csua.org/u/hbx -> www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Citizens-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465081452/sr=8-1/qid=1162331150/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-7904351-0326338?ie=UTF8&s=books
Forgoing jargon, equations, graphs and complicated exposition, he's produced a book that's easy to read and understand, though it tends to be superficial and is written in an angry tone, often accusing others of economic ignorance, as if that is the only possible explanation for disagreement with the author's views. Sowell is at his best discussing microeconomics in the first two-thirds of the book. Unlike most accounts, which cover the subject from the point of view of business or investment, Sowell concentrates on government action, in an effort to prepare the reader for civic participation. He addresses price controls and subsidies in detail, both as important political issues in their own right and to demonstrate how prices work by showing what happens when they are constrained. In the final third of the book, he wades into more complex and controversial territory--macroeconomics, international economics and popular fallacies--and his effort to cover them at the elementary level results in a muddled treatment. Overall, his defense of certain conservative tenets is wielded with a sledgehammer rather than a rapier. General readers can--and some of them will--find better written, more sophisticated introductions to economics, including such middle-of-the-road overviews as From Here to Economy: A Short Cut to Economic Literacy by Todd G Buchholz or New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought by Todd G Buchholz and Martin Feldstein. For a conservative viewpoint, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman has yet to be topped. In this groundbreaking work, he explains the basics of economics without resorting to the graphs, equations, and jargon that typically fill the textbooks and literature in the field. Along the way, he explains exactly what economics is and what its guiding principles are. Sowell covers a broad range of topics, from scarcity, the balance of trade, and price controls to minimum-wage laws, competition, profits and losses, and the role of government. Intended as a primer for the citizen not trained in the basics of economic theory, this book is flawed only in a somewhat confusing organization that leads to repetition.
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Books compete to have more charts, sidebars, highlighted sections, and, of course, the ever-necessary multimedia CD ROM. Into this wind spits Thomas Sowell, with his delightfully retro attempt to put the "text" back into textbook. Taking us back to the days before Samuelson, and indeed before Marshall, he presents economics in terms of logic, examples, and occasional data. Turning to substance, one might fairly ask, "Is this book an economics textbook or a right-wing polemic?" My college economics professor used to point out that the liberal Samuelson and the conservative Friedman believed in the same price theory. However, Friedman applied it to policy more aggressively. Sowell applies economic theory aggressively to policy, and the chips happen to fall well to the right of center. But what is there in "Basic Economics" to which a liberal economist might object? He does not mention the savings/investment imbalance theory of Keynes. But even most liberal economists won't stick up for Keynes nowadays (I will). But they still like social security, and Sowell does not deal with their rationale (weak as it may be). Again, liberal economists would have to agree, but nonetheless they would have put the issue of "income distribution" into Sowell's chapter on the proper role of government. One need only look at the California "energy crisis" to see the consequences of economic ignorance.
Mr Sowell then explains the economic theory of prices, industry and commerce, work and pay, time and risk, the national economy, the international economy, and concludes with popular economic fallacies. He accomplishes this without any graphs or equations to scare some people away. The reader, no matter his educational level or political persuasion, must come away with one overpowering and disturbing conclusion and that is: When it comes to having the most rudimentary knowledge of economics, the vast majority of politicians and talking heads are either complete idiots or socialists who are still in denial. This book allows anyone to analyze thorny and difficult economic issues in a relative simple manner by applying basic principles. It allows one to instantly recognize the ridiculousness of so many arguments that are continually put forth. My only criticism of the book is that the publisher did a very poor job of editing. These errors should be corrected in subsequent printings and there should be many additional ones. This is one of those rare books that everyone should read and is certainly suitable for use as an elementary economics textbook in high school and college.
The book primarily discusses various economic arrangments and their effects from primarily a causal standpoint. The book does contribute a valuable dissection of value arguments in its chapter on "Non-Economic Values," but the rest of the book focuses on how arrangments work and what consequences arise from those arrangments, rather than explicitly advocating one set of arrangments over another (although it does make a very strong case for free-market arrangments as a whole, due to more beneficial overall consequences). An example of how this causal focus is maintained can be found in the discussion of how honesty and trust reduce monitoring costs, and thus, transactional costs. Even though the reduced transactional costs caused by honest behavior amongst a group of participants argues strongly for increased honesty, Sowell doesn't explicitly advocate honesty but maintains his focus on showing how it affects economic arrangements. Sowell does strongly criticize economic fallacies and those who promote them. This feature of this book will not endear it to people who do not want to think through the probable consequences of the political or social opinions that they hold. However, Sowell's criticisms do not descend to ad-hominem attacks, and are backed up with very detailed explanations, buttressed by both facts, logic, and history, for why fallacious arguments do not work. This logical dissection prevents the book from being a mere polemic of unproven assertions, as some of the reviewers on Amazon have insinuated. Some of the historical examples that Sowell uses to explain his arguments are recycled from his other works, but given their applicability to the discussion of Economics, I can't fault him for including them in this book.
I have always wanted to know more about economics, and I am so glad I chose Thomas Sowell to help me understand. when it is hard to ship things to the places where they are needed. We learn it is not "greed" that makes items go up during these times of crisis. He tells us WHY prices are so high in the inner city where the crime rates are high... and why the very people who can least afford high prices must pay high prices if they choose to stay in the inner city to shop. He shows us that it is because of the "greedy" capitalists that our country is so fantastic. I am 67 years old, and I feel like blinders have been removed from my eyes.
I like this book because it consciously shrugs off charts, graphs, and equations and gives instead a real-world, example-based overview of basic economic theory. It will come as a shock to no one familiar with Sowell that the book is quite conservative ideologically, though, as one reviewer pointed out, most is just common sense explained more lucidly than usual. The book embraces the classical definition of economics as "the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses" from the outset, and Sowell explains through numerous historical examples, the consequences that flow from that conceptualization. I agree with Sowell on most key issues, though there are a few minor areas where I disagree with him. This is an exce...
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