Thomas Sowell is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist, born June 30, 1930, in Gastonia, North Carolina, who grew up in Harlem, New York City.
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist, born June 30, 1930, in Gastonia, North Carolina, who grew up in Harlem, New York City. ◦
Due to poverty and difficulties at home, Sowell dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War (1951-1952), before graduating with honors from Harvard University in 1958. ◦
Since his time at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Sowell has held the title of Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy, and he is described as a prominent voice in the American conservative movement and a libertarian on economics. ◦
Sowell self-identified as a Marxist throughout his 20s: his senior thesis at Harvard was on Marxian economics and his master's thesis at Columbia was on Marxian business cycle theory, and even his first scholarly publication, in the March 1960 American Economic Review, was on the writings of Karl Marx. ◦
Sowell said the turning point in his ideology was a 1960 summer job at the U.S. Department of Labor. ◦
He wrote that the experience of seeing government at work from the inside and at a professional level started him to rethinking the whole notion of government as a potentially benevolent force in the economy and society. ◦
He wrote that it forced him to realize that government agencies have their own self-interest to look after, regardless of those for whom a program has been set up. ◦
Sowell credited a ninth-grade science class for his lifelong empiricism, saying that even at the height of his Marxism he read William F. Buckley and Edmund Burke because he had absorbed the idea of evidence, the importance of evidence and the need to test evidence. ◦
Of Harvard's intellectual atmosphere Sowell recalled that smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic, with a tendency to assume that certain things were so because we bright, good fellows all agreed that it was so. ◦
Sowell wrote that the first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. ◦
He wrote that the first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. ◦
He wrote that the big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. ◦
Reviewing Sowell's work, economist David Henderson noted that the main point of debate is Sowell's distinction between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. ◦
Sowell credited a ninth-grade science class for his lifelong empiricism, saying that even at the height of his Marxism he had absorbed the idea of evidence, the importance of evidence and the need to test evidence. ◦
He wrote that it is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. ◦
He wrote that those who cry out that the government should do something never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. ◦
Reviewing Sowell's work, economist David Henderson noted that the main point of debate is Sowell's distinction between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. ◦
Sowell wrote that the first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. ◦
He wrote that those who cry out that the government should do something never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. ◦
He wrote that the big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. ◦
He wrote that it is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. ◦
In his 1980 book Knowledge and Decisions, Sowell argued that like other forms of price controls, usury laws distort the communication of correct facts about credit risks without in any way changing those facts themselves. ◦
Reviewing Sowell's work, economist David Henderson noted that the main point of debate is Sowell's distinction between the constrained vision and the unconstrained vision. ◦
He wrote that it forced him to realize that government agencies have their own self-interest to look after, regardless of those for whom a program has been set up. ◦
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, economic historian, and social theorist. ◦
Sowell self-identified as a Marxist throughout his 20s: his senior thesis at Harvard was on Marxian economics and his master's thesis at Columbia was on Marxian business cycle theory, and even his first scholarly publication, in the March 1960 American Economic Review, was on the writings of Karl Marx. ◦
Since his time at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Sowell has held the title of Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy. ◦
At the Labor Department, Sowell analyzed the Puerto Rican sugar industry and noticed that as the minimum wage had been raised, employment had fallen. ◦
In his 1980 book Knowledge and Decisions—described by reviewer David Henderson as his favorite of Sowell's books and inspired by Hayek's 1945 paper The Use of Knowledge in Society—Sowell argued that like other forms of price controls, usury laws distort the communication of correct facts about credit risks without in any way changing those facts themselves. ◦
Reviewing Sowell's work, economist David Henderson noted that Sowell's writing is so clear, so evidence-based, and so persuasive that he had trouble injecting controversy. ◦
Sowell wrote that when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. ◦
He wrote that when you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. ◦
He wrote that some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence. ◦
Sowell self-identified as a Marxist throughout his 20s, with his senior thesis at Harvard on Marxian economics and his master's thesis at Columbia on Marxian business cycle theory. ◦
Since his time at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, he is described as a prominent voice in the American conservative movement and a libertarian on economics. ◦
Sowell credited a ninth-grade science class for his lifelong empiricism, saying that even at the height of his Marxism he read William F. Buckley and Edmund Burke because he had absorbed the idea of evidence, the importance of evidence and the need to test evidence. ◦
Of Harvard's intellectual atmosphere Sowell recalled that smug assumptions were too often treated as substitutes for evidence or logic. ◦
Sowell wrote that some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence. ◦
He wrote that when you want to help people, you tell them the truth. ◦
He wrote that those who cry out that the government should do something never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. ◦