Do you think “smart growth” improves our lives? Do you think evil discrimination accounts for pay differentials between men and women and between whites and blacks? Do you think income inequality is growing in our society? Do you think conventional foreign aid programs will help Third World countries escape poverty?
Fret not. There is a cure for your misconceptions: Thomas Sowell‘s brand-new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies (Basic Books, 2008). Sowell debunks these myths and others in the course of 221 pages. He also urges readers to consider the mental processes that lead to false beliefs:
Perhaps most dangerous of all is the practice of not subjecting fashionable beliefs to the test of facts, but instead accepting or rejectiing beliefs according to how well they fit some pre-existing vision of the world. The idea that government intervention is needed to create “affordable housing” is an idea that makes sense only in the context of a preconceived notion, while mountains of hard evidence point in the exact opposite direction. The belief that ghetto riots such as those of the 1960s are a reaction against poverty, discrimination, unemployment, and blighted communities simply will not stand up in the face of hard evidence of when and where those riots took place, which were not in the places or times where these factors were worse.
George Leef (who’s cited in this book) frequently points you to the wisdom contained in Sowell’s latest columns. Now Economic Facts and Fallacies offers you an opportunity to benefit from a more detailed discourse.
