Finished 7/23/22
Another book said to be the author's favorite one authored that he wrote (I'm a sucker for these). Given that Sowell has written more than 40 books, not to mention many, many essays and decades worth of syndicated columns. Yet this is his favorite.
I can see why.
Discrimination and Disparities is a masterful treatis on why activists, philosophers, politicians, and other people who do not suffer the consequences of their ideas continually try to tinker with circumstances and society to make things "fair" to their chosen victim group. From Affirmative Action to sex education, from welfare to integration, the "good intentions" (which are really actionable biases) of these tinkerers invariably 1) fail, 2) fail for the same reasons and in the same ways they have previously, and 3) hurt the very people it is said they will benefit. Yet undeterred, the tinkerers publish their research, write their books, organize their marches, and pass their legislation to fight these phantoms with ever larger weapons.
His alternative ways of approaching problems stem from the idea that disparities are neither discriminatory nor random.
Some nuggets of wisdom from this clear-thinking economist:
“But, if the wealth of rich capitalists comes from exploitation of poor workers, then we might expect to find that where there are larger concentrations of rich capitalists, we would find correspondingly larger concentrations of poverty. Yet what we find is the opposite.”
“All that the government can do in reality is change the tax rate. How much tax revenue that will produce depends on how people react.”
Thomas Sowell teaches us to think with our own minds, to examine the date, and to test ideas of causation. He is a national treasure.
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