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Interesting to read but untrustworthy 2010-08-24

Reviewer: C P

I read this book fairly quickly because I found the subject matter interesting and I appreciated Mr. Sowell's writing style. In Basic Economics he always provided some contrast in views which is always an effective way to make a topic memorable and more intriguing. On the downside though, he was entirely too narrowminded in his approach to issues that are far from settled and call for multiple viewpoints. He could have easily concluded each paragraph with the phrase "And those fools think that [insert fallacy according to Sowell]," and the tone throughou would have remained intact.

I found it humourous but ultimately disappointing that the book rested on the straw man arguments of the Soviet economic model. I just couldn't trust his underlying premise that if something didn't work in the Soviet Union then the opposite approach, without any further nuance or qualification, must be correct. The failure of an utterly constrained and oppressed economic model as the Soviet model is insufficient evidence for allowing free reign of the market (it's conclusive evidence that Stalin was a nut).

I was ready to give up reading the book outright when I saw an interview with Sowell where he compared Obama to Stalin, Chamberlain and Hitler. How can someone with such absurd views be fit to tell me directions to the restroom nevermind educate me on the economy? (Which brings me to another issue: when we fixate on ridiculous issues like comparing a duly elected leader to genocidal maniacs, politicians across the board get a free pass on the real issues that assail our country. Remember when Senator McCain launched his campaign by claiming Obama was a paedophile? Talk about contempt for the real issues.) But the book, as I said, is interesting to read and it did teach me a great deal about the economy. Now I have to find another, more balanced, book to verify what I've learned is accurate.

Looking for the truth? 2010-08-06

Reviewer: JM

Am I the only one who found an answer to a fundamental question of Life in this amazing book?

Raised in a liberal Marin County California household was a frustrating youth. Parents, teachers, media, seemingly "society" itself, framed the ways of the world, what I should expect, how I should act, how the world worked. I should defer to the collective needs and desires of others and them to mine and all would be happy. I grew up with an increasing sense distrust of others, of a hypocritical world around me. What "they" said didn't work, it did not make sense. All were very willing to accept my contribution to their needs, but mine were never met. I struggled to find the truth, trying one philosophy after another. I tried to build my own model with little success.

Thomas Sowell's book, Basic Economics, blows away the obscuring, misleading, cobwebs of untruth and offers an irresistible invitation to recognize the unchangeable bulwark of "Truth", and like physics, the inviolable laws of economics. It is a foundation for the discovery of "I Am", of self and beyond self. It is the perspective from which to live the adventure of life. The world makes sense now.

Basic Conservative Dogma 2010-07-31

Reviewer: John E. Harriss

I have the audio version of this book and if you are interested in learning about economics do not buy anything from Thomas Sowell. He is a conservative political agent and this book is masquerading as economics. You would be far better off buying principles of macroeconomics and principles of microeconomics textbooks. Some of the instructors at my college are using these ones:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Campbell-McConnell/dp/0073126632/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280546191&sr=1-3
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-U-Seventh-Nariman-Behravash/dp/0393926052/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280546603&sr=1-3
They cover both macroeconomics and microeconomics. You will also need some Algebra under your belt if you are going to work any of the models.

Thomas Sowell repeats a lot of failed agenda driven arguments from the Austrian school of economics. This is just a distilled update of the ideas of Ludwig Von Mises and Eugen Von Bohm-Bawerk. The latter was quoted as argued "Labor cannot increase it's share at the expense of Capital" and the former assaulting all forms of government intervention and regulation. Many of the arguments made in this book were thoroughly discredited in the debates between the Austrians and the Keynesians in the 30's and then again in the 70's when the Monatists of Milton Friedman went head to head with the Keynesians.

One of these false arguments is that unemployment is caused by the price of labor being held higher than it's natural rate due to minimum wage laws. This is the argument that labor follows the rule that "something at a lower price will be consumed more, than at a higher price", so if labor is cheaper more people will be hired. The rule applies to goods and services, and Thomas Sowell extends it to capital, such as labor. Labor isn't consumed based on it's price. It is consumed based on its relation to the price of the goods and services it produces. It doesn't matter how little you are willing to work for, if your boss cannot sell what you would produce then you will not have a job. People are not going to hire the unemployed to dig holes and fill them back in if only the government would let them work for a dollar an hour. Thomas Sowell should know this. If minimum wage laws were to be abolished all it would do is allow bosses more leeway to decrease labor as a capital expense so that they can realize higher net profits. In other words, 'See that guy in the unemployment line over there? He's really hungry and he will work for $4 an hour and if you want to keep your job you better do it too.' This isn't economics. This is politics.

Another is that all of his arguments against bureaucracy, central planning and subsidies are used against government to justify a 'free market', also apply to private firms and he ignores this throughout his entire book. Corporations have just as much bureaucracy as government. They just don't call it that. They call it administration. The people on the ground closest to the problem are not the decision makers and have to file just as much paperwork, through swarms of middle management types, to try and get anything done just as much as any government entity.

All major corporations are centrally planned. Every store manager files business reports that are sent to district headquarters where district managers make decision based on them and file their own reports, that go to regional headquarters for regional managers to make decisions and so on and so forth. He criticizes an example of Soviet central planning in his book where a wheelbarrow factory manager runs out of the right kind of paint and so has to stop production instead of using the wrong color of paint they have on hand. This situation isn't unique to Soviet production and an American corporate manager would be forced to do the exact same thing if he did not have the authority to change the production order, as the Soviet factory manager didn't.

Private firms will also transfer money from a successful store to an unsuccessful store to keep it afloat. This is subsidizing just the same as when the government bails out a store. In the private arena this is even a tactic. A large successful corporation will build a store in an area with high competition from several smaller businesses or L.L.C.s and run it in the red with low prices. They subsidize the losses with their other branches until their competition can't take the losses anymore and go out of business. After achieving market dominance they bring the prices back up to make the store profitable again.

There are many other fallacies in this book but to include all of them would turn this review into a book all on its own. So why the bias? Why argue that governments as legal entities shouldn't do any of these things but major corporations as legal entities can? Why try to convince people to vote away labor laws that protect their livelihood? I think it has to do more with the desired concentration of power rather than allocating resources for the benefit all. This book isn't about economics. It is about politics. One big fat lonely star for trying to manipulate me with this propaganda pamphlet of conservative dogma.

Basic Economics 2010-07-27

Reviewer: fred

Except for gummy stickers in several places on these books, they were in excellent condition (5 stars without the tags). For a good quality hard bound book, the price was very good.

Old-Fashioned Economic Discussion 2010-06-21

Reviewer: Daily Reckoning

It's easy to draw inspiration from the book, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. The most striking thing about this book is that it is written in plain English - no small thing for an economics text. Sowell does it the old-fashioned way, using analogies and word pictures to explain complex concepts in simple fashion. No pie graphs or multicolor charts, no heavy reliance on statistics or data points. Just good old logic and reasoning.

Not that there is anything wrong with numbers, graphics or visuals. They certainly have their time and place, and I am happy to make use of them. But for some discussions, unadorned logic works better. A good argument is one you can understand, letting you take it or leave it. In contrast, numbers can be manipulated, data points stretched and statistics tortured to say what we'd prefer them to say. (All you have to do is check the consumer price index to see that this is true.) The one time I saw Sowell speak in person, he offered a great one-liner that captured the tricky nature of statistics. "Have you heard the one," he said to the crowd, "about the statistician that drowned in a lake with an average depth of only 2 feet." That captures the point nicely I think. I try to maintain a Sowell-style reliance on plain English in my writing.

Review from Agora Financial, publisher of economic and financial analysis including Financial Reckoning Day Fallout: Surviving Today's Global Depression, The New Empire of Debt: The Rise and Fall of an Epic Financial Bubble, and I.O.U.S.A.: One Nation. Under Stress. In Debt.