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Title: Economic Facts and Fallacies
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $14.72
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books More Than Economics | | Typical of Dr. Sowell's writing. Easily understood; irrefutable logic. Too many cold facts to be propaganda. | | Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books Great for someone with no background in Economics! | | Sowell does an excellent job in this book. He explains the many facts and fallacies found in economics... especially applicable to the current political debates. | | Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books excellent just before an election | With all of the noise that comes before a presidential election, if you want to be grounded, if you want clarity, then read Thomas Sowell's newest book. Sowell provides a wealth of knowledge, on economic issues, based in facts you can further investigate.
Because this is a presidential year all issues will look very bleak to all canidates who are in the running for any political office. Any of Sowell's books are a great counterbalance to remove the unecessary emotion and blind nobility that can not produce the lofty promises made.
Sowell's newest book first defines classic fallacies to be on the look out, for the future. Also, he deals with specific issues like men and women earnings, academics, third world countries, and race. With each subject Sowell shows us classic fallacies the press or politicians will use to manipulate public perception.
Sowell makes his data and evidence very clear; therefore, if you like to go to the primary source, he'll show you how to get there, if you're a researcher. | | Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books Economic Facts and Fallacies by Sowell | Sowell is well-versed in practical reality-based economics and makes common sense to his readershio. His points range from quite humorous (I think) to quite serious, and are not stated in a verbose or technical jargon, or literary fashion. He integrates well into my general speaking and thinking genre/pattern, so I truly do enjoy his authorship to date He may be said to be somewhat sociological, but the underlying ideas are much more important than fuzzy theories from ivory towers. I believe strongly in pattern recognition as a strong natural force and these are values I recognize clearly and readily.
Chris G. | | Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books Not as Good as I was Led to Believe | While I may agree with most of the conclusions in this book, and agreement generally seduces four and five star reviews, at best this book deserves three stars for trying but two for falling short. Sowell, rightly wants to "torture" the data in order to reveal the truth, a truth that is very much at odds with common perceptions based on intentionally misleading superficial interpretations of the same data. While he does a much better job than most, he still falls well short of his objective. And worse, he knows it and intentionally disguises it. For that, I subtract one star.
For example, he (merely) asserts that changes in the marriage patterns of women largely accounts for changes in their relative pay. Perhaps, but more equal pay may very well have motivated significant changes in their behavior. Incentive based behavioral changes would surely be consistent with economic theory. He shows that while there might not be many women in careers like engineering, with other factors held equal, their equal pay demonstrate that women do earn as much as men. Perhaps, but employers desperately seeking the appearance of equality should likely have driven the salaries of scare women engineers beyond the pay of equivalent men.
In the case of hedonic quality adjustments and their critical effect on measures of inflation, he lists reasons why simple measures of price inadequately measure inflation, knowing full well that many of the factors he mentions are already incorporated into inflation measures as a result of the Boskin commission. He never mentions Boskin. Similarly, he creates a list of people that are rich but don't earn much, like the housewives of rich husbands, and then asserts that they account for "hundreds of thousands" of workers who are mistakenly classified as poor. "Hundreds of thousands" may sound like a lot but mathematically it's essentially zero. The list goes on. While Sowell searches for a more accurate interpretation of the data, at the same time he intentionally disguises flaws and weakness in his own analysis. A much fairer approach, and for me, a more persuasive one, would be to reveal and admit to the shortcomings of his own work.
Typical of his work is his chapter on income, which I found especially weak, despite agreeing with its conclusions. Given the current debate on income inequality, I would have thought this should have been the most important chapter. His analysis in this chapter can best be described as "thought salad" - a fact here and another quasi-related fact there, but never a more comprehensive picture of the "mix adjusted" data. He completely overlooks what is probably one of the most significant factors causing the appearance of flat wages, the dramatic shift in the demographics of the work force to what have traditionally been below average wage earners (first generation immigrants, minorities, women, single mothers, children of unwed mothers, etc). If you want to show that wages have increased over time when adjusted for demographic mix shifts, for example, then show the changes in wages rates for each demographic. If necessary, put the data table in an appendix. The book has no such appendices because he really hasn't analyzed the data. He merely reports factoids from other people's work. Why? Because he hopes the reader will carry a few of those factoids into the world. Ok, even if they're true factoids, that's still propaganda and not "four star" work. For me, it damages the credibility of the work.
Nevertheless, I would recommend everyone read this because there aren't many other works trying to use the data to reveal the truth, even if he is less straightforward then I would prefer. In the end, I can't help but wonder if the data the government collects isn't either unwittingly or intentionally obfuscated because it sure is misused and it sure is hard to use properly as evidenced by the fact that no one, not even Sowell, seems able to mix-adjust the data to the satisfaction of a critical layman, like myself.
| | Economic Facts and Fallacies by Basic Books Product Description | Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author’s Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues. |
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