Walter Williams

A couple of weeks ago, heading down to George Mason University, I pulled into my favorite Wawa gasoline station just off the Bel Air, Md., exit on I-95 South. At each of the 20 gasoline pumps, there was a sign posted that Wawa would no longer dispense free coffee to...

The Virginia Senate just passed the Virginia Post-Disaster Anti-Price Gouging Act of 2004, which now awaits Gov. Mark Warner's signature. In part, the act says, "During any time of disaster, it shall be unlawful for any supplier to sell, lease, or license, or to offer...

Listening to the political and media rhetoric about the war in Iraq, you'd think that only President Bush thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Here are just a few past statements made by Bush's critics. President Clinton (1998): "One way or the...

What passes for educational enlightenment these days boggles the mind. Matt Gouras, of The Associated Press, writing in the Jan. 5 Seattle Times tells a story about Tennessee schools. The success of some students has made other students feel badly about themselves....

In Marcus Cook Connelly's spiritual play, "Green Pastures," God lamented to the Angel Gabriel, "Every time Ah passes a miracle, Ah has to pass fo' or five mo' to ketch up wid it," and adding, "Even bein God ain't no bed of roses." That's something our congressmen...

The first concept an economics student learns is that for every benefit there's also a cost -- or, as my longtime colleague and friend Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman has put it, "There's no free lunch." While the person who receives the benefit might not pay or even...

Having been deserted by her husband, my mother worked. That meant that my one-year-younger sister and I often lunched by ourselves during our pre-teen years. Being bigger and stronger than my sister, quite often there wouldn't be a fair division of the food,...

Here's a question. Suppose you see people lining up for hours, and people willing to pay a month's salary in bribes, in order to get a $2 a day factory job. What might you conclude? Would you guess there are higher-paying jobs around, but the people are too lazy to...

What needs to be done to improve black education? Whether it's civil rights organizations, politicians or the education establishment, you'll get answers that cover the gamut from more money for teachers and smaller class sizes to school desegregation and racial...

It might have been Ross Perot who first used the expression that America is turning into a nation of "hamburger flippers," in reference to the decline in good paying manufacturing jobs replaced by low-pay service sector jobs. Here's my question: If millions of...

Literally hundreds of readers informed me that in last week's column, "Some Things I Wonder About," my reference to a Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City -- who set his 32-foot Winnebago on cruise control, left the driver's seat to brew a cup of coffee, crashed, then sued...

Early in our marriage, 40-some years ago, Mrs. Williams would return from shopping complaining about the unreasonable prices. Having aired her complaints, she'd then ask me to unload her car laden with purchases. After the unloading, I'd ask her: "I thought you said...

Why are we a rich nation? It's tempting to suggest our wealth is a result of bountiful natural resources. However, if bountiful resources were the source of wealth, South America and Africa would be rich instead of being mired in poverty. Hong Kong, Japan and England,...

There's a little known law called the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. It remains on the books today. Before saying what the law is and its effects, let me run by you some of the language used, in the early 1930s, to push the law through Congress. Rep. John Cochran of...

In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators. In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls. Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators. That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss. What...

The largest losers of America's anti-tobacco crusade aren't tobacco companies and smokers, it's the American people who are incrementally giving up private property rights. You say, "Hold it, Williams, I agree that people have the right to smoke and harm themselves,...