Topic: Must Read
Thomas Sowell’s latest book, Economic Facts and Fallacies, couldn’t be more topical. As the Obama Administration lays waste to American prosperity with its economically illiterate policies, this admirably clear and concise primer explains just how Barry & Co. managed to get it so wrong.
The theme of Economic Facts and Fallacies can be summed up in a single sentence: “There is no free lunch.” As Sowell notes, this statement is trite precisely because it has so often been proved true. And every wrong-headed, destructive economic policy, from price controls to “affordable housing,” violates this fundamental principle of economics.
The fact that there is no free lunch explains why economics has been dubbed “the dismal science.” Contrary to what you may think, it didn’t get branded as dismal by long-suffering college students in Econ 101. No, what makes economics dismal—to politicians, bureaucrats, political activists, community organizers—is the reality check it imposes on their grand schemes for the improvement of society. The idealist is seldom a realist. There is, after all, something very attractive in the notion that sufficient commitment and compassion can sweep aside all barriers to produce the desired result—an end to poverty, say—by sheer force of will.
But whether or not a given scheme will work is an empirical question in which considerations of compassion and commitment have no place. If the scheme is ineffective or counterproductive, it simply won’t produce the desired results. And the more passionately it’s pushed, the more damage it will do.
Sowell gives several examples of misguided social engineering that not only failed to solve problems but created new and worse problems, e.g. rent control, a well-meaning policy that has made it well-nigh impossible to find a decent, reasonably priced apartment in cities like New York. He also discusses facts and fallacies surrounding such issues as incomes, higher education and race.
Economic Facts and Fallacies is written in Sowell’s plain, unadorned style—prose like a window pane, as George Orwell would have said. Buy this book (available for the Kindle), read it, and be enlightened. Especially at a time of economic troubles like the one we are living though, era of economic malaise, Economic Facts and Fallacies is a must read.
