Walter Williams
| Walter Williams | |
| Personal Details | |
| Birth: | 31 March 1936 |
| Death: | 01 December 2020 |
| Occupation: | Economist |
Walter Williams is an American economist and prominent libertarian commentator. He is an economics professor at George Mason University. Williams also produces a weekly syndicated editorial column which may be read in many newspapers in the United States. Many of these past articles have been collected in books and made available for purchase; most of his articles since approximately 1996 are available online (see below).
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. Williams is also an outspoken critic of the minimum wage and affirmative action, believing that both practices are detrimental to blacks. 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. Williams is a guest host for Rush Limbaugh
Like most libertarians, Williams criticizes gun control as endangering the innocent and failing to reduce crime. Although some people describe Williams as conservative, Williams' economics training gives him a perspective which can best be described as libertarian. Williams' columns do not promote social conservative policies.
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." Capitalism and the Common Man (1997)
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.