Quotes from Thomas Sowell

In 21st century China, seven times more energy is used than is used in Japan to produce products of the same value. In this case, the gigantic differences in efficiency have also meant gigantic differences in the standard of living of millions of human beings.

The civil rights vision tends to view group characteristics as mere "stereotypes" and concentrates on changing the public's "perceptions" or raising the public's "consciousness." Yet the reality of group patterns that transcend any given society cannot be denied.

Decades later, universities in Sri Lanka likewise had "a backlog of unemployed graduates" who had specialized in the humanities and the social sciences.

by 1891, nearly two-fifths of all living people born in Ireland were living outside Ireland.

Despite beliefs in some quarters that education makes people more tolerant of other cultures and groups, it has been precisely individuals from newly educated groups, often lacking marketable skills, who have promoted group polarization, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Western

The remarkable reversal of public attitudes toward the Japanese over the years -- especially in Australia, Peru and the United States -- suggests that behavior and performance are more effective ways of changing other people's minds than moral crusades or emotional denunciations.

Because immobility is the key to exploitation, fixed capital, like labor, can also be exploited in the short term. And, since some capital goods can last longer than the average life span of a worker, once a hydroelectric plant has been built, both local taxes and local unions can absorb much of its profits, to the point of making very difficult that someone is ever willing to build another hydroelectric plant in that jurisdiction.

Many rubber estates kept records of the daily output of each tapper, and distinguished between the output of Chinese and Indian workers. The output of the Chinese was usually more than double that of the Indians, with all of them using the same simple equipment of tapping knife, latex cup and latex bucket. There were similar or even wider differences between Chinese, Indian and Malay smallholders. .

Since democratic elections are always held in the short term, politicians have every incentive to extract as much wealth as possible from the fixed capital under their jurisdiction, whether through taxes, the imposition of charges on property or of the expropriation. Only public awareness of the long-term consequences can limit this form of exploitation.

The success of politicians does not depend on their learning their lessons about history or politics, but depends much more on having the ability to act on what is widely believed by the public and the media, which may include theories conspiracies or the belief that the higher prices are due to deception or greed.

In summary, a policy intended to make housing more affordable for the poor has resulted in resources being redirected to the construction of houses that are only affordable for the rich or wealthy, since generally , luxury homes are not subject to rent control, and neither are office buildings and other commercial properties. This illustrates, among other things, the crucial importance of making a distinction between intentions and consequences

One of the reasons for the political success of price control is that part of its costs are hidden. Even the dire consequences of the shortage are unable to show the whole picture.

One of the main problems of price control is to define the appropriate price of what is being controlled

One of the greatest defects of the economies run by political authorities, whether under medieval mercantilism or modern communism, is that the vision and insight that emerges among the population does not carry enough weight to force the authorities to change the the way they do things.

But the word "change" is not a blank check for self-indulgence— least of all self-indulgence in the notion that disparities imply villainy, which in turn implies a crusade on the side of the angels against the forces of evil, despite how self-flattering such a vision of the world might be.

Much of what is taught in our schools and colleges today seeks to break down traditional values, and replace them with more fancy and fashionable notions, of which "a duty to die" is just one.

Price controls and the direct allocation of resources by political institutions require much more explicit knowledge on the part of a small number of planners than a market economy requires so that it can be coordinated by prices to which millions of dollars respond. people based on first-hand knowledge of their own circumstances and preferences, and the relatively low prices that each individual must handle.

Attitude-changing curriculum programs can be assessed in a number of ways, including (1) how effective they are in the specific area in which they claim to be effective (drug prevention, for example), (2) the academic and emotional costs they entail, and (3) their wider social consequences. Remarkably

Drawing up policy blueprints is a task for which there has never been a shortage of eager candidates. We can only hope that those policies will be based on hard facts about the real world, rather than on rhetoric or preconceptions.

The fact that an idea sounds plausible, and is consistent with the prevailing social vision, does not exempt it from the test of empirical evidence.

It is a painful irony that people who are promoting the make-believe equality of inclusion and diversity in schools are attacking charter schools that are producing the real equality of educational achievement.

people share a very similar vision of the world and treat its conclusions as axioms rather than as hypotheses that need to be checked against facts.

There is no a priori reason to believe such claims, especially in the face of multiple evidences of declining educational quality during the period when multiculturalism and other non-academic preoccupations have taken up more and more of the curriculum.

To understand most of the discussions about economics that take place in the media and in politics, all you need is to know the most basic economic principles. However, most of the people are unaware of them, including politicians, journalists and many academics from other fields.