RealClearPolitics - Articles - Thomas Sowell Delivers Inconvenient Truths - 0 views
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Ihering Alcoforado on 11 Nov 11Thomas Sowell Delivers Inconvenient Truths By Heather Wilhelm Economic Facts and Fallacies By Thomas Sowell Perseus Publishing, December 2007 -------------------------------------------- Want to be a real hit at a cocktail party? Try bringing up politics, preferably with someone who disagrees with you--and if they're an emotional sort, even better. Proceed to delve into controversial issues of the day (the politics of race and gender, for instance) and, as you do, back up each point with lucid economic facts. After thorough research and a calm, learned presentation, odds are that you'll make a real impact. An impact, that is, in the form of gigantic tufts of steam shooting out of your audience's ears. Thomas Sowell's new book, "Economic Facts and Fallacies," is much like that cocktail party guest: cool, logical, informative, insightful, and, for some sides of the political aisle, a major irritant to be blocked out of the mind. Indeed, Sowell is the first to admit that facts, though the subject of his book, aren't always enough when it comes to winning the debate. He quotes Henry Rosovsky, a Harvard economist: "Never underestimate the difficulty," the professor once said, "of changing false beliefs by facts." Sowell's book dismantles many of the pervasive fallacies running rampant in politics today, broken into categories of urban life, gender, academia, income, race, and the problems of the third world. Some of these fallacies stem from false assumptions; others from faulty economics; still others from dodgy definitions. "Undefined words have a special power in politics," Sowell writes, "particularly when they evoke some principle that engages people's emotions." He mentions "fair" as a prime example. In the charged political milleu of 2008, "change" is surely another. Sowell packs the book with salient facts--that less than 5% of all American land is developed, for instance, or that the percentage of American families with incomes over $75,000 has tripled ove