Thomas Sowell Quotes - Page 14

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• Unfortunately, the real minimum wage is always zero, regardless of the laws, and that is the wage that many workers receive in the wake of the creation or escalation of a government-mandated minimum wage, because they lose their jobs or fail to find jobs when they enter the labor force. Making it illegal to pay less than a given amount does not make a worker’s productivity worth that amount—and, if it is not, that worker is unlikely to be employed.

  Thomas Sowell

  Jobs, Zero, Real

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• The greatest danger to the liberal vision are facts about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies, and ways of life that the left has spawned. That the black family, which survived centuries of slavery and generations of discrimination, has disintegrated in the wake of the liberal welfare states is only one example.

  Thomas Sowell

  Law, Black, Vision

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• To say that 'wealth in America is so unfairly distributed in America,' as Ronald Dworkin does, is grossly misleading when most wealth in the United States is not distributed: at all. People create it, earn it, save it, and spend it.

  Thomas Sowell

  America, People, United States

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• Those who cry out that the government should 'do something' never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Data, Cry

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• We might have been better off if the question of Obama's patriotism had been raised before he was first elected. Never should we ignore so many red flag warnings again.

  Thomas Sowell

  Red Flags, Warning, Might

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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.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Hate, People

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• For society as a whole, nothing comes as a "right" to which we are "entitled." Even bare subsistence has to be produced-and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

  Thomas Sowell

  Work, Rights, Historical

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.74, Basic Books

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• All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ignorance, Complexity, Seems

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.397, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• One of many problems with survey research in general is that you can only survey the survivors. In other words, if you were to do a survey of people who were known to have played Russian Roulette and you sent out the questions before the time they were going to play and then you come back six months after they played Russian Roulette, you would probably discover that among the people who did come back there was no harm done.

  Thomas Sowell

  Play, People, Months

  "Do No Harm: An Interview With Thomas Sowell". Interview with David Harsanyi, thefederalist.com. January 13, 2015.

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• You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

  Thomas Sowell

  Political, Teeth, Analysis

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.396, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.

  Thomas Sowell

  Ignorance, Government, People

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.317, Hoover Press

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• Sometimes it seems as if I have spent the first half of my life refusing to let white people define me and the second half refusing to let black people define me.

  Thomas Sowell

  White, People, Black

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• The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.

  Thomas Sowell

  Truth, Knowledge, Hands

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.320, Hoover Press

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• To the economically illiterate, if some company makes a million dollars in profit, this means that their products cost a million dollars more than they would have without profits. It never occurs to such people that these products might cost several million dollars more without the incentives to be efficient created by the prospect of profits.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, People, Dollars

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• Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.

  Thomas Sowell

  Sacrifice, Simple, Common Sense

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• For the anointed, traditions are likely to be seen as the dead hand of the past, relics of a less enlightened age, and not as the distilled experience of millions who faced similar human vicissitudes before.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Hands, Age

  Thomas Sowell (1995). “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy”, p.118, Basic Books

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• You don't send people to prison on the basis of what other people imagine, or on the basis of media sound bites like 'shooting an unarmed child,' when that 'child' was beating him bloody.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, Media, People

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• An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Independent, Law

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• If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, Government, Would Be

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.397, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Why the transfer of decisions from those with personal experience and a stake in the outcome to those with neither can be expected to lead to better decisions is a question seldom asked, much less answered.

  Thomas Sowell

  Decision, Liberty, Outcomes

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• It is amazing how many of the horrors of the 20th century were a result of charismatic quacks misleading millions of people to their own doom. What is even more amazing is that, after a century that saw the likes of Hitler, Lenin and Mao, we still see no need to distrust charisma as a basis for choosing leaders, either in politics or in numerous organizations and movements.

  Thomas Sowell

  Organization, People, Leader

  Thomas Sowell (2002). “Controversial Essays”, Hoover Inst Press

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• The reason so many problems do not get solved in Washington is that solving those problems is not the No. 1 priority: Re-election is.

  Thomas Sowell

  Priorities, Politics, Election

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• If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a 'stimulus,' then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Should Have, Republic

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• If politics were like sports, we could ask Israel to trade us Benjamin Netanyahu for Barack Obama. Of course, we would have to throw in trillions of dollars to get Israel to agree to the deal, but it would be money well spent.

  Thomas Sowell

  Sports, Israel, Dollars

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• Like so many before him who have ruined countries around the world, Obama has a greatly inflated idea of his own capabilities and the capabilities off what can be accomplished by rhetoric or even by political power.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Ideas, Political

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