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Headlines can heat the blood; evidence steadies the mind. We step back from election drama to explore Thomas Sowell’s lifetime of clear thinking on prices, incentives, culture, and the hard truth that there are no solutions—only trade-offs. From a hardscrabble childhood and a GED to Harvard, Chicago, and the Hoover Institution, Sowell’s journey shapes a method: test claims against outcomes, not intentions. That approach leads us into the politics of “affordable” promises, why price signals matter, and how well-meaning policies can shrink the very prosperity they aim to expand.

We dig into Sowell’s early work at the Department of Labor and his influential findings on minimum wage effects for low-skilled workers, especially black teenagers. We read from The Thomas Sowell Reader to unpack the affordability fallacy and trace the historical costs of price controls that produced shortages and hunger. Then we widen the lens: the welfare state’s incentive problem, the constrained versus unconstrained visions from A Conflict of Visions, and what Hayek’s knowledge problem tells us about why markets outperform central planning by discovering information rather than pretending to possess it.

Culture, too, plays a pivotal role. We discuss patterns highlighted in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the portability of skills across migrant communities, and the controversy and clarity around affirmative action mismatch and outcomes after California’s Prop 209. Through it all, we keep returning to Sowell’s style: relentlessly empirical, comparative across countries and centuries, and immune to flattery or faction. If you’re ready to think harder, start with Basic Economics, then move to A Conflict of Visions, and let the data change your mind where it should.

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Key Points from the Episode:

• Sowell’s early life, military service, and academic rise  
• Lessons from labor economics and minimum wage data  
• The “affordable” fallacy and the role of price signals  
• Historical failures of price controls and shortages  
• Trade-offs versus intentions in welfare policy  
• Constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature  
• Culture, skills, and group outcomes across countries  
• Affirmative action mismatch and graduation rates  
• Hayekian knowledge, markets, and adaptation  
• Recommended books and a reading path for newcomers

Other resources: 

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