All Posts Tagged With: "Thomas Sowell"
Staying Out of the Corner
In a world of pervasive scarcity, every choice has a cost. Recognizing this fact about the human condition should lead us to see the world in terms of marginal benefits and costs.
24Mar2011 | Steven Horwitz | 9 comments | ContinuedThe Gasoline Demagogues Will Be Back
Here we go again. In late February gasoline prices across America were surpassing $3 a gallon. Forecasters are advising us to expect $4 by summer, maybe higher. So be prepared for something else with it all: the broken-record rhetoric of anti-market types about “gouging.” It’ll be coming from a lot of the same people who [...]
23Mar2011 | Lawrence W. Reed | 13 comments | ContinuedIntellectuals and Society
If you trace back to the origins of almost any damaging public-policy idea in America, you find it rooted in the imagination of some intellectual. Just to pick one field, consider housing. Why do we have huge tracts of depressing, unsafe, unclean public housing in some of our largest cities? That did not simply happen—the [...]
24Feb2011 | George C. Leef | 5 comments | ContinuedGetting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis and The Housing Boom and Bust
These two books are must-reads for anyone wanting to have a working understanding of the economic and financial crisis. They complement each other and together form a civics lesson for an informed electorate. Economists are prone to write turgid prose and employ a jargon-filled style. Not these two gems. Each author is a deservedly well-regarded [...]
22Sep2010 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 2 comments | ContinuedBlack Rednecks and White Liberals
In a just world Thomas Sowell would win the Nobel Prize in economics. Over several decades he has applied his exceptional skills as an economist to an array of interdisciplinary studies focusing on race, culture, and politics. And in doing so he has challenged and undermined many of the dominant ideological myths of our time. [...]
13Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedApplied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One
This book works well on two levels. First, it explains the basic principles of economics in an unusual way—without equations, graphs, and jargon. It could be read easily by an intelligent ninth-grader, but it is neither condescending nor dull. Sowell is a master storyteller. Second, Applied Economics compares how well markets work to how well [...]
9Jul2010 | Craig M. Newmark | 4 comments | ContinuedWhat’s Wrong with Reparations for Slavery
There has been much debate recently about reparations for slavery. According to its proponents, the federal government should award Americans of African descent financial damages solely because slavery, as an institution, existed in the United States from the founding until almost a century later. Three principal arguments are offered: (1) The legacy of slavery has [...]
30Jun2010 | Stefan Spath | 16 comments | ContinuedHealth Care and Medical Care
In the current Atlantic Megan McArdle discusses the flaws in using gross domestic product as a measurement of a country’s well-being and notes that a search is underway for alternative measures. (Actually Mark Skousen proposed one in The Freeman some years ago.) Her column contains this interesting paragraph: One possible approach is to focus on [...]
5Nov2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomic Facts and Fallacies
You don’t have to read far to find the focus of Thomas Sowell’s latest book, Economic Facts and Fallacies. It begins by quoting John Adams—“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence”—then immediately argues for the [...]
22Jan2009 | Gary M. Galles | 5 comments | ContinuedEquality, Markets, and Morality
Burton Folsom, Jr. is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of New Deal or Raw Deal?, to be published by Simon & Schuster this year. The subject of “equality” is the source of much political debate. Ever since the founding era, free-market thinkers have argued for equality of opportunity in the economic [...]
1Sep2008 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedUnpleasant Economists
Economists are not the most pleasant people to have around when others are delightfully praising the benefits of this or that public policy. We acknowledge the existence of scarcity, the fact that to enjoy more of one thing requires having less of another, which in turn forces us into bringing up the unpleasant topic of [...]
1Sep2008 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – May 2003
The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power by Max Boot Basic Books • 2002 • 448 pages • $30.00 hardcover; $16.00 paperback Reviewed by Ivan Eland Max Boot provides a thorough and relatively candid history of the U.S. government’s involvement in small wars. The section of the book on [...]
1May2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedBasic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell
Basic Books · 2000 · 432 pages · $30.00 Reviewed by Roger Meiners Thomas Sowell is one of the fine scholars of our time. He has written on a wide range of important topics, is an excellent writer, and has provided some original insights into some difficult issues. Teaching economics is difficult, as Sowell notes. [...]
1Nov2001 | Roger Meiners | 21 comments | ContinuedThe Quest for Cosmic Justice
The Quest for Cosmic Justice offers no big surprises to anyone familiar with Sowell’s work. Its theme of arrogant elites’ tyrannizing ordinary folk has sounded prominently in Sowell’s writings since at least the late 1970s. But the book percolates throughout with ingenious smaller-scale insights that make it well worth reading. By “cosmic justice” Sowell means [...]
1Jul2000 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedConquests and Cultures
Conquests and Cultures is the final book in Thomas Sowell’s trilogy exploring the formation and importance of human culture. The earlier volumes were Race and Culture (1994) and Migrations and Cultures (1996). With this volume, Sowell brings this great project to its conclusion. The book is superb, and the trilogy a monumental achievement. Sowell’s topic [...]
1Oct1998 | George C. Leef | 2 comments | ContinuedAffirmative Action: Institutionalized Inequality
Mr. Mulcahy is a student and Dr. Block a former professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dr. Block is currently chairman of the department of economics at the University of Central Arkansas. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy established a program of “affirmative action” with the declaration of [...]
1Oct1997 | and Walter Block | 3 comments | ContinuedWho Said What About Liberty? (a quiz)
The literature of liberty offers double pleasure. You can often enjoy both dynamic ideas and great eloquence. Just for fun, see if you can match the following unforgettable quotations with their authors. The quotations are representative views of many of the greatest thinkers in the history of liberty: A. Lord Acton B. Benjamin Franklin C. [...]
1Jul1997 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | Continued-
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