Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Reviewing Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics and Applied Economics
In a nutshell buy and read the first one, skip the second one because it really adds very little to his basic thesis. Which is that a free market economy is the best way to allocate scare resources.
Basic economics is better because it sticks closer to the fact. In his second book he spends more time trying to make points. Unfortunately that lead to some disingenuous arguments. For example he demonstrates that white, blacks and Hispanics with the same level of education make the same amount of money when they work the same amount of time per year. Which he uses to show that racism has no effect in freer market economies. Unfortunately he has already taught us that most people are poor because they don't work full time. I suspect the ability to find full time employment is a function of race, and Mr. Sowell knows this so he keeps it out of his discussion on racism.
I suspect the reason Sowell is not read by the left is that they don't accept his premise that we live in a world of scares resources. For the rest of us who know we live in a world of scares resourses this is a must read.
In a nutshell buy and read the first one, skip the second one because it really adds very little to his basic thesis. Which is that a free market economy is the best way to allocate scare resources.
Basic economics is better because it sticks closer to the fact. In his second book he spends more time trying to make points. Unfortunately that lead to some disingenuous arguments. For example he demonstrates that white, blacks and Hispanics with the same level of education make the same amount of money when they work the same amount of time per year. Which he uses to show that racism has no effect in freer market economies. Unfortunately he has already taught us that most people are poor because they don't work full time. I suspect the ability to find full time employment is a function of race, and Mr. Sowell knows this so he keeps it out of his discussion on racism.
I suspect the reason Sowell is not read by the left is that they don't accept his premise that we live in a world of scares resources. For the rest of us who know we live in a world of scares resourses this is a must read.
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