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REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES / NATIONAL IMPACT
Thomas Sowell
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31 weeks 1 day
BIOGRAPHY
Thomas Sowell was born in North Carolina and grew up in Harlem. As with many others in his neighborhood, he left home early and did not finish high school. The next few years were difficult ones, but eventually he joined the Marine Corps and became a photographer in the Korean War. After leaving the service, Sowell entered Harvard University, worked a part-time job as a photographer and studied the science that would become his passion and profession: economics.
After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University (1958), he went on to receive his master's in economics from Columbia University (1959) and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago (1968).
In the early '60s, Sowell held jobs as an economist with the Department of Labor and AT&T. But his real interest was in teaching and scholarship. In 1963, at Douglass College, he began the first of many professorships. His other teaching assignments include Cornell Univeresity, Rutgers University, Amherst University, Brandeis University, and the University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught in the early '70s.
Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His 28 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. Moreover, much of his writing is considered ground-breaking -- work that will outlive the great majority of scholarship done today. Sowell's most recent book, On Classical Economics, is an historical review of classical economics consisting of a series of essays. David C. John of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy studies calls it "An important, beautifully researched collection" that is able "to clearly and simply explain both complex questions of economic theory and how they developed."
Though Sowell had been a regular contributor to newspapers since the late '70s, he did not begin his career as a newspaper columnist until 1984. George F. Will's writing, says Sowell, proved to him that someone could say something of substance in so short a space (750 words). And besides, writing for the general public enables him to address the heart of issues without the smoke and mirrors that so often accompany academic writing.
Currently, Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.
COMMENTARIES
Obamacare Would Add Billions to Deficit
By Thomas Sowell | 07/24/09
Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics. The big trick for the president is to convince the public that he can add tens of millions of people to his government medical care plan without raising the costs. But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office... read more »
2 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Selling Government Controlled Health Care with Slogans and Hysteria
By Thomas Sowell | 07/21/09
Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and hysteria considered sufficient? We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises the question as to why that calls for government-controlled medical care. A bigger question is whether medical care will be better or worse after the government takes it over.... read more »
3 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Government Can't Level Every Playing Field
By Thomas Sowell | 07/14/09
Sometimes, when I hear about "disparities" and "inequities," I think of a disparity that applied directly to me-- the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan. When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't even let me try out for softball, at which I was actually pretty good. I was more than forty years old before I ever got the ball through the basket. It... read more »
4 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Legal System Encumbered by Ideology and Politics
By Thomas Sowell | 07/07/09
While the recent Supreme Court decision in the New Haven firefighters' case will be welcome news to those who don't think that a gross injustice is O.K. when those on the receiving end are white, the reasoning behind the 5 to 4 decision is a painful reminder that the law is still tangled in a web of assumptions, evasions and contradictions when it comes to racial issues. Nor have these problems been clarified with the passage of time. On the... read more »
2 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Reversals Raise Questions Regarding Sotomayor's Qualifications
By Thomas Sowell | 07/01/09
For the fourth time in six cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed a decision for which Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. If this nominee were a white male, would this not raise questions about whether he should be elevated to a court that has found his previous decisions wrong two-thirds of the times when those decisions have been reviewed? Is no one supposed to ask questions about... read more »
5 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Few Coherent Arguments for Governent Run Healthcare
By Thomas Sowell | 06/30/09
Most political and media discussions of medical care have an air of unreality reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. There is an abundance of catch-phrases but remarkably few coherent arguments. Let's start at square one. Why is there alarm about American medical care? The most usual reason given is because its cost is high and rising. That is certainly true. We were not spending nearly as much on high-tech medical procedures in the past... read more »
5 Comments | Related Topics »National |
"Stimulus" Has Them Lining Up at the Trough
By Thomas Sowell | 06/23/09
Even if the "stimulus" package doesn't seem to be doing much to stimulate the economy, it is certainly stimulating many potential recipients of government money to start lining up at the trough. All you need is something that sounds like a "good thing" and the ability to sell the idea. A perennial "good thing" is education. So it is not surprising that leaders of the Association of Public and Land Grant... read more »
3 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Gallop Poll: Republicans Should Stand on Principles
By Thomas Sowell | 06/23/09
A Gallup poll last week showed that far more Americans describe themselves as "conservatives" than as "liberals." Yet Republicans have been clobbered by the Democrats in both the 2008 elections and the 2006 elections. In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling-- in fact, amazing-- that we have the furthest left President of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left Speaker of the... read more »
2 Comments | Related Topics »National |
Attorneys Polled Rate Sotomayor As Abusive
By Thomas Sowell | 06/16/09
Back when I was on the receiving end of racial discrimination, it was to me not simply a personal misfortune, or even the misfortune of a race, it was a moral outrage. But not everyone who went through such an experience sees it that way. When it comes to subjecting other people to the same treatment in a later era, some have no real problem with that. They see it as pay-back. One of the many problems of the pay-back approach is that many... read more »
The Character of Nations: Review
By Thomas Sowell | 06/09/09
In an age that values cleverness over wisdom, it is not surprising that many superficial but clever books get more attention than a wise book like "The Character of Nations" by Angelo Codevilla, even though the latter has far more serious implications for the changing character of our own nation. The recently published second edition of Professor Codevilla's book is remarkable just for its subject, quite aside from the impressive... read more »
2 Comments | Related Topics »National |
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