks face today.
Like most conservatives and libertarians, Dr. Williams criticizes gun control as endangering the innocent and failing to reduce crime.
Dr. Williams praises capitalism (of a laissez-faire variety) as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. "Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man." [1]
Dr. Williams has gone on record as advocating the Free State Project in at least two columns and once on television. The Williams endorsement correlated with the largest single membership jump in the first 5000 phase of the project, a jump even higher than the results of the project being Slashdotted. He also believes in the right of states to secede from the union as was done in the U.S. in the 1860s[2] and has supported or been sympathetic toward various secessionist ideas in his writings.[3]
Dr. Williams has written hundreds of articles and his syndicated column is published weekly in approximately 140 newspapers across the United States, as well as on several web sites. [4]
Conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore has launched a campaign to draft Williams for the Republican nominiation in the 2008 United States presidential election [5]. Williams has stated that he is inundated with emails, but won't run, although he won't completely rule out the possibility [6].
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- His biography at GMU
- Syndicated articles (at townhall.com) (rss feed)(at Jewish World Review)
- Audio interview with EconTalk's Russ Roberts
- Biography and List of Articles written by Walter Williams at Capitalism Magazine
- Economics for the Citizen
[edit] Books
- ISBN 0-07-070378-7 The State Against Blacks (1984)
- ISBN 0-8179-7562-4 America: a Minority Viewpoint (1982)
- ISBN 0-89526-569-9 All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View (1988)
- ISBN 0-275-93179-X South Africa's War Against Capitalism (1989)
- ISBN 0-8179-9382-7 Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks (1995)
- ISBN 0-8179-9612-5 More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (1999)
Categories: 1936 births | African American academics | African-American journalists | African American writers | American columnists | American economists | American libertarians | American political writers | American radio personalities | Living people | Proponents of free trade | The Rush Limbaugh Show
