Quotes from Thomas Sowell

But, although Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are officially private, profit-making enterprises, their size and the federal government's involvement in both their creation and their on-going operations led many investors to assume that the federal government would never allow them to fail—which is to say, the increasing riskiness of the assets of these two mortgage market giants was an increasing riskiness for the taxpayers, whether the taxpayers knew it or not.

When John Rawls, in his A Theory of Justice repeatedly referred to outcomes that 'society' can 'arrange,' these euphemisms finessed aside the plain fact that only government has the power to override millions of people's mutually agreed transactions terms. Interior decorators arrange. Governments compel. It is not a subtle distinctions.

At various times and places, particular individuals have argued that existing tax rates are so high that the government could collect more tax revenues if it lowered those tax rates, because the changed incentives would lead to more economic activity, resulting in more tax revenues out of rising incomes, even though the tax rate was lowered.

Engineers and mechanics were as much products of the industrialization process as the material goods and the machinery by which those goods were produced.

British mechanics and engineers were in demand around the world.

That decades had to pass before a mistake with obvious negative consequences began to be corrected is one sign of the problems of decisions by third parties who pay no price for being wrong.

Put bluntly, failure attracts more money than success. Politically, failure becomes a reason to demand more money...

As late as 1876, there were more than a hundred foreign industrial workers in the Japanese railroad industry alone and, of these, 94 were British.

Using machines to make other machines allowed finer tolerances to be maintained-sometimes down to a thousandth of an inch-and this in turn meant that parts could be made interchangeable.

The vision of the anointed begins with entirely different premises. Here it is not the innate limitations of human beings, or the inherent limitations of resources, which create unhappiness but the fact that social institutions and social policies are not as wisely crafted as the anointed would have crafted them.

Railroads, in turn, were revolutionary in their social consequences. The concentrations of the world's populations along coasts and near rivers was reduced, as land transport into interior hinterlands became cheaper.

Confiscating physical wealth for the purpose of redistribution is confiscating something that will be used up over time, and cannot be replaced without the human capital that created it. Nor is human

In the Occident the city has been the greatest opportunity and the worst influence; a place of creation and decay, of freedom and subjection, of riches and poverty, of splendor and misery, of communion and lonesomeness—an optimal milieu for talent, character, vice and corruption. Eric Hoffer

In other words, the loss of freedom as the reach and power of the government are increasingly extended is an issue kept off the agenda by redefining words. Moreover, government-provided benefits are not net benefits to society, because the government simply transfers wealth, rather than creating it.

The Population Bomb is a textbook example of a scare book

millions of people died in the war "to make the world safe for democracy"—a war that led to autocratic dynasties being replaced by totalitarian dictatorships that slaughtered far more of their own people than the dynasties had?

The hallmark of the vision of the anointed is that what the anointed consider lacking for the kind of social progress they envision is will and power, not knowledge. But to those with the tragic vision, what is dangerous are will and power without knowledge—and for many expansive purposes, knowledge is inherently insufficient

If we go back to the beginning of the twentieth century, before government intervention became pervasive in housing markets, we find people paying a smaller percentage of their expenditures for housing than at the end of that century.

Back then, the rule of thumb was that housing costs—whether rents or mortgage payments—should not take more than one-fourth of a person's income. In 1901, housing costs took 23 percent of the average American family's spending. By 2003, it took 33 percent of a far larger amount of spending.

As late as 1912, Britain carried more than half the goods shipped across the seas of the

In contrast to times past when low-income people lived packed into overcrowded housing, Americans living below the official poverty level today have more housing space per person than the average European— not poor Europeans, but the average European.

Here the poor are a means to an end. These kinds of leftists show remarkably little interest in the creation of wealth, which has raised living standards for the poor, as compared to their obsession with redistribution, which has not. These kinds of leftists concentrate on inequalities that can be dealt with by turning money and power over to people like themselves. These kinds of leftists will never desert the cause that serves them so well, no matter how badly it serves others.

Bajo un gobierno electo popularmente, los incentivos políticos son hacer lo que es popular, a pesar de sus posibles consecuencias negativas, o hacer algo tan popular como sea posible

No small part of the existing problems of the public schools is that the school day is already so long and boring, with so little to challenge the ablest students. Moreover, many average and below-average students who have lost all interest are retained by compulsory attendance laws for years past the point where their presence is accomplishing anything other than providing jobs for educators.