Thomas Sowell

In the wake of the hurricanes in Florida , the state’s attorney general has received thousands of complaints of “price gouging” by stores, hotels, and others charging far higher prices than usual during this emergency. “Price gouging” is...

Our current unemployment rate — 5.4 percent — is one of the lowest in the world and one of the lowest in our own history. Why then the hysteria about jobs? Because this is an election year and Senator Kerry is desperate for some issue that will rescue his...

Jobs have become a big issue in this election year — which means that it is optimistic to expect a rational discussion. Nothing is discussed more irrationally than “outsourcing.” It is obviously completely misleading to discuss how many jobs American...

Our hearts automatically go out to the people of Florida , who are being battered by a series of hurricanes in rapid succession. But we have brains as well as hearts — and the time is long overdue to start using them. Hurricanes come through Florida every year...

August 20th marks the 40th anniversary of one of the major turning points in American social history. That was the date on which President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation creating his “War on Poverty” program in 1964. Never had there been such a...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: I don’t even like campaign oratory that I agree with. Alaska is much larger than France and Germany — combined. Yet its population is less than one-tenth that of New York City . Keep that in mind the next time you hear...

Despite clever and hard-working political handlers who have done a masterful job of concealing and distracting attention from John Kerry’s voting record in his long Senate career, and the liberal vision behind that record, glimmers of reality still break through...

Sometimes little things can tell you about big things. While Senator John Kerry and his running-mate Senator John Edwards were recently being photographed at lunchtime at Wendy’s, to show what regular guys they are, their real lunch was from a local yacht club,...

Santa Monica, California , has decreed a fine of $2,500 a day for not cutting your hedges! Has someone discovered some terrible health hazard or other danger from hedges that are too high? Not at all. The politicians who run Santa Monica have simply decided that...

A recent angry e-mail from a reader said that certain issues should not be determined by “the dictates of the market.” With a mere turn of a phrase, he had turned reality upside down. Decisions by people free to make their mutual accommodations with other...

Much of what is being said and done at the Democratic convention in Boston is so 1960s. The old favorite songs of the left, the old rhetoric, the old gestures, the delegates swaying together, all take you back to a time 40 years ago when the liberal vision seized the...

My ears picked up when my wife told me that she was one of the beneficiaries of a class-action lawsuit that brought a settlement of more than $100 million. “How many millions do you get?” I asked. I could envision our retiring to the Riviera or some such...

We all know that Senator John Kerry was in the Vietnam war. He repeatedly reminds us of it at every opportunity. He also repeats the great things he will accomplish when he becomes President of the United States. What he says very little about is what he has actually...

Whatever the specific merits or demerits of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, re-organizing the whole intelligence operations of the United States in a few months before an election seems like quite a rush to judgment. Yet, precisely because it is an...

The sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart raises questions with implications that reach far beyond this one retail giant. Too many people in the media, in academia, and even in courts of law, act as if numbers plus a preconception equals proof. The preconception...

A record-breaking new class-action lawsuit against Wal-Mart claims that this retail chain discriminates against women, for which of course vast millions of dollars are being demanded. The New York Times aptly summarized the case — “about 65 percent of the...

One of the maddening things about some computer programs and computerized products is their making you fight your way through a maze of complications to do simple things. Whether you want to play chess, take a picture, or do some other obvious and straightforward...

Reactions to Bill Cosby’s recent criticisms of some counterproductive ghetto behavior patterns have ranged from applause from some in the black audience that heard him to a cheap attack from white liberal Barbara Ehrenreich in the New York Times....

This may go down in history as the year when an attempt to win an election, at all costs, led to longer run disasters that make any election pale into insignificance. The biggest and loudest political rhetoric of this year is that President Bush “lied”...

Now that Senator John Kerry has named Senator John Edwards as his vice-presidential running mate, we need to examine the reality behind the images that both men have projected. Senator Kerry has been busy posing for the media shooting guns, playing hockey, declaring...