A Tribute to Dr. Thomas Sowell

Part 1 of a Three-Part Series

April 5, 2025

A good example of “equity” is when a 6th grade math teacher gives all 30 students in her class a score of 77 on a test. There were 9 students that scored above 90, and 11 students that scored in the 80’s, but the class average was 77. The top students were furious, the lower students liked the grade. On the next test, the class average declined to 72. Self.

Dr. Thomas Sowell is my favorite economist. I have read 6 of his books on Economics.

Dr. Sowell was born in 1930 in NC and lived in extreme poverty for most of his childhood. At age 9 his family moved to Harlem. He was accepted to Stuyvesant HS (private school for gifted students). He was the first member of his family to reach HS. However, Sowell had to drop out due to family financial problems.

In 1951 Sowell was drafted into the Marines and served 2 years during the Korean War. After the war, he completed his HS diploma, studied at Howard U. and later was accepted to Harvard. He graduated from Harvard in 1958 magna cum laude. He earned a master’s degree in economics at Columbia and later (1968) received his PhD in economics from the U. of Chicago. Sowell taught economics at Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA. He has written 45 books on economics and social politics and is considered a conservative.

This post is my tribute to Dr. Thomas Sowell. Below are some of my favorite writings from my favorite economist:

• “In American society, achievement is what ultimately brings respect, including self-respect.”
• “Equal opportunity laws and policies require that individuals be judged on their qualifications as individuals. Affirmative action requires that they be judged with regard to such group membership, receiving preferential treatment, in some cases.”
• “To many of us, a level playing field means that everyone plays by the same rules and is judged by the same standards. To others, however, a level playing field means that results are pre-arranged by third parties who ration out benefits to various groups.”
• “Government programs that promote “affordable housing” are programs to allow some people to decide what housing they want and force other people, taxpayers, landlords, others, to absorb a share of the costs of a decision that they had no voice in making.”
• “Denying citizenship is not a punishment because crossing the border illegally does not entitle you to citizenship. “
• On preserving the American Black culture-“in a world where an absolute majority of Black children are born and raised in fatherless homes, where most Black kids never finish HS, and where the murder rate among Blacks is several times the national average, surely there must be more urgent priorities than preserving a lifestyle and identity.”
• “They say cream rises to the top. However, among government employees, the cream tends to leave after a few years, allowing mediocrity to rise to the top.”
• “British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave the best definition of consensus-lack of leadership.”
• “A majority of men in prison came from fatherless families. In some cosmic sense, it may not be entirely their fault that they took the wrong road. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was the wrong road-or make it any less dangerous to turn them loose.”
• “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions that by putting those decisions in the hands of people who will pay no price for being wrong.”

End of Part 1