>If you interpret the phrase "violent criticism" as perpetrated violence, you are clearly doing whatever you can to interpret my argument in the worst people way. Allegory and metaphor are figures of speech anyone should understand when put forwards so plainly and with no other possible interpretation.

I felt 'violently' was chosen for a reason to put Sowell in the worst possible way, but perhaps I misinterpreted. My apologies if you were just choosing to show Sowell is passionate, I misinterpreted.

>If you sincerely believe this you need study the run-up to WW2 in more detail. A politician trying to make the common person conscious of a real crisis which affects their lives and is representative of a serious systemic problem where greater public conscience is necessary is in no way comparable to the peddling of lies and conspiracy theories in order to drum up hatred against minorities in order to justify atrocities. If you honestly think this and go around repeating it, you are doing a great service to fascists all around the world by equating their methods to the way a democracy needs to operate.

What's you point here, that Hitler had some good ideas that we also implement today? He sure did. That's how he (his party) got elected. He also had a lot of bad ones. I don't think Obama is Hitler and neither did Sowell. It would also just be fallacious to suggest because of one mention of Hitler you disapprove of, that somehow the rest of his arguments are discredited.

>No, it was not. 20 billion dollars is far less than what BP should have paid for the oil spill. It was a deal he cut with BP so that the environmental crisis could be paid for without going through a decades long process by which time BP could have completely offloaded their assets or would have lost them due to the uncertainty of a ~100B$ fine hanging over their heads. It's exactly the same thing as a plea deal, except the perpetrator was caught doing the crime in broad daylight in front of thousands people.

I don't agree with the way plea deals happen either. Plea deals I see as an extrajudicial way for a prosecutors to exercise power, and should be illegal. But plea deal is a great way to describe this extra-judicial process devoid of due process. If ~$100B is the fair fine, let due process extract that out, not some 'plea deal' by Obama.

>No, they would not, and we both know this. There is a necessary amount of unemployment in any capitalist economy. If the bottom two percent magically got employed with a sub-minimum wage, the entire economy would suffer greatly from reduced wages and higher barriers to entry, or another 2% would find themselves unemployed anyways. A reserve army of labour is absolutely necessary. Reducing the minimum wage would hurt those people, because now on top of being unemployed, they also have much lower prospects once they do find employment. This is evident to anyone who thinks beyond incredibly simplistic supply-demand graphs whose interpretation contradicts itself.

Sure, there is a 'necessary' amount of unemployment as workers are in friction seeking new employment, stuck in a hospital, or so disabled they cannot find any work they are fit to perform, etc. But there is also a sort of unemployment of those who cannot generate enough value to meet minimum wage, thus they are outlawed from legal employment and definitely not part of a 'reserve army'. In particular, elimination of minimum wage will help these people enter the career ladders to start gaining traction (and even if they don't have the capacity to move up, at least to create some wealth on their own outside of transfer payment or illegal activity.) Reducing minimum wage actually help everyone, by reducing the need for transfer payments, expanding the outputs of the nation, and developing and enriching some under or unemployed low-skill workers. Reducing minimum wage would definitely not cause more people to become unemployed or stay that way longer, that doesn't even make sense.