Thomas Sowell, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and the Limits of Regulation

Thomas Sowell is a great economist, but his expertise extends to other fields of study. Everything from history to education. But he’s also famous for being a great communicator, with dozens of well-known quotes. I use one of them on my rotating banner because it succinctly summarizes why the left has to rely on emotional […]

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Venezuela and Santa Claus vs Thomas Sowell and the Little Red Hen

Earlier this year, I borrowed from Dante’s Inferno and created the Five Circles of Statist Hell. At the time, I suggested that Venezuela was on the cusp of moving from the third circle (“widespread poverty and economic misery”) to the fourth circle (“systematic and grinding poverty and deprivation”). Since we now know that children in […]

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Thomas Sowell on the Economics of Redistribution: Quicksand at One End and Beatings at the other End

Over the years, I’ve shared some clever images, jokes, and cartoons to expose the flawed mindset of those who hope to achieve coerced equality of outcomes with redistribution and high tax rates. The size of a pizza vs the share of a slice. The modern version of the Little Red Hen. Washington’s Byzantine welfare state. […]

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In the Debate over Capitalism and the Poor, the Score Is: Thomas Sowell 1 – Pope Francis 0

Two days ago, I contrasted the views of Pope Francis and Walter Williams about capitalism and morality. I explained that Walter had the upper hand because free markets are a positive-sum game based on voluntary exchange while redistribution (at best) is a zero-sum game based on coercion. That’s the theoretical argument. Now let’s look at […]

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Thomas Sowell Explains How the Welfare State Hurts the Poor

Political cartoonists like Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay are effective because they convey so much with images. But we need more than clever cartoons if we’re going to educate the general population about how government harms the economy and undermines freedom. And that’s why Thomas Sowell is so invaluable. He’s one of the nation’s top […]

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Thomas Sowell Exposes Dishonest Budgetary Scare Tactics and Cartoonists Mock Obama’s Hysteria

Public finance experts are quite familiar with the budgetary shenanigans of cossetted government bureaucracies. They even have terms to describe how agencies and departments try to manipulate outcomes by claiming that any requirement for fiscal restraint will necessitate cuts to the most politically popular parts of the budget. The “fireman first principle” – Describes how […]

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After Reviewing the Federal Reserve’s Lousy Track Record, Thomas Sowell Asks Why such a Deeply Flawed Institution Should Be Allowed to Accumulate more Power

When speaking about the difference between the private sector and the government, I sometimes emphasize that mistakes and errors are inevitable, and that the propensity to screw up may be just as prevalent in the private sector as it is in the public sector. I actually think the government is more likely to screw up, for reasons […]

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An Invaluable Economic History Lesson from Thomas Sowell: Politicians Should Only “Do Something” If that Means Doing Less

The great Ronald Reagan famously said (and I am paraphrasing, since I do not remember the exact phrase) that the most dangerous words in the English language were “I am from Washington and I am here to help you.” Those are very wise words, especially when we think of the damage politicians have done because of […]

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Thomas Sowell Exposes How the Left Advances Statism by Distorting Language

Even though it’s important – particularly in a world with slippery politicians – to define words and terms accurately, I haven’t focused on this issue. Indeed, a quick search through my archives shows that the only glossary I’ve ever published was this humorous list of financial terms. And the only dictionary I’ve ever published was […]

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Obama’s Technically not a Socialist, but He Won’t Like How Thomas Sowell Describes His Philosophy

A couple of years ago, Newt Gingrich accused Obama of being a socialist, causing some squawking and grousing about incivility from the more sensitive types in Washington. I jumped to the President’s defense, pointing out that Obama is a different type of statist. I’m gratified that Thomas Sowell of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution agrees with […]

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Thomas Sowell Explains the 1942 Case that Enabled Government Statism, Just as Plessy v. Ferguson Enabled Government Racism

A few days ago, I wrote about Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, which lists the “enumerated powers” of the federal government. That post included a reference to Wickard v. Filburn, an infamous Supreme Court case that opened the door to unlimited intervention from Washington. Why was this case important? As is so often the […]

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Thomas Sowell Wonders Why the Obama Administration Is Trying to Undermine Educational Opportunities for Black Children

Welcome, Instapundit readers. This school choice video shows the best way of dealing with the problems described in this post (though, as Walter Williams explains, that’s only part of the answer). ======================================================= If you care about helping the less fortunate succeed, I’m commenting today on a Thomas Sowell column that will make you sad and […]

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Thomas Sowell Exposes the Historical and Economic Illiteracy of the Political Class

Thomas Sowell just completed a three-part “Back to the Future” series, looking at a couple of fiscal policy issues. His unifying theme is how the political class fails (perhaps deliberately) to learn from mistakes. In Part I, he decimates President Obama’s new stimulus scheme. Once we get past the glowing rhetoric, what is the president […]

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Thomas Sowell: Obama’s Policies Are a Sedative, not a Stimulus

As usual, Sowell is right on the mark. By expanding the size and burden of government, Obama is making it more difficult for the economy to prosper: President Obama keeps telling us that he is “creating jobs.” But more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many […]

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Insight from Thomas Sowell

Government did not help us in the 1930s, and it is not helping us today.

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Tom Sowell: So Many Left-Wing Hoaxes to Debunk, So Little Time

I recently posted an excellent video showing how the War on Poverty has been a disaster for both taxpayers and poor people. Let’s now look at a specific example of the income-redistribution racket. Professor Thomas Sowell has a superb column, which begins by noting that the left tried to build support for more income redistribution […]

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Tom Sowell’s Latest Column Is a Good Birthday Present for Me

As far as I can tell, everything that Thomas Sowell writes is worth reading, but I especially like how he is so effective at linking his arguments to the underlying principles of a free society. And when he writes a column focused on those underlying principles, I can’t help but get inspired. He reminds me […]

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Tom Sowell Wisdom on Firearms and the Constitution

In addition to noting that gun control tends to increase crime by reducing the cost of being a criminal (i.e., thugs are less likely to meet armed resistance), Tom Sowell also explains that people who don’t like the Constitution should amend the document rather than appointing ideologically-motivated Justices who ignore what it says. …there is no […]

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Tom Sowell: Restoring Free Markets Is the Way to Fix Healthcare

As usual, Tom Sowell uses basic economics to explain a confusing topic. His core insight is that government has undermined market forces, which is leading to rising costs. Obama and the other statists somehow think more government will make things better: …policies based on political hype over the years are what have gotten us into […]

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Good Advice for Republicans from Tom Sowell

I’ve always been mystified by GOP politicians, pollsters, and consultants who argue that the GOP needs to support big government in order to win votes. The biggest victories for Republicans in living memory, after all, are the 1980 and 1994 landslides, when the GOP was most aggressive in promoting an anti-government message. The big-government, compassionate-conservative […]

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Sowell for President

In his Random Thoughts column, Thomas Sowell shows more wisdom in his questions than politicians could demonstrate if they ever had to provide answers. The three questions excerpted below underscore the importance of thinking about both the underlying morality of public policy as well as the unintended consequences of government actions: Since this is an […]

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Class Warfare From an Economic Luddite

Perhaps the greatest living public intellectual is Thomas Sowell and one of his famous quotes asks our leftist friends to quantify how much of other people’s money they supposedly deserve. Another way of looking at that issue is to ask what’s the maximum tax rate anyone should have to pay. Is it 30 percent? 40 […]

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Death by Regulation

As Frederic Bastiat sagely observed nearly 200 years ago, a good economist considers the indirect or secondary effects of any action. For instance, a politician might claim we can double tax revenue by doubling tax rates, but a sensible economist will warn that higher tax rates will discourage work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. And those […]

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Stadium Subsidies, Reverse Redistribution, and Cronyism

Redistribution is bad economic policy. As the great Thomas Sowell observed, the people who finance redistribution are hurt because they get taxed for working and producing. And the people on the receiving end often are hurt because they get lured into dependency. But not all forms of redistribution are equally bad. For instance, I don’t […]

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The Excellent Fiscal Policy of Warren Harding

I’ve repeatedly heaped praise on Ronald Reagan. I’ve also lauded Calvin Coolidge on several occasions. And I even once extolled the virtues of Grover Cleveland. Today, we’re going to celebrate the fiscal achievements of Warren Harding. Most notably, as illustrated by this chart based on OMB data, he presided over a period of remarkable spending […]

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Libertarian Humor

Time for some more humor about America’s most lovable minority. We’ll start with a guy who must have raided his friend’s “jewelry box.” Next, libertarians were in favor of Juneteenth, and not just because slavery was an awful policy of government. For our third item, the Babylon Bee has an amusing story about nine warning […]

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The 2nd Amendment and the Individual Right to Gun Ownership

Back in 2012, I shared a video clip of Ice-T defending the 2nd Amendment, but that video is now dead, so I’m glad to see that Prager University has added his comments as a prologue to this defense of gun rights by Prof. Eugene Volokh. Ice-T and Prof. Volokh make for a good combination, one […]

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Blame Washington for the Great Depression

There are several false narratives about economic history, involving topics ranging from the recent financial crisis to 19th-century sweatshops. But probably the biggest falsehood, as explained in this video by Prof. Lee Ohanian, is the notion that big government saved us from the Great Depression. The only shortcoming of Ohanian’s video is that he’s analyzing […]

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Walter Williams, RIP

One of America’s leading public intellectuals, Walter Williams, has passed away. In 2014, I shared a teaser for Suffer No Fools, a video biography of his life. To commemorate the life of this great man, here’s the full video. I first got to know Walter when I was a Ph.D. student at George Mason University […]

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Correcting Pope Francis…Again

While I generally don’t think recycling is economically sensible, I am going to reuse this 2013 BBC interview because it’s time (again) to criticize the economic illiteracy of Pope Francis. As I’ve previously explained, it’s good to care for the less fortunate. Indeed, as I explain in the interview, it’s part of being a good […]

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