Reddit Reddit reviews Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition

We found 12 Reddit comments about Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition
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12 Reddit comments about Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition:

u/lawyer-up-bro · 188 pointsr/ImGoingToHellForThis

According to world renounced economist Thomas Sowell:

In the 50s, she would have been 20% more likely to have known who her father was. In terms of the decline of African-American family, welfare did more damage in one decade than slavery or Jim Crow did over generations. At-least, that is what the data concerning single parent households show.

u/UtMed · 14 pointsr/Showerthoughts

Only about 2% of the workforce earns minimum wage. Of those, something like 70%+ are under 18 and have no dependents. Minimum wage is a conflated problem that is used to rally up support from folks who don't look beyond the headlines. Read a book.
http://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Common-Sense-Economy/dp/0465002609
http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030

I recommend these. By a fantastic economist with a solid record and written so everyone can understand it.

u/confused_teabagger · 7 pointsr/CoonTown

I stand corrected. I should have said someone doing a fantastic job of imitating a SJW. However, I don't think he is faking the "smug" part.

The book from that video Economic Facts and Fallacies is a pretty non-mainstream economic take on many social issues in the US. It is also a pretty easy read.

u/BashAtTheBeach96 · 5 pointsr/history

As others mentioned the Barbary Slave Trade enslaved whites and which continued years after the Emancipation Proclamation occurred in the US. Another more recent example was the Japanese Slave camps in WWII. The majority of people enslaved in these camps were Asians from Korea, China, and other countries. However American POWs were present in these camps as well. The Japanese company Mitsubishi used over 900 American POWs as slave labor in their Copper mines. I want to stress that some of our greatest heroes in WWII were African American. So there is no way of getting an actual statistic here on the demographics of the POWs. But it is safe to assume that a large number of the POWs were white.


If you want a World History view on the history of slavery there is a great chapter on it in Thomas Sowell's book Economic Facts and Fallacies. He goes into detail about the evils of World History and how every ethnicity has been enslaved at one point in time.

u/Hailanathema · 5 pointsr/slatestarcodex

The point in the Vox article about employers (and people generally) substituting stereotypes for information they don't have or can't obtain was made over five years ago in Economic Facts and Fallacies, also in the context of race and crime.

u/z64dan · 2 pointsr/Austin

It's quoted in this book but I can't find the source that he actually quoted from (google books doesn't show the bibliography, but does show the quote).

u/_AnObviousThrowaway_ · 2 pointsr/JordanPeterson

Not really, I cited a book to them and they just said Thomas Sowell wasn't a reliable economist, so that tells me they aren't very familiar with economics.

u/Zeppelin415 · 2 pointsr/askaconservative

Tomas Sowell is in my opinion the most eloquent conservative writer. I read a lot of his work that's published on the internet. The only book of his I've read personally is ["Economic Facts and Fallacies"] (http://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030). It puts together some good arguments on controversial economic issues.

u/harrison_wintergreen · 1 pointr/investing

> why real wages have stayed so stagnant in the face of such extremely low unemployment and strengthening inflation will be a huge economic puzzle for the next few years

it's not a puzzle.

there are two different data sets: HOUSEHOLD income, and PERSONAL income.

Household income is from Census data.

Personal income is from IRS data.

household incomes are basically flat over the last few decades.

personal incomes have more than kept up with inflation.

the majority of US individuals live in households that are in the bottom 20% AND the top 20% of incomes. just at different times in their lives. households are getting smaller, thus household incomes stay flat even though personal incomes rise.

see Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell (longtime fellow at the Hoover Institute at Sanford).

https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030

the only puzzle is why so much of the media and policy makers are ignorant about these very simple explanation. mainly because to explain it simply, as Sowell does, would take a lot of wind from the sails of the political left. the two data sets are often lumped together, or the individual salary is obscured under averages and medians that don't track individual people. track individual people, and the vast majority of Americans see wage raises tha more than beat inflation.

just stop and think about it: do you know anyone whose personal income has remained flat for 20+ years? the only person I know who has, is an alcoholic who wants to stay at an entry level job so he has zero responsibilities to cut into his drinkin' time at 4pm. everyone else I know has gotten raises, often substantial raises, throughout their careers.

u/youareanidiothahaha · 1 pointr/gue

Thomas Sowell and others debunk the claims that women and blacks earn less in the marketplace due to discrimination. When they are compared on equal footing, it is found they are not discriminated against, and in some cases even earn slightly more. For example, unmarried women without children tend to earn a bit more than their male counterparts. What is affecting the average woman? Having children, obviously. If you thought that women, on average, should be earning equal wages, you were clearly not using your brain effectively, as bearing children is such an obvious and enormous cost.

There is a cost to conducting irrational practices in the marketplace (racism, sexism in hiring and in customer discrimination are the examples we are concerned with in this discussion). For example, bus companies wanted to give equal treatment to Blacks during the era of segregation in the U.S., as Black Americans were their biggest customers. They were forced to conduct costly (in opportunity), racist practices in order to comply with government segregation laws. Most people simply are not willing to pay the cost if they are racist, but I also think that most people aren't racist.

If we look at Asian Americans and Irish Americans who's ancestors also experienced severe discrimination, as well as Irish in the UK who's ancestors experienced slavery, we find they don't have the same problems Black Americans face. Blacks immigrants do better on average than their American counterparts. It is clear it is not discrimination at the employer which is the problem. It is a culture of victimization that has been built around them by liberals attempting to "help" them through horrendous government policies--most notably education that amounts to nothing and subsidies of bad behavior--which has lead to alarming rates of single parenthood (usually mothers) which has destroyed the future of these young children. It really needs to stop.