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It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.'

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Solution
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Newspapers
Someone
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More quotes by Thomas Sowell

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Too often the past has been twisted to fit the visions and agendas of the present.
Thomas Sowell
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The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
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Another way of verbally masking elite preemption of other people's decisions is to use the word 'ask'-as in 'We are just asking everyone to pay their fair share.' But of course governments do not ask, they: tell. The Internal Revenue Service does not 'ask' for contributions. It takes.
Thomas Sowell
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Given that some social processes must convey inherent constraints, the choice is among various mixtures of persuasion, force, and cultural inducement. The less of one, the more of the others. The degree of freedom that is possible is therefore tied to the extent to which people respond to persuasion or inducement.
Thomas Sowell
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Tariffs that save jobs in the steel industry mean higher steel prices, which in turn means fewer sales of American steel products around the world and losses of far more jobs than are saved.
Thomas Sowell
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No society ever thrived because it had a large and growing class of parasites living off those who produce.
Thomas Sowell
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The way to get people's votes is to say that all their problems are caused by other people, and that you will stop those other people from giving them trouble. But if you really want to help, then you can tell them the truth and risk losing their votes.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
Thomas Sowell
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In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.
Thomas Sowell
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Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.
Thomas Sowell
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As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price control.
Thomas Sowell
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The anointed don't like to talk about painful trade-offs. They like to talk about happy solutionsthat get rid of the whole problem- at least in their imagination.
Thomas Sowell
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We enjoy freedom and the rule of law on which it depends, not because we deserve it, but because others before us put their lives on the line to defend it.
Thomas Sowell
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Do countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data.
Thomas Sowell
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Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral.
Thomas Sowell
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Envy plus rhetoric equals social justice..
Thomas Sowell
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No individual and no generation has had enough personal experience to ignore the vast experience of the human race that is called history. Yet most of our schools and colleges today pay little attention to history. And many of our current policies repeat mistakes that were made, time and again, in the past with disastrous results.
Thomas Sowell
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What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?
Thomas Sowell
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One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.
Thomas Sowell
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While rationalism at the individual level is a plea for more personal autonomy from cultural norms, at the social level it is often a claim- or arrogation- of power to stifle the autonomy of others.
Thomas Sowell