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These studies claim that people are poor due to many different reasons. Their fates are determined by race, background, religion, location, etc., not merit or hard work. People residing in poor neighborhoods tend to stay there. Many college professors even say that social mobility is rare, and that the smart, wealthy, good-looking white people are the ones who will keep all the wealth due to tax loopholes, as well as the benefits of capitalism that everyone else doesn't have the luxury of experiencing. They also allude to the idea that a dollar earned is a dollar taken from somebody else--a dollar not given for an object of equal value. Are these studies (something I look at as a breeding ground for socialist ideology) legitimate, let alone relevant? |
We need to be careful not to dismiss a field because of errors of practitioners in the field. Plato and Kant don't render philosophy illegitimate; Keynes doesn't render economics illegitimate; Lamarck doesn't render biology illegitimate; and so on. That said, fields of study can of course be illegitimate: astrology, creation "science", and on and on -- but their illegitimacy isn't caused by merely the errors or worse of this or that practitioner.
What information would an Objectivist receive from sociology and socioeconomics?