Economic Facts and Fallacies [With Earbuds]

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Economic Facts and Fallacies [With Earbuds]

by Thomas Sowell, Jeff Riggenbach (Read by)

4.01 · rating details · 451 ratings · 92 reviews

From one of America's most distinguished economists, a short, brilliant and revelatory book: the fundamental ideas people most commonly get wrong about economics, and how to think about the subject better.

Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues--and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge...more

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Published May 28th 2009 by Playaway (first published December 30th 2007)

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Oct 03, 2008

Nicholas rated it

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Shelves: economics

Pure Sowell. Same as usual. Stop interfering. Let people do what they want cause they know better than you do. Oh and things aren't as bad as everyone says.

I really liked his point about traditional wives investing int he economic future of their husbands. I never thought about it that way. Probably because I never thought about it.

Covers; Urban, Gender, Academic, Income, Racial, and the Third World.

Quotes:

"No matter how much is done to promot...more

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Dec 12, 2008

Camille rated it

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I’m just finishing this book now so I won’t spoil the ending for you, just kidding. It really is a great book applying basic economic theories to real life situations.
He spends quite a bit of time debunking economic myths and explaining the real reasons why for example, real estate near San Francisco and college tuition are so ridiculously expensive. Basically, it comes down to too much government economic control.
I really do love Sowell’s logical practical approach. It’s great in ...more

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Jul 29, 2011

Ice Bear rated it

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Shelves: economics-business

As the author alludes to, statistics can be used to prove opposite sides of an argument. This book makes you think about the larger issues covered, helpful if you live in the US. The main view I take is that the author has used his logic and evidence to make the 'generally held beliefs' be given a verdict of 'not proven' which probably does not sell as well as the word 'fallacy'.

The complexities and multiple variables perhaps mean that any conclusions may be difficult to reach rather...more

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Oct 31, 2011

Robert rated it

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This was a very interesting book that challenged many preconceived notions and sacred cows that continually arise in social and economic debates. The volume of evidence cited for the author's arguments made this book both exhausting to read and difficult to dismiss.

While reading this book, I felt like I was back in my economics classes where the professors constantly asked the students to look deeper and not simply react to a statistic, but to really understand what factors shaped t...more

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Jul 23, 2011

Midclassind rated it

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I liked the last two chapters. The book is not objective. He cleverly points out libertarian successes and socialist failures and dodges the opposite. The numbers give the reader the impression of objectivity, but the comparisons are far from it. Two examples (spoiler alert):

He compared the failures of housing policy in San Francisco (built on a mountainous peninsula prone to earthquakes) to the successes in Houston (flat plain for a 30 mile radius).

He compared the 1%...more

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Apr 04, 2011

Kenny rated it

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Shelves: current-events, non-fiction

STUBBORN THINGS

Thomas Sowell’s remarkable book Economic Facts and Fallacies is even more remarkable for its brevity. In just over two hundred pages, he tackles and deconstructs fallacies infecting our cities, our relationships, the academy, business, race relations, and the Third World.
John Adams said famously, “Facts are stubborn things.” The Austin Lounge Lizards sang, “Life is hard, but life is hardest when you’re dumb.” Both are true and one of the most difficult things in...more

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Mar 07, 2011

Kenny Cranford rated it

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Shelves: 2011-books

Great book - started off slow but really picked up in the last half. Sowell is a very bright guy and combed through many, many books and articles to write this book. The notes/appendix section is over 10% of the book! His writing style is very preachy but I enjoyed his insights and anecdotes.

His chapters on income, race, and "third world" countries were the most interesting and the most controversial. On the income front, he does a good job dispelling the myths that the...moreGreat book - started off slow but really picked up in the last half. Sowell is a very bright guy and combed through many, many books and articles to write this book. The notes/appendix section is over 10% of the book! His writing style is very preachy but I enjoyed his insights and anecdotes.

His chapters on income, race, and "third world" countries were the most interesting and the most controversial. On the income front, he does a good job dispelling the myths that the middle class is shrinking and illustrates how much standard of living is increasing across the board. I especially enjoyed his points on part time vs full time earners and the transient nature of people in the top and bottom income brackets. Another strong point he makes is defending the "greed" of corporate executives compared with actors, musicians, and other celebrities. Racially he breaks most fallacies down to differences in education and age while arguing against "employment discrimination and ghetto environments. For third world facts and fallacies Sowell rejects the way most countries distribute foreign aide and the myth of colonial exploitation. I enjoyed this paragraph:

"Exploitation is a virtually perfect political explanation of income differences. It validates whatever envy or resentment may be felt by people with lower incomes toward people with higher incomes. It removes whatever stigma may be felt from implications of lower ability or lower performance on the part of those with lower incomes. It locates the need for change in other people, rather than imposing the burdens of change on those who wish to rise. More, it replaces any such task with a morally uplifting sense of entitlement. Whatever the empirical and logical problems with the theory of exploitation, political movements are seldom based on empirical evidence and logic."

In general, this book makes a strong case against the notion that "third-party observers know better what is good for people than those people know themselves". When dealing with this kind of thought (read liberalism), he suggests doing 3 things:

1. Make that implicit assumption explicit
2. Demand proof of that superior knowledge
3. Point out how many disasters in countries around the world have followed in the wake of programs and policies based on that assumption.

Highly recommend this quick read for those looking to dispel many of the flaws being circulated in our American society today.
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Dec 10, 2009

Jonny99 rated it

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This book lacks the increasingly popular long subtitle that most non-fiction books now sport; I would like to suggest “In Defense of the Wealthy”. Over this dense “an economist looks at…” collection of analyses of popular politic topics was a challenge to push through but worth the excursion so some degree. The advertising copy for this book includes the phrase: “Writing in a lively manner…” – I believe this would be the first fallacy.
An early section of the book deals with property rights...moreThis book lacks the increasingly popular long subtitle that most non-fiction books now sport; I would like to suggest “In Defense of the Wealthy”. Over this dense “an economist looks at…” collection of analyses of popular politic topics was a challenge to push through but worth the excursion so some degree. The advertising copy for this book includes the phrase: “Writing in a lively manner…” – I believe this would be the first fallacy.
An early section of the book deals with property rights and I was left with the distinct impression that Sowell may have recently been turned down for a variance by his local zoning board. Sowell feels that environmental concerns have unnecessarily eroded property rights in the U.S. and suggests that some 90% of U.S. land lies nearly criminally underdeveloped. I assume his 90% figure includes the deserts of the Southwest and the Arctic tundra of Alaska (I hear there is a lot of scrub-grass left in Montana as well). If he were to consider only those parts of the country where large numbers of people actually live, he might see the need for more centralized efforts at controlling suburban sprawl and for conservation of underdeveloped areas for future generations. To his credit he does rail against the increasing loose interpretation of eminent domain which has recently been interpreted to allow the dislocation of communities in favor of shopping malls. It is an easy target but one that needs to be assailed.
Another early section actually fulfills the promised of the book’s title by reviewing the economics involved in higher education. Sowell demonstrates that colleges claim to be bastions of innovation while forcing students to spend four years attaining a degree no matter what the field and by largely using instructional methods (lecturer in front of a chalkboard) which haven’t changed in better than 125 years. He shows how the institutional accreditation system is designed to, and is extremely effective at, keeping tuitions high and competition low. He also covers other rigging of the system such as college presidents and other officials billing the university for personal costs, professors requiring book they authored to be purchased and admissions offers receiving kickbacks from student loans organizations. A particularly illuminating passage demonstrates how professors are incented not to be very good teachers. This disincentive grows with the prestige of the school such that instruction at Ivy-League schools may actually be on par with the local community college
Having defended the rights of property holders but then assailing Ivy-leaguers, Sowell returns to defend the rich by exposing the fallacy (as he sees it) of an increasing division of wealth in the U.S. Sowell notes that today’s poorer classes enjoy amenities that the poor of 1971 (not sure why this year was particularly salient) could only envy from afar. He doesn’t compare how the wealthy of the two eras compare. Certainly the rich of 1971 would look at accouterments such fractional jet ownership, a doubling of house square footages and exclusive gated communities and feel some pangs of jealousy. Sowell complete ignore the point in a section where he defends outsized executive compensation by comparing it to outsized entertainer or sports star compensation. A TV star or baseball player is judged by objective measures while executive employment contracts often go to great lengths to avoid such objectivity. Actors and basketball players also don’t normally have much say in who owns the studio or team and thus sets their pay while executives often are able to staff Boards with favorable directors. Sowell also feels that the increasing CEO/average work pay gap is a fallacy by saying Boards have a right to pay what they feel is just compensation for contributions at all levels. But why has the multiple between the CEO and average worker expanded so much? Are CEOs really so much more important in 2008 versus 1960 relative to the front-line employee? Sowell never does discuss how this could be the case.
Also on the topic of pay, Sowell jumps into the gender-wage gap debate showing that it can be demonstrated that women are paid a percentage of what men earn but that this gap rapidly evaporates as confounding factors are controlled for. He concludes pay discrimination is the fault of both nature, which put the responsibility for childbearing on women, and society, which expects that women will continue to shoulder the lion’s share of that responsibility after birth. However, women should not complain too loudly as Sowell cites results that suggest that somewhere above 80% of dollars spent in the typical household are the result of decisions made by wives. On a personal note, my favorite statistic in the book was that households with female children spend 70% more on appearance (clothing, cosmetics, etc.) as compared to households with boys.
Having done some chapters on gender, Sowell feel compelled to cover race. I struggled to understand what his historical review of slavery has to do with economics. He also reviews the genesis of race riots in large cities. His contention that cities with officials less tolerant of demonstrations also have fewer riots is a little Orwellian.
Overall, if the book didn’t have the discussion on colleges, I would have seen it as largely a defense of the privileged through economic theory. However, there were enough insightful spots to make it worthwhile.(less)

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Jun 16, 2009

David rated it

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This is a brilliant book. The writing is uncomplicated even when dealing with complex issues.
Thomas Sowell tackles economic issues that effect many of us in the course of our lives and breaks them down to the point where we can clearly see the simple choices that people make and how dynamically
that impacts our society.

This is not dry reading. This is not boring at all.

Everyone "knows" that Homes in california cost ten times more than homes in the mid...more

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Oct 28, 2010

Jeremiah added it · review of another edition

Sowell's basic tenet is that the free market is the best decider when it comes to wages, zoning, rent prices, and other economic decisions. (Central planning is a failure everywhere) The law of unintended consequences usually undermines what government policies are trying to achieve. Sowell also takes on the tenure system and college accreditation as it is practiced. Both drive up costs for students and tenure ends up doing the oppposite of its intention - creating more job insecurity for excell...more

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Dec 21, 2011

Earl rated it

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In this book Sowell describes several fallacies. Unfortunately he forgot to examine the "Straw Man Fallacy." He uses it so many times I felt that he must know it backwards and forwards.

For example, in his attack on Higher Education, he talks on page 97 about research institutions and gives as an example Ft. Hays State University in Kansas. What???? Ft. Hays is the smallest of six state universities in Kansas and has never ever claimed to be a research institution. The ...more

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Feb 17, 2009

Lynn rated it

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This is a well written and incisive analysis of economics based on false assumptions about race, education and other major areas of society by a scholar and social commentator. Sowell turns economic issues on their heads by introducing an unorthodox way of viewing inter alia poverty and race and education. Claiming that the reasons for disparities in these areas are not salvageable by government intervention, (witness LB's "war on poverty" that only served to make the poor believe that...more

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Aug 30, 2011

John rated it

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Shelves: economics

A decent book that highlights many misconceptions, usually based on deliberate bias toward certain narratives which align with their world vision, people have about what statistics seem to be telling them. Two exceptionally strong points Sowell makes are on the use of tautologies (circular reasoning to create "infallible" arguments) and the use of "exploitation" as a political device for class warfare. This is succinctly put:

"Exploitation is a virtually ...more

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Mar 25, 2010

Lacey rated it

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This was a great introductory book to many contemporary issues. He goes through different issues such as education, racism, sexism, and urban development and illustrates which parts of current argument and policy are based on economic facts or fallacies. His main point is that politics or activists oftentimes over simplify issues such as chalking it up to discrimination when there are many different factors involved. I liked his section on urban facts and fallacies best. He talked about fals...more

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Jun 12, 2011

Mary Ronan Drew rated it

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Shelves: kindle

Thomas Sowell is feisty. He has to be as his economic theories are in direct opposition to much of what has become mainstream belief: a high minimum wage helps the poor, so does rent control, strict controls by government are needed to protect people from capitalist predators, black slavery in the US is the worst the world has ever known. Sowell quotes reliable sources to debunk all of these and more; this is a richly footnoted book.

Economic Facts and Fallacies takes an approach to e...more

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Jan 14, 2009

Wayne rated it

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Shelves: 2009, economics

Sowell presents some very interesting and well thought through arguments in this book. I originally picked it up based on how much I enjoyed Freakonomics and have an appetite to learn more about the subject matter. The downside to me was how slow going it seemed to be. I enjoyed the content and managed to get through it all, but on many occasions I found myself re-reading large sections where he presented a lot of stats and number in a way that didn't allow e to retain the knowledge very well. ...more

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Feb 26, 2009

Ryan rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

A worthwhile read. The chapters I found most compelling (or perhaps simply the most interesting) were "Academic Facts and Fallacies" as well as "Income Facts and Fallacies." Throughout the book Sowell highlights a solid set of tools with which readers' can analyze the validity or lack thereof of both statistics as well as the conclusions drawn from them.

He aptly quotes Mark Twain at the beginning of one of his chapters where Twain remarked on the three kinds of l...more

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Aug 28, 2010

Clifton rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction, politics, economics

A wonderful book, more detailed than Applied Economics –a must read for anyone wishing to take time to think through many of the ideas people believe.

The chapters on Race and Income were enlightening. A quote from Chapter 6, that is not often heard, "Whatever we wish to achieve in the future, it must begin by knowing where we are in the present– not where we wish we were, or where we wish others to think we are, but where we are in fact."

To often we look at the wor...more

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Jun 15, 2011

Mark rated it

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Thomas Sowell hits another home run with this latest look into the realities of economics in the United States. In this third book of his I have read, he looks at the Facts and Fallacies of Urban life, Gender issues, Academia, Race, Income ineqtuity and the Third World. As always, his prose is very readable and fascinating, and his arguments compelling. This book ought to be required reading for graduation from every high school and college. (It OUGHT to be required reading for every American ci...more

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Jan 08, 2009

Michelle rated it

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Shelves: politics-economics

Well, this book was not really tightly organized, but it is a gem nonetheless. Sowell has a real talent for using economic reasoning and statistics to point out that we really don't know what we are talking about a lot of the time. Sowell points out a lot of the dumb ways people try to use statistics, sometimes with intent to deceive, and sometimes just because they don't know any better. Are the richest countries in the world really widening the gap with the poorest countries? Do black Amer...more

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Aug 01, 2011

Byron Wright rated it

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This is a great book for shaking up your perceptions of how the world works. The author is very libertarian, in that he believes regulation and government just get in the way. I'm a little left leaning so, I don't agree with all of the conclusions and feel that there is a role for government and regulation in specific circumstances. However, I am now more skeptical of conventional wisdom. Much of conventional wisdom appears to be based on anecdotes without proper context. Since that was the auth...more

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Oct 05, 2009

Toby rated it

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Shelves: politics-economics

Good basic stuff here. Great chapters on the differences between men and women in the economy, race and economy, and the third world and economy.

He's adequately hard on "third parties" intervening into situations where two parties will do. But I wonder if he falls prey to one of his own fallacies (the chess board fallacy) assuming a kind of interchangeability between various parties (at least on that point). He's just not addressing the hardest questions in other words. ...more

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Jun 15, 2009

Daisy rated it

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Shelves: business-books, non-fiction

The Fallacy of Composition:
-is the belief that what is true of a part is true of the whole.

Urban Facts and Fallacies:
governmental intervention on housing prices is one of the reasons why housing price is so high. Restrictions on the building of homes and apartment buildings take many forms. "Smart Growth" laws restrict the expansion of home building in suburban areas. "open space" laws which simply forbid the building of anything on land set aside in ...moreThe Fallacy of Composition:
-is the belief that what is true of a part is true of the whole.

Urban Facts and Fallacies:
governmental intervention on housing prices is one of the reasons why housing price is so high. Restrictions on the building of homes and apartment buildings take many forms. "Smart Growth" laws restrict the expansion of home building in suburban areas. "open space" laws which simply forbid the building of anything on land set aside in various areas. Respect for property rights mean that existing residents and potential newcomers compete for the same space on an equal basis in the marketplace, rather than in a political process in which only the existing residents can vote. Cities sometimes can reduce the cost by spread over vast numbers of people living in a limited urban area, reducing the cost per person compared to what it would cost per person over vast countrysides. The resources are also more readily available nearby, the transportation costs are lower and is easier to find employee in case of machine breakdown. Other costs in cities are greater than suburban areas like the sewage disposal because the country soil can absorb and decompose human wastes,

Male-Female facts and fallacies:
employers sometimes want to segregate women from men at work, typically if an occupation was one that attracted males, the distraction of a female worker in their midst could adversely affect productivity.

Academic facts and fallacies:
normally, in a university, the faculty decides the rules of the whole school because the administrators wouldn't know about the fundamentals of the school.legally, the ultimate authority at a college or university rests with the board of trustees including the power to fire the university presidents, but most trustee members only meet with each other for 5 hours per month. Faculties even have the power of corruption, like selecting textbooks based on how much money they got paid by publishers. Some university teachers will intent on selecting course where they don't have to put course which they don't have to do too much research. A lot of professors give out grade inflation to keep away from negative evaluation. Universities nromally only offer full tenture system to professors that can bring about research revenues for the school. Now a lot of universities even participate in the lobbying strategy to lobby congress for more grants. It is common today for football coaches in universities getting paid higher than university president.

racial Facts and fallacies:
most people believe that minorities earn less than the majority population but statistics show that minorities are generally a lot younger than majorities and younger people normally earn less than majorities. People think that employers discriminate against minorities because the color of their skin, not so, most employers discriminate because of cost-benefit analysis, many people have said that each person should be judged as an individual but virtually no one actually does that because the cost of acquiring sufficient knowledge about an individual is often far more than it is worth. Employers only forgot about discrimination once the minorities have reached the point where the benefits of sorting the minority individual exceeded the costs of doing so. Anti-discrimination law determines that the burden of proof falls on the accused in the cases to demonstrate the validity of the criteria used. most employers settle the cases outside of the court, even when they have not discriminated. prices charged by stores in low income neighborhoods tend to be higher than prices charged by stores in middle income neighborhoods because the operation costs are higher in ghetto areas.

Third world facts and fallacies:
most people believe that geography impact the poverty of a country. What human beings can do with a given geographic environment changes over time as knowledge and experience grow. Geography plays a crucial role in determing how wide the cultural universe extends at any given place. countries with rich resources like Russia is not even among the top 70 nations of the world in real income per capita, which countries with no resources are rich like Japan. Argentina has fewer people per square mile than the United States but has a per capita real income that is only a fraction of that of americans. India has a population per square mile that is several times that of either Argentina or United States, but not quite as many people per squire mile as Japan, which has a far higher real income per capital than india.
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Nov 30, 2011

Jeremy rated it

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Quotes:

In 2001, for example, cash and in-kind transfers together accounted for 77.8 percent of the economic resources of people in the bottom 20 percent. The alarming statistics so often cited in the media and by politicians count only 22 percent of the actual economic resources at their disposal.

Three-quarters of those Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point during the next 16 years.

As...more
Quotes:

In 2001, for example, cash and in-kind transfers together accounted for 77.8 percent of the economic resources of people in the bottom 20 percent. The alarming statistics so often cited in the media and by politicians count only 22 percent of the actual economic resources at their disposal.

Three-quarters of those Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point during the next 16 years.

As of 2001 a household income of $84,000 was enough to put those who earned it in the top 20 percent of Americans. A couple making $42,000 each is hardly what most people would consider rich. Even to make the top 5 percent required a household income of just over $150,000 – that is, about $75,000 apiece for a working couple.

Among individuals who are actively in the labor force, only 5 percent of those who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 were still there in 1991, compared to 29 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 who had risen to the top quintile by 1991.

North Africa’s Barbary Coast pirates alone captured and enslaved at least a million Europeans from 1500 to 1800, carrying more Europeans into bondage in North Africa than there were Africans brought in bondage to the United States and the American colonies from which it was formed.

The percentage of black families with incomes below the poverty line fell most sharply between 1940 and 1960, going from 87 percent to 47 percent over that span, before either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and well before the 1970s, when “affirmative action” evolved into numerical “goals” or “quotas.”

While, in the late twentieth century, an absolute majority of those black families with no husband present lived in poverty, more than four-fifths of black husband-wife families did not. From 1994 on into the twenty-first century, the poverty rate among black husband-wife families was below 10 percent.

Educational and intellectual performance is a readily documented area where the persistence of culture can be tested. As late as the First World War, white soldiers from various Southern states scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Northern states.

As far back as 1980, college-educated black married couples earned slightly more than white college-educated married couples.
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Jan 10, 2009

Brian rated it

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I only read about a quarter of the book and then just skimmed the rest.

The book is mostly a litany of facts and anecdotes that attempt to call into question of refute some popular or commonly-held beliefs or would-be facts about economics. I think the author's thesis is that you need to look very critically at the world lest you fall into fallacious reasoning/conclusions, but this thesis is obvious and the examples are complicated, wandering, mostly uninteresting and often unconvinc...more

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Nov 07, 2008

Richard rated it

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Recommends it for: everyone who cares anything about the world around them

This is an absolutely excellent book that exposes some of the most widely held and most influential fallacies of our time. Unfortunately, many of these fallacies drive governmental priorities, to the detriment of us all. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are immune from buying into erroneous thinking.

For example, one fallacy concerns the alleged inequality of income distribution among men versus women. Virtually every study of this effect ignores important differences in the two g...more

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Nov 17, 2008

Julie rated it

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Wow, I wouldn't have ever pictured myself reading something like this, but it was interesting and eye-opening. Sowell lays seemingly in(un?)disputable fallacies to rest just by looking at the facts that "experts" ignore or the media doesn't take the time to notice, thereby giving us half the story and leading us to believe things that aren't true. For example, that overpopulation is what causes poverty in Third World countries, or that government intervention is needed to create "...more

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Sep 01, 2008

Michelle rated it

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I did not read this cover to cover. I read it for pleasure, not for school, so I felt no guilt about skipping around to the interesting parts, and not reading parts that didn't interest me as much. Still, the book had some great insights.

The book really doesn't focus so much on economic facts as on economic fallacies. It has a basic intro and conclusion, with 6 topics covered in between.

The first chapter dealing with fallacies was about housing, and in my opinion, it w...more

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Dec 28, 2010

Doug rated it

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Like many of his other books, Sowell comes at these issues armed with boatloads of extrapolated data to support his conclusions. In a few cases it would be nice to find the source material cited more directly so as to be more fully researched. It is possible to picks knits with some of his conclusions, but he will generally point out and admit his bias in each of the examples. All in all, it is a smart and compelling follow up to his introductory economics text.

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Oct 18, 2009

Howard Olsen rated it

· review of another edition

Sowell brings the "facts" to expose fallacies that persist in America's politics, media, social sciences and conventionally understood history regarding income, race, the Third World, and other hot button topics. Pretty good, but mostly a rehash of Sowell's other books. As usual he writes for general readers, not specialists, and this book reads easily, even as he covers some very controversial terrain. Recommended.

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About Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholars...moreThomas Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.

Sowell was born in North Carolina, where, he recounted in his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, his encounters with Caucasians were so limited he didn't believe that "yellow" was a hair color. He moved to Harlem, New York City with his mother's sister (whom he believed was his mother); his father had died before he was born. Sowell went to Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out at 17 because of financial difficulties and a deteriorating home environment. He worked at various jobs to support himself, including in a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union. He applied to enter the Civil Service and was eventually accepted, moving to Washington DC. He was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and assigned to the US Marine Corps. Due to prior experience in photography, he worked in a photography unit.

After his discharge, Sowell passed the GED examination and enrolled at Howard University. He transfered to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He received a Master of Arts in Economics from Columbia University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Chicago. Sowell initially chose Columbia University because he wanted to study under George Stigler. After arriving at Columbia and learning that Stigler had moved to Chicago, he followed him there.

Sowell has taught Economics at Howard University, Cornell University, Brandeis University, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman.

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981986-economic-facts-and-fallacies-with-earbuds?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1270400532m/7981986.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7981986-economic-facts-and-fallacies-with-earbuds?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Economic Facts and Fallacies [With Earbuds] by Thomas Sowell[/url]

Economic Facts and Fallacies [With Earbuds]

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