Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college. Please contact your local newspaper editor if you want to read the THOMAS SOWELL column in your hometown paper.
Some readers objected to a statement in this column that black students usually do not perform as well in school as white students or Asian American students. These readers seemed to think that this was a personal opinion — or even an immoral statement. It never...
One of the confusions that plagues discussions of equality and inequality is a confusion between the vagaries of fate and the sins of man. There are plenty of both but they need to be sharply distinguished from one another. The plain fact that there are large...
This is truly the age of dogma when it comes to differences between groups. Some will blindly deny that intergroup differences in performances are anything other than “stereotypes,” “perceptions,” or discrimination. At the other end of the...
Those of us who believe in the brotherhood of man have to be able to accept the negative, as well as the positive, aspects of that belief. For example, a stupid and counterproductive idea that catches the fancy of one part of the human race in one part of the world in...
The issue of “weapons of mass destruction” is being played for all it is worth as a weapon of political destruction. In fact, it is being played for more than it is worth. The ultimate question is whether we should or should not have gone to war with the...
It is a sad but understandable fact that there are many places where the poor cannot afford to buy a house. California has the distinction of having many places where the affluent cannot afford to buy or build a house — and it is not necessarily a slam dunk for...
Once, after giving a talk, I was confronted by a lady in the audience who asked what some people regard as the ultimate question: “What is YOUR solution?” “There are no solutions,” I said. “There are only trade-offs.” “The...
A new study shows that you need an income of about $104,000 to buy an average home on the San Francisco peninsula with a 20 percent down payment. Since the average price of a home in this area is more than half a million dollars, the 20 percent down payment itself...
This election year we are sure to hear a lot about “special interests.” Candidates of both major parties, as well as candidates of third or fourth parties, are sure to denounce special interests both hotly and repeatedly. The secret of these verbal...
The so-called “debates” among the Democratic candidates in the primaries are not really debates — and that is a real shame. In a real debate, opponents could question each other’s statements — and there have been a lot of questionable...
Those who vent their moral indignation over low pay for Third World workers employed by multinational companies ignore the plain fact that these workers’ employers are usually supplying them with better opportunities than they had before, while those who are...
“Low-Wage Costa Ricans Make Baseballs for Millionaires.” That was the headline on one of those New York Times “news” stories that continued its recent tradition of disguised editorials. The headline said it all but the story ran on and on...
What do you do when you don’t have as much of something as you need? One of the things you can do is stretch it out to make it last as long as it can. That is what the political left is doing with the poor. A lot of noise is made about how we are “running...
The headline story out of the Iowa caucuses is Senator John Kerry’s surprising victory and the collapse of Governor Howard Dean’s political bubble. This is all very well for those in the media who treat politics as the personal stories of politicians. But,...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Some people’s jobs will allow them to be important only by being a pain. Politics is the art of making your personal desires seem like the national interest. One of the people I am glad I trusted is someone who got angry and...
“Manufacturing jobs” has become a battle cry of those who oppose free trade and are sounding an alarm about American jobs being exported to lower-wage countries overseas. However, manufacturing jobs are much less of a problem than manufacturing confusion....
The British Broadcasting Corporation has made itself look ridiculous by issuing orders that its reporters are not to refer to Saddam Hussein as an ex-dictator. Apparently using the word “dictator” would compromise the BBC’s neutrality and call its...
If you wonder what has gotten California in such an economic mess, here is a recent sample: The state legislature has passed a law requiring landlords to give tenants 60 days’ notice, instead of 30 days, before evicting them. In other words, if you are renting...
Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world — an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different. The...
In a hugely complex world, there is no way for the average person — or any person, for that matter — to be knowledgeable about even half the things that affect their lives. Most of us are necessarily ignorant of many fields, from botany to brain surgery....
Those who rail against profits and “greed” seldom stop to think through what they are saying, much less go check the facts. Most of the great American fortunes– Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, etc. — came from finding more efficient ways to...
Profits are certainly without honor among the intelligentsia. The very word produces negative reactions, even from people who cannot give you a single reason why money carrying that label is worse than money called by other names. Many professional athletes and...
Lawlessness usually conjures up images of a wild frontier or mobs in the streets. But the painful reality is that the supreme examples of lawlessness in our times are in the august and sedate chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States . If you think the issue...
One of the reasons our children do not measure up academically to children in other countries is that so much time is spent in American classrooms twisting our history for ideological purposes. “How would you feel if you were a Native American who saw the...
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