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 enlarge | Author: Thomas Sowell
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy New: $15.72
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Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 580
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0465003494
Dewey Decimal Number: 330
EAN: 9780465003495
ASIN: 0465003494
Publication Date: December 31, 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 excellent just before an election May 8, 2008
With all of the noise that comes before a presidential election, if you want to be grounded, if you want clarity, then read Thomas Sowell's newest book. Sowell provides a wealth of knowledge, on economic issues, based in facts you can further investigate.
Because this is a presidential year all issues will look very bleak to all canidates who are in the running for any political office. Any of Sowell's books are a great counterbalance to remove the unecessary emotion and blind nobility that can not produce the lofty promises made.
Sowell's newest book first defines classic fallacies to be on the look out, for the future. Also, he deals with specific issues like men and women earnings, academics, third world countries, and race. With each subject Sowell shows us classic fallacies the press or politicians will use to manipulate public perception.
Sowell makes his data and evidence very clear; therefore, if you like to go to the primary source, he'll show you how to get there, if you're a researcher.
Economic Facts and Fallacies by Sowell April 27, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Sowell is well-versed in practical reality-based economics and makes common sense to his readershio. His points range from quite humorous (I think) to quite serious, and are not stated in a verbose or technical jargon, or literary fashion. He integrates well into my general speaking and thinking genre/pattern, so I truly do enjoy his authorship to date He may be said to be somewhat sociological, but the underlying ideas are much more important than fuzzy theories from ivory towers. I believe strongly in pattern recognition as a strong natural force and these are values I recognize clearly and readily.
Chris G.
 Not as Good as I was Led to Believe April 18, 2008
28 out of 42 found this review helpful
While I may agree with most of the conclusions in this book, and agreement generally seduces four and five star reviews, at best this book deserves three stars for trying but two for falling short. Sowell, rightly wants to "torture" the data in order to reveal the truth, a truth that is very much at odds with common perceptions based on intentionally misleading superficial interpretations of the same data. While he does a much better job than most, he still falls well short of his objective. And worse, he knows it and intentionally disguises it. For that, I subtract one star.
For example, he (merely) asserts that changes in the marriage patterns of women largely accounts for changes in their relative pay. Perhaps, but more equal pay may very well have motivated significant changes in their behavior. Incentive based behavioral changes would surely be consistent with economic theory. He shows that while there might not be many women in careers like engineering, with other factors held equal, their equal pay demonstrate that women do earn as much as men. Perhaps, but employers desperately seeking the appearance of equality should likely have driven the salaries of scare women engineers beyond the pay of equivalent men.
In the case of hedonic quality adjustments and their critical effect on measures of inflation, he lists reasons why simple measures of price inadequately measure inflation, knowing full well that many of the factors he mentions are already incorporated into inflation measures as a result of the Boskin commission. He never mentions Boskin. Similarly, he creates a list of people that are rich but don't earn much, like the housewives of rich husbands, and then asserts that they account for "hundreds of thousands" of workers who are mistakenly classified as poor. "Hundreds of thousands" may sound like a lot but mathematically it's essentially zero. The list goes on. While Sowell searches for a more accurate interpretation of the data, at the same time he intentionally disguises flaws and weakness in his own analysis. A much fairer approach, and for me, a more persuasive one, would be to reveal and admit to the shortcomings of his own work.
Typical of his work is his chapter on income, which I found especially weak, despite agreeing with its conclusions. Given the current debate on income inequality, I would have thought this should have been the most important chapter. His analysis in this chapter can best be described as "thought salad" - a fact here and another quasi-related fact there, but never a more comprehensive picture of the "mix adjusted" data. He completely overlooks what is probably one of the most significant factors causing the appearance of flat wages, the dramatic shift in the demographics of the work force to what have traditionally been below average wage earners (first generation immigrants, minorities, women, single mothers, children of unwed mothers, etc). If you want to show that wages have increased over time when adjusted for demographic mix shifts, for example, then show the changes in wages rates for each demographic. If necessary, put the data table in an appendix. The book has no such appendices because he really hasn't analyzed the data. He merely reports factoids from other people's work. Why? Because he hopes the reader will carry a few of those factoids into the world. Ok, even if they're true factoids, that's still propaganda and not "four star" work. For me, it damages the credibility of the work.
Nevertheless, I would recommend everyone read this because there aren't many other works trying to use the data to reveal the truth, even if he is less straightforward then I would prefer. In the end, I can't help but wonder if the data the government collects isn't either unwittingly or intentionally obfuscated because it sure is misused and it sure is hard to use properly as evidenced by the fact that no one, not even Sowell, seems able to mix-adjust the data to the satisfaction of a critical layman, like myself.
If only Sowell's knowledge and wisdom were more widely known April 18, 2008
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
There is no end to the exposure of crackpot left-wing theorists in the media. Happening upon an appearance of a conservative economist like Thomas Sowell in the media, however, is extraordinary, which is the nation's loss.
Sowell is a prolific writer, but I doubt he reaches a fraction of the audience of a crank like Paul Krugman.
In this slim volume, Sowell exposes, refutes and debunks six of the major economic fallacies of our time:
1. Urban Facts and Fallacies
2. Male-Female Facts and Fallacies
3. Academic Facts and Fallacies
4. Income Facts and Fallacies
5. Racial Facts and Fallacies
6. Third World Facts and Fallacies
As you've probably noticed, these are six of the major flashpoint issues of our times - and Sowell knocks down the myths and lies the left-wing has worked so hard to spread.
For example, Sowell shows how elitists have made the most desirable areas of California unaffordable for all but the very rich through restrictive policies. This results in various hypocrisies, such as driving out poor blacks from places like San Francisco and also contributes to the fallacy of a lack of "affordable housing". The latter is not the fault of evil conservatives, but of very selfish left-wingers.
Sowell applies his truly formidable knowledge and scalpel-like logic to each of these six fallacies, slicing away the untruths and revealing that the United States is not a nation of massive inequalities, but is in fact still the land of opportunity.
As Sowell puts it so well, "[s]ome things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many things are believed because they are consistent with a widely held vision of the world - and this vision is accepted as a substitute for facts." For those willing to learn, Sowell demolishes six major myths here. Would that there were more like Sowell - and those willing to learn from him.
Jerry
Another winner April 16, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I had second thoughts about buying this book. I have already read several of his other books and I read his column regularly. When I got it in the mail I worried that I might already have heard everything he was going to say.
Nope. It was fresh and new.
Sowell is such an easy writer to read. His writings have a high concentration of facts. His facts read like anecdotes. They are easy to digest but they are all backed up by solid scholarship.
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