Posted on 06/27/2020 3:54:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Dr. Thomas Sowell has been both a friend and a colleague of mine for over a half-century. On June 30, he will have completed his 90th year of life, and I want to highlight some important features of that life.
Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1930. As part of the Great Migration northward during the 1930s and '40s, he and his family moved to Harlem, New York. Sowell attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School but dropped out. In 1951, he was drafted into the military and assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps, where he became a photographer. Photography remains his hobby today.
After his military tour of duty, Sowell took night classes at Howard University, where he was encouraged to apply to Harvard University. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and graduated magna cum laude in 1958. The next year, he earned a master's degree from Columbia University. Ten years later, Sowell earned a Ph.D. in economics from the prestigious economics department at the University of Chicago.
As Sowell explains in his autobiography, "A Personal Odyssey," for most of his time in college, he considered himself a Marxist. After studying the effects of a variety of government regulations, such as the minimum wage law, Sowell concluded that free markets are the best alternative, particularly for disadvantaged people.
Sowell taught economics at several universities, including Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College and UCLA. Since 1980, he has been a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds the Rose and Milton Friedman fellowship. By the way, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and George Stigler were two of Sowell's tenacious mentors when he was a student at the University of Chicago.
Most of those familiar with Sowell's writings do not have any idea about his early research interests in the history of economic thought. His dissertation, titled "Say's Law and the General Glut Controversy," analyzed the work of French economist Jean-Baptiste Say. His early research in the history of economic thought that appeared in refereed academic journals included writings on Sir Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx, Samuel Bailey and Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi. These and later writings make up his 19 scholarly publications.
Most academics do not publish that many scholarly articles in a lifetime. And, in addition, Sowell has written 56 books, among them "Say's Law: An Historical Analysis," "Knowledge and Decisions," "A Conflict of Visions," "Late-Talking Children," "Basic Economics," "Discrimination and Disparities" and most recently "Charter Schools and Their Enemies." A full list of his publications can be found on his website.
Sowell's writings do not end with scholarly publications and books. He has authored 72 essays in periodicals and books, wrote 32 book reviews and was a regular columnist for Creators Syndicate for 25 years, Forbes magazine for eight years, Scripps Howard News Service from 1984 to 1990, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner from 1978 to 1980. Sowell has had occasional columns in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Star, Newsweek, The Times (London), Newsday and The Stanford Daily. My colleague not only writes when you and I are asleep or enjoying ourselves, but he might write with two hands.
Sowell cares about people. He believes that compassionate policy requires dispassionate analysis. He takes seriously the admonition given to physicians, "primum non nocere" (first, do no harm). In many respects, Sowell is an Austrian economist like the great Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who often talked about elites and their "pretense of knowledge." These are people who believe that they have the ability and knowledge to organize society in a way better than people left to their own devices -- what Hayek called the fatal conceit. Their vision requires the use of the coercive powers of government.
In my book, Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest economist-philosophers of our age, and I am proud to say that he is one of my best friends. Sowell demonstrates something that is uniquely American: just because you know where a person ended up in life, you cannot be sure about where he started. Unlike many other societies, an American need not start at the top to get to the top. That is something all Americans should be proud of and jealously guard -- the socioeconomic mobility that comes from a relatively free society.
I’m going to take this opportunity to recommend his:
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
https://smile.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X
The book is almost 25 years old, and still incredibly relevant and insightful.
Too bad they’re a minority of a minority.
There is no doubt ... Thomas Sowell is a great man, a great American. Influenced me in the early 1980s, and I have never looked back.
Walter Williams falls into that category too.
2 hours 19 minutes - well worth the time:
Youtube: THOMAS SOWELL - Black Rednecks and White Liberals | An Incredibly Insightful Perspective!
An excerpt from Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks & White Liberals”.
Dr. Thomas Sowell is probably one of the most brilliant minds alive in America. In a series of long essays, It presents eye-opening insights into the historical development of the ghetto culture that is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity—a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves “friends” of blacks. This essay titled “The Real History of Slavery” presents a jolting re-examination of that tragic institution and the narrow and distorted way it is too often seen today...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuAf8XL2xQI
Thomas Sowell , Walter Williams bump
They’re about five sigma from the norm...
Bttt.
5.56mm
“A great tribute to Thomas Sowell by another great man Walter E. Williams.”
That’s a fact.
In a culture that truly values intelligence these guys would be celebrities.
Hear, hear. Here’s to a much longer life for Dr. Sowell.
Or any other age, as well
b f l ..
Dr. Williams and Dr. Sowell are two of my favorite Americans. Sowell is probably the deepest thinker in America.
Oh wait, they are both black men so I’m supposed to hate them.
My daughters best friend is married to a black guy who’s also a cop. He’s a great young man. She wants to study op on race and race issues.
I’m pointing her toward Sowell and Williams, both of whom will give truthful answers.
Dr. Sowell is one of the 20th Century’s greatest thinkers IMHO. His ability to succinctly encapsulate and communicate an idea is remarkable. I just bought his book, Basic Economics and it’s fascinating.
I dread the day when I read of his obituary.
This adds to the snippets of Sowell's history that I knew...just bits.
Underappreciated??? By me??? Never.
“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.
Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays.
Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”
- Booker T. Washington, historical black educator and Presidential advisor
BUMP for later viewing. Thanks for the link.
Required reading!
Basic Economics - A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
Does this mean I have to sign up for utube premium, or whatever, so I can watch it in pieces?
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