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Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
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Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell (born 30 June, 1930) is a prominent American economist, political writer, and conservative/libertarian [link] commentator. He is presently a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. In 1990, he won the prestigious Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. Best-selling conservative British author, Paul Johnson, once described Sowell: "America's leading philosopher is Thomas Sowell. He has given me more than any other living American philosopher..."

Contents

Education

Thomas Sowell's memoir, A Personal Odyssey (2000)
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Thomas Sowell's memoir, A Personal Odyssey (2000)

Sowell was born in North Carolina, where, he recounts, his encounters with white people were so limited that he didn't believe that "yellow" was a possible color for human hair (A Personal Odyssey, 2000), and later moved with his mother and siblings (his father died before he was born) to Harlem, New York City. There he attended the highly selective Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out when he moved out on his own at the age of 17 because of money problems and a deteriorating home environment.[link] He soon after served in the US Marine Corps as a photographer and pistol instructor. After his service, he earned an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College, an A.M. in Economics from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, known for its Chicago school of economics. He chose University of Chicago, he has said, because he wanted to study under George Stigler, who would later in 1982 win the Nobel Prize in Economics. At University of Chicago Thomas Sowell also took a course taught by Milton Friedman, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics. Sowell has taught at prominent American universities including Cornell University and UCLA, and since 1980 has been a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, where he holds the fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman. [link]

Writings

Sowell is both a popular columnist and an academic economist.

Besides scholarly writing, Sowell has written books, articles and syndicated columns for a general audience, in such publications as Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and major newspapers. Sowell primarily writes on economic subjects, in which he generally advocates a free market approach to capitalism. In addition to this Sowell opposes Marxism providing a critique in his book Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. In this book he also makes the declaration that Marx never had a labor theory of value. Sowell also writes on racial topics and is a critic of affirmative action,[link],[link].

Columns

He has a regular politics column that appears on the conservative Townhall.com website. He also regularly writes a column for [Capitalism Magazine].

A selection of the liberal positions of which Sowell is a staunch critic:

He has defended racial profiling regarding terrorist suspects today. He is a supporter of free market and pro-growth economics.

Books

Brief notes on some of Sowell's thoughts

1) Empirical evidence and objective analysis of costs, benefits and trade-offs is sorely lacking in claims surrounding race, culture and society: In his writings Sowell has repeatedly emphasized the need for empirical evidence and objective assessments of data, as opposed to the sweeping generalizations, wishful thinking, and distorted or false evidence provided by numerous writers in the field of social policy and economics. In no field are these distortions greater than when the topic of race is discussed.

2) What counts in assessing a social or economic policy is not the stated intentions of promoters, but the actual end results produced on the ground: In his book "Marxism: Philosophy and Economics" Sowell shows that this was the outlook of Marx, and applies this "bottom line" approach to other social policies ranging from IQ Tests to affirmative action. In numerous cases he demonstrates that the stated aims of promoters had little relation to the actual results produced. In regard to affirmative action, for example, claims by proponents that it was a temporary measure, that it helped those categories of minorities less fortunate, that it would promote social harmony, et cetera, have all proven false when the empirical evidence is actually analyzed. Too often, Sowell points out, social policy is made on the basis of sweeping assumptions, arbitrarily-selected statistical data, and ideological dogma, where evidence is neither asked for nor offered.

3) Numerous factors determine income and education levels among American ethnic groups, and between genders, not the all purpose explanations of racism, or sexism: In books such as Markets and Minorities, Ethnic America, Race and Culture and many others, Sowell demonstrates the importance of such factors as geography, degree of urbanization, cultural structures, field of work, and other factors much more relevant than charges of “racism”. As with so much social policy, those who make such charges seldom present credible empirical evidence and often none is asked for. As for the “pay gap” between men and women, for example, Sowell’s “Civil Rights” book shows that most of said gap is based on marital status, not some sinister “glass ceiling” discrimination. Earnings for men and women of the same basic description (education, jobs, hours worked, marital status) were essentially equal, something that would not be possible under explanatory theories of “sexism”.

4) Internationally empirical evidence shows easy charges of colonialism and imperialism, or claims of genetic superiority to be sorely lacking in explaining technological or economic differences: Sowell’s trilogy, "Race and Culture", "Migrations and Culture" and "Conquests and Cultures" take his analysis up to international level comparing nations and minority groups within nations, particularly migrants. On an international scale, cultural factors are very important and some of the countries heavily subjected to imperialism and colonialism are themselves among the most prosperous- Britain for example which suffered under centuries of Roman colonialism and imperialism. Sowell shows that NON-WHITE nations like China were more advanced that those of Europe for centuries until comparatively recent times, and how the West borrowed freely from such nations. Within national settings, students of Asian origin in the West frequently outperform their white counterparts, undercutting white supremacist theories of inherent genetic superiority.

5) Many modern ideological struggles can be traced to two visions: the vision of the anointed and the vision of the constrained realist: These two visions encompass a range of ideas and theories, but essentially the vision of the anointed relies heavily on sweeping assumptions about human nature, distrust of decentralized processes like the free market, distrust of systematic processes that constrain human action, and missing or falsified/distorted empirical evidence. The constrained vision relies heavily on a less grand view of the goodness of human nature, and prefers the systematic processes of the free market, and the systematic processes of the rule of law and constitutional government. It distrusts sweeping theories and grand assumptions in favor of heavy reliance on solid empirical evidence and on time-tested structures and processes.

6) What liberals portray as "authentic black culture" is actually a relic of a highly disfunctional white southern redneck culture. This in turn came from the ‘Cracker culture’ from the regions in Britain, mainly on the harsh English border, they immigrated from. Sowell gives a number of examples that he regards as supporting the lineage, e.g.

an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship,… and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.
Sowell also provides figures to support his argument that there was a far bigger divide between the cracker/redneck culture and the North than between white and black. E.g. Northern blacks tried to stop redneck blacks coming up from the South, and the same happened with northern whites with redneck whites. This thesis is the title essay of Sowell's book Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

Those Influenced by Sowell

It is worth noting that Sowell's book Race and Economics greatly influenced Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In 1975, when Thomas read the book, he found an intellectual foundation for his philosophy. Later on, Thomas said that the book changed his life.

Quotes

"'Entitlement' is not only the opposite of achievement, it undermines incentives to do all the hard work that leads to achievement. It is the people who were born and raised in the welfare state atmosphere who seem to have great difficulty finding jobs."

"Envy plus rhetoric equals "social justice.'"

"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain."

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today."

"Blacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks."

"The next time some academics tell you how important 'diversity' is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

"Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights."

"Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated."

"The real minimum wage is zero [unemployment]."

"Imagine a political system so radical as to promise to move more of the poorest 20% of the population into the richest 20% than remain in the poorest bracket within the decade? You don't need to imagine it. It's called the United States of America."

"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive."

"Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help."

"A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation."

"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

"Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric."

"One of the most fashionable notions of our times is that social problems like poverty and oppression breed wars. Most wars, however, are started by well-fed people with time on their hands to dream up half-baked ideologies or grandiose ambitions, and to nurse real or imagined grievances."

"Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don't run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them."

"Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on 'global warming' predictions that have even less foundation?

"Many of the same people who cry 'No blood for oil' also want higher gas-mileage standards for cars. But higher mileage standards have meant lighter and flimsier cars, leading to more injuries and deaths in accidents — in other words, trading blood for oil."

"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

"The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way."

"Facts do not 'speak for themselves.' They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities."

"The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite."

External links

Articles and interviews

 

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