Walter E. Williams - Economic and Political Views

Economic and Political Views

As an economist, Williams is a proponent of free market economics and opposes socialist systems of government intervention. "I praise lassez-faire capitalism 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." In advancing these theories, Williams has said "That's a challenge I love: making economics fun and understandable."

In the mid-to-late 1970s Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government's interventional programs were harmful. Among those state programs Williams was critical of were minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help. He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently Williams has spoken on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment. Williams believes that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He points to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family" Though in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses, city halls and libraries, Williams opposes anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people's right of freedom of association.

Williams views gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argues that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also makes the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supports legalization of selling one's own bodily organs. He argues that government prohibiting the selling of one's bodily organs is an infringement upon one's property rights, asking "If I don't own my organs, please tell me who does?"

Regarding Federalism, Williams is in favor of power being in the hands of the states, with limited powers being held by the Federal government. He notes this was the design of the nation's founding documents, which were largely undermined by the events of the civil war.

"The War between the States settled by force whether states could secede. Once it was established that states cannot secede, the federal government, abetted by a Supreme Court unwilling to hold it to its constitutional restraints, was able to run amok over states’ rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today. Not only did the war lay the foundation for eventual nullification or weakening of basic constitutional protections against central government abuses, but it also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'"

In light of the founding documents, Williams concludes it is the right of U.S. states to secede from the union if they so wish, as several states attempted to do during the Civil War. He 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.

Williams believes programs such as affirmative action and minimum wage laws set up to aide minorities have, in fact, been harmful to them and stifled their ability to advance in society. "Affirmative action has led to, I believe, many Black people expecting favors from the system and not working as hard as they otherwise would. That is, if you know that you can get into college because of affirmative action—or some people call it diversity nowadays—well then why work as hard in high school? So it might undermine some of the spirit of people. And I think that the basic premise of those who advocate affirmative action is that the problems that Black Americans face today are the result of racial discrimination." In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." He still offers it to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.

Williams is opposed to the Federal Reserve System. He has also compared U.S. monetary policy to "counterfeiting": "Knowing the dangers posed by central banks, we might ask whether our country needs the Federal Reserve Bank. Whenever I'm told that we need this or that government program, I always ask what we did before. It turns out that we did without a central bank from 1836, when President Andrew Jackson closed the Second Bank of the United States, to 1913 when Federal Reserve Act was written. During that interval, we prospered and became one of the world's major economic powers."

In his work, Williams builds on the economic theories of F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, and Milton Friedman, as well as the previously mentioned Thomas Sowell, and he has said of Ayn Rand's 1967 work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal that it is "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read."

Besides his weekly columns, Williams has become known nationally as a highly popular guest host before the twenty million listeners of the Rush Limbaugh radio program when Limbaugh is away traveling. Reason has called Williams "one of the country’s leading libertarian voices." In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel.