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The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.

Thomas Sowell

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Thomas Sowell
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: June 30
Economist
University Teacher
Gastonia
North Carolina
Resources
Finite
Number
Services
Numbers
Ignore
Politics
Goods
Desire
Desires
Firsts
Economics
First
Rule
Infinite
Chasing

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Whenever people talk glibly of a need to achieve educational excellence, I think of what an improvement it would be if our public schools could just achieve mediocrity.
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The key fallacy of so called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.
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In various countries and times, leaders of groups that lagged behind, economically and educationally, have taught their followers to blame all their problems on other people - and to hate those other people.
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When a highly successful leader retires after a long career, it is very unlikely that his successor will be of comparable caliber. Anyone of similar ability and drive would have gone somewhere else, instead of waiting in the wings for years for a chance to show his own leadership.
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The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.
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Rhetoric is no substitute for reality.
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Has Obama ever grown even a potted plant, much less a business, a bank, a hospital or any of the numerous other institutions whose decisions he wants to control and override? But he can talk glibly about growing the economy. Arrogance is no substitute for experience. That is why the country is in the mess it is in now.
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When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention.
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In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.
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There are no solutions there are only trade-offs.
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People who have never run even a modest little business assert with great certainty and indignation that heads of multinational corporations are paid much more than they are worth. People who know nothing about medicine and nothing about economics unhesi.
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Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.
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Too many policies, programs and institutions are judged by what they are supposed to do, rather than by what they actually do and the consequences of their actions.
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The government is now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s - use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s.
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Hilary Clinton said you know, it takes a village to raise a child and somebody said it takes a village idiot to believe that … it is part of the whole thing of third parties wanting to make decisions for which they pay no price for when they’re wrong.
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There are 3 questions that would destroy most of the arguments of the Left. The first is - compared to what? The second is - at what cost? And the third is - what hard evidence do you have?
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Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves 'progressives.' What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.
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Intellect is not wisdom.
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Just as any moron can destroy a priceless Ming vase, so the shallow and ill-educated people who run our schools can undermine and destroy from within a great civilization that took centuries of dedicated effort to create and maintain.
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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.'
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