Posted on 08/03/2020 8:46:20 AM PDT by karpov
Measured by his contributions to economics, political theory, and intellectual history, Thomas Sowell ranks among the towering intellects of our time. Yet, rare among such thinkers, Sowell manages never to provoke, in the reader, the feeling of being towered over. As Kevin Williamson observed, Sowell is “that rarest of things among serious academics: plainspoken.” From 1991 until 2016, his nationally syndicated column set the bar for clear writing, though the topics he covered were often complex. “Too many academics write as if plain English is beneath their dignity,” Sowell once said, “and some seem to regard logic as an unconstitutional infringement of their freedom of speech.” If academics birth needlessly complex prose, editors too often midwife it. An editor, Sowell once quipped, would probably have changed Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be, that is the question” to something awful, like “The issue is one of existence versus non-existence.”
Consider Sowell’s clear, brief explanation of the economic idea of “scarcity.” “What does ‘scarce’ mean?” he asks in his layman’s textbook, Basic Economics. “It means that what everybody wants adds up to more than there is.” Not only is pointless complexity absent from Sowell’s prose; so is the first-person perspective. The words “I” or “me” scarcely show up in his 30-odd books, but for his memoir, A Personal Odyssey.
To his critics, Sowell’s writing style is severe. But to his fan base—which includes figures as different as Steven Pinker and Kanye West—it’s a refreshing break from the self-absorbed drivel that frequently passes for cultural commentary nowadays. Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and leading public intellectual, named Sowell the most underrated writer in history. West, for his part, tweeted out a handful of Sowell quotes to millions of followers in 2018.
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
THE Giant of his age.
Bears repeating.
America’s Greatest Living Intellectual.
very nice article.
Totally agree. Unparalled.
This was a key book in my life, although I didn't read it until around 2006.
The same is true of "the economy." When you hear someone say that we have to choose between "saving lives" and "the economy," you know that person is an ignoramus.
"The economy" is simply the aggregatation of people making decisions about meeting their needs and then making exchanges with one another so that each gets what he values more.
The real question issue is, "How much of people's freedom to make decisions about their lives will we take away under the threat of armed violence?" ... to save lives.
I found it great, also.
If one were to read just one book by Sowell, that would be it.
Another unremarkable globalist Free Traitor™ that fed into China’s mercantilism at the expense of the US worker, national security and economic self sufficiency.
Unparalleled globalist which makes him very dull and dangerous.
I can’t claim to have read every word he has written, so can you direct me to some of his writings that illustrate your point? Thank you in advance.
“The Smoot Hawley tariffs of 1930 had a lot more to do with the Great Depression than the stock market,” Sowell told FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.” “Unemployment was nowhere near as low the first year after the stock market as it was in the first five months after those tariffs went in. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, we had trade surpluses, but it didn’t do us a bit of good.”
Sowell, like almost all "economists" ( globalist tools in reality ), have bought off on a complete lie about trade, tariffs and the great Smoot Hawley scare. Smoot Hawley had almost no effect the GD. link here
"But the impact of trade was miniscule when compared to the size of the overall economic contraction. Government expenditures remained essentially constant, but private consumption and investment plummeted. Of the $131 billion in lost economic output over the five-year period, only about $0.7 billion seems attributable to trade. This is shown as the last entry in the last row of the table. In either absolute or relative terms, the trade portion of the economic contraction of the Great Depression appears to be of little import."
Marking.
Tuesday bump. Thank you so much for your reply and link. Haven’t had time — on a deadline — but will get to it eventually this week.
I’ve finally had time to read your links today. I confess, my overall knowledge of economics is rudimentary; but without comparing the numbers associated with Smoot-Hawley against the comparables during the Trump admin’s levying of tariffs, I can’t tell if your example of Sowell’s disfavor is apples to apples. He seemed concerned about the possibility of economic retaliation versus a potential gain. And it seems we have paid a high price, assuming the wuhan flu was a deliberate act of asymmetrical economic warfare; but I’m intellectually unable to crunch those numbers to make that case.
At any rate, the reason I so admire Sowell is that he does not deal solely in the bottom line in terms of the abstract aspects of economics; but has a broad and deep concern for the effects on all sectors of society. Nor does he always skew to the liberal default of throwing money at poverty—far from it.
So, based on the examples given, I can’t yet conclude that his motivation was strictly globalist. It seemed more of a practical warning that tariffs might not solve the problem of trade imbalance, without necessarily dismissing Trump’s idea that the trade imbalances with China and Mexico were a problem. He seemed more concerned with whether tariffs were the right solution.
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