Walter Williams, RIP

David BoazAs if 2020 wasn ’t bad enough, today comes the sad news that Walter Williams has died at 84. He was a scholar who made an impact on the public debate, and a great teacher of economics. I’m old enough to remember when he was just breaking into public view in the mid‐​1970s. In fact, this past weekend I wa s trying to prune some of my old files, and I found Walter Williams clips in several of them, including a study, “Youth and Minority Unemployment,” published by the Joint Economic Committee, and a full‐​page ad in the Wall Street Journal, sponsored by the SmithKline Corporation, featuring his essay “Minimum Wage, Maximum Folly.” As editor of New Guard magazine, I published his article “How Big Government Hurts Minorities” in 1978. And he was for many years anadjunct scholar of Cato, where he contributed to Regulation and Cato Journal and gave many lectures.After early stints as a  cab driver, a soldier in Korea, and a probation officer, Walter focused on education and got a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1972. From 1973 to 1980 he taught at Temple University in Philadelphia before moving to George Mason University for the rest of his career.In 1982 he published a  book of original research and provocative ideas,The State Against Blacks,which Don Boudreauxdescribes in today ’s Wall Street Journal as “an eloquent, data ‐​rich broadside against occupational licensing, taxicab regulations, labor‐​union privileges and othe...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs