THOMAS SOWELL

His videos were definitely head and shoulders above Fox news.
Here have a look see:
youtu.be/SzHd5bmEdU4
I'm not saying he's 100% right but one could actually have a discourse with this man.

He's extremely clear and erudite, though a bit disconnected from reality in that he sometimes attacks strawmen, not exactly in portraying arguments unfavorably but in attributing arguments to "the anointed", which I have a hard time identifying as an actual group of people, though he did spend his time in academia supposedly witnessing these people.

I enjoy the fact that he never has to retreat to an appeal to value in order to show how his opponents are wrong. He always finds a way to collapse a thought from within or has some technical reason why it is wrong.

Thomas Sowell is lightyears beyond fucking Bill O.

I know Veeky Forums is turned off by Sowell because he's a right-winger, but his books present actual and fresh arguments, with no regress into "muh values".

Also, he used to be a marxist.

It's difficult to say, though he certainly is "free-market". Most of his writings are basically expositions of economic thought and critiques of ideologies, journalists, thinkers and so on.

At most you could call him a right-winger. You might describe him as an ideologue, but he's certainly not one in any traditional sense. He doesn't present the reader with an ideology, and he's stated before that he prefers not to be put into a box.

That's what I was getting from the videos. He's very smart and I cannot fathom why the right doesn't flock to this man.

Well he hates the idea of being worshipped.

It might also be because the American right, that is, the classic, conservative voting population, just does not have an intellectual tradition which it follows in the first place (that's not to say aren't the unwitting exponents of certain ideas created by intellectuals). And it doesn't help that they may find Sowell disconcertingly secular.

We could imagine Sowell appealing to the more intellectual (if I may use that word), internet-based, alt-right youngins if he wrote about issues that they care about (but he does not).

He's not left with much of an audience besides a handful of some minarchist, right-libertarians.

He writes about being anti welfare and about black culture being a disgusting aberration. This would have to appeal to alt right types

Maybe to hardcore /pol/

But migration and transgenderism are the hot issues with a lot of right-wing youngins

Huh. That's a bummer those issues aren't really serious issues at all.

In Europe and the US immigration is a bloody big issue

Maybe moreso in Europe, but still not really. In the u.s. it's basically a non issue we have vast expanses of unpopulated land still. Mexicans are already here and are not only mostly law abiding citizens but absolutely integral to industries like agriculture and hospitality. If what you're alluding to is radical Islam then lmao dude they're recruiting through the internet and killing a dozen people here or there isn't even a war it's just petty violence, nothin worse than what we've done to ourselves for decades. It's not nearly as big of an issue as the macroeconomic and pervasive society wide ills that sowell is discussing.

They do. The main reason he doesn't come up as much any more is 1) he's getting old and 2) he was pretty anti-Trump, which lost him some of the ardent support he used to have. The people who broke for Trump earliest tended to be Sowell's biggest fans, but after being intensely critical of Obama for lack of experience, he refused to consider Trump as anything but an incredible folly and hypocrisy.

Seriously is Trump just a neoliberal plant? How is he not?

I know it's cliche, but follow the money. If you look across his cabinet, he's got a range you would never see from a neo-liberal. It's dangerous to try and put him into a political box, though, because he's not really one for a strong ideology. He's very much the businessman, in terms of delivering results within a system for a given goal measured by pre-determined methods. I know I sound like an apologist, and to some extent I am, but my main purpose is actually to help the hysterical get a better sense of the landscape. It's quite significant that Trump won with such a staggering difference in campaign donations. Many of the traditional metrics for measuring performance are simply irrelevant, or potentially inverse in this environment. He's a dedicated student of Art of War, so be careful of his stratagems. Many people like to say he's incompetent, but that's a really dangerous way to consider him, even if it's true. Look for where the incentives lie, look for the set up, and then pay attention to the reverse. It's a pretty big deal that China is even remotely positioning itself against NK. And notice how the Syrian strike got the Hawks riled up, but now he's pulled the attention away from Syria. Trump rarely does anything that serves only one strategic purpose. A master of lenticular communication. A targeted audience gets a very targeted message, but a broader audience gets something completely different out of the same communication. The MOAB strike was at least four pronged--demonstration that the US can obliterate the NK tunnel network, message to Russia that Trump is still anti-ISIS/pro-Syrian Gov (minus Assad), signal to world about Trump's hands-off approach to warfare compared to Obama's, and a signal to any concerned about a probably shift from relying on drone warfare. Meanwhile, what gets very little attention, is that he's taking a scythe to the beuareaucratic structure. Ben Carson just uncovered HUGE fraud at HUD, that could quite easily lead to convictions down the road. Healthcare was probably an intentional walk. Its already been swept from national conversation.

TL;DR
There's not really anything of substance that suggests Trump is a neo-liberal or a neo-con.

I agree with your post entirely, the first thing that struck me about the tomahawk attack in Syria was that he did it during a dinner with President xi. That actually impressed me. It made me start rethinking my stance on the guy, I still think he is more of a gambler tho and I feel one of his gambles could literally blow up in someone's face.

In international politics, everything is a bit of a gamble. But what you really need to consider is that sometimes an outward look of animosity is a good front for a loose alliance and the building of a longer friendship. It was a gift to both Russia and the United States that there was an appearance of a falling out. But the missiles were allowed to hit their target, and with minimal casualties. Now Syria pushes harder against the rebels/ISIS/jihadis, and the US strikes hard on their far eastern flank.

It's quite possible he's just a mostly incompetent gambler, but his win percentage is a bit high to attribute to just luck.

I'm not that guy you're responding to, but a book intended as an introduction for a subject should not be written with any moral or political bias. Not saying he's not an incredibly smart guy, but learning economics through that is like the right-wing equivalent of learning economics through Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century.

Yeah I can appreciate that. There is no doubting the its a very liberal book and often when discussing a principal of economics, such as the value of labour, he would follow with the liberal argument for a certain political position, such as the negative effects of minimum wage laws. The basics are there though and frankly the way he links it to political decision-making is pretty spot-on with plenty of evidence to back everything up. Its almost like he extends to logic of economic theory to logical conclusions of policy.

Yeah he's pretty much up there with Friedman and Hayek. I guess it would be a good place to start if you wanted to learn more about their ideology.

you're the type of person incapable of reason

Nah not really. I believe the artificial boarders imposed by governments is nothing more than market manipulation of labor. In an open trade global society man ought to be able to move as freely as the goods he creates and consumes.

buzz osbourne from the melvins recommends his books...I shit thee not

>boarders

stopped reading there

>Heh thought you had a point too bad your auto predict used the wrong borders. >Guess I win this one.
Srsly?

That's cool. I've already decided I'm buying these books. It seems intelligent people pick up what he's putting down.

Just a neoliberal Uncle Tom.

you cant fathom why?
really?

He's not neoliberal at all! WTF.

Yeah maybe conservatives are all racist, well at least the taste makers. He was touted by William Buckley tho.

>No you see
>*preens thinning afro*
>I's be a
>*Panders to whitey"
>I'm finna be call a
>*Polishes $1000 pair of glasses with spit*
>CLASS-I-KUL liberal

Good one.

t. Larry_Elder_Fan84

Yup. Thanks for the free bumps by the way.

someone for open borders no zero capability of critical thought

Loved Basic Economics. Read Barbarians inside the gates a month ago.

Other than
>Muh culture
There is no real argument against it when you consider that the wealth of nations and man is derived from land, labor, and capital. We allow capital to move freely why not labor? Moving capital while holding man hostage to imaginary lines is tantamount to macro-estate serfdom.

yes lets allow literally anyone at any time move into a country. that will surely be a good thing

he's my uncle, I call him uncle tom

Why not? If Americans across the heartland want their factory jobs back then they should be able to move to the new factories in Mexico and elsewhere. You think my ancestors wanted to leave their homelands for America for shits and giggles? No they moved to work, everybody should be afforded that right. Without freedom of mobility it is impossible to have self determination of the individual.

He's not just up there with Friedman, he's a devoted student of Friedman. If you want the central theory and analysis, go to Hayek. If you want demonstrations in the the broader modern world, go to Friedman. If you want some more specific applications, go to Sowell.

Yeah I like the way sowell breaks stuff down he's like a conservitive freakanomics. I would like to see a debate between those 3

For that to be even remotely viable you'd need to completely abolish any sort of welfare or social program

It's funny how often leftists reveal themselves to be as much if not more racist than the right

And? This is a discussion about sowell. Do you not see where my leanings lie? It's still not even true what you said either. We could do a Continental or even global baseline. You could just get rid of unemployment benefits to get rid of free loaders. It's not that hard. Also I highly doubt that lazy people will get up off their ass to move somewhere to be lazy en masse. They are much more likely to make themselves content in their existing squaler.

>I know Veeky Forums is turned off by Sowell because he's a right-winger, but his books present actual and fresh arguments, with no regress into "muh values".

Yes, but the absence of "muh values" in his work has spawned among other things comparisons of basic welfare provisions to black slavery, and him promoting the abolition of the minimum wage.

He is very intelligent and well-educated, but unfortunately there are parts of his work that are difficult to take seriously unless you think that basic social contracts in a society aren't that important. He is, however, a good economist in many respects and people interested in the subject should read some of his general works.

No. That's not quite it. He starts with the facts and then blatantly tells you where they possibly fit with a conservative world view.

I suspect you haven't read a word of sowell and are talking out of your ass...

A good example of the hypocrisy of right-wing intellectuals who complain about affirmative action. Sowell has produced almost no results of value but is trotted out to spout conservative talking points only because he is black.

>Hayek
What specifically?

Then you'd need some sort of continental/global wealth redistribution body which I can't see working very efficiently

That's such bullshit, the only people I see pointing out his race are leftists who call him an Uncle Tom

He has almost no papers publishing novel results in economic journals, he shouldn't be mentioned along with someone like Friedman.

He's loved by conservatives. Ask about him on any conservative forum and they'll gush over him for good reason.

Abolition of the minimum wage is not exactly a looney idea if you are economically literature.

gotta love these wagecuck faggots on Veeky Forums arguing against the minimum wage cuz they heard some jew hedge fund manager on cnbc saying it was a good idea

It'll help to give some reasons why this is true because this idea that a minimum wage is a necessity has been unchallenged for far too long which is why left leaning people consider abolishing it to be a crime against the poor.

Minimum wage laws are disproportionately harmful to unskilled and inexperienced workers because those laws take away their one competitive advantage, which is price. In a free market, an employer might choose to hire a lower-priced and less productive worker and train them for the job. Minimum wage laws make this unaffordable for many employers.

Paul Krugman in his textbook on macroeconomics describes the effects of super high minimum wage laws in European countries like Greece and Spain. The "disproportionately young, from ages of 18 to 30, are locked out of employment without any prospect of finding a good job. In these countries a generation of young people is unable to get adequate job training, develop careers and save for their future, thanks to the minimum wage laws. These young people, moreover, are also more likely to engage in crime."

Unions don't care about the poor. They care about their members, and few of them are ever minimum wage workers. They support increasing the minimum wage because they understand that low skilled non union labor is often a substitute for them in the eyes of a employer, so they use the minimum wage law to artificially raise the barrier of entry for new workers to protect themselves. An example of this would be in Apartheid South Africa, where construction unions used the minimum wage law to eliminate the competitive advantage of black construction workers who were willing to work for $1.51 an hour less than white workers. American unions have similarly pushed for minimum wage laws to take away the competitive advantage of less expensive, and often ethnic minority workers.

There are a wide variety of positions on what the minimum wage should be among reputable economists.

Defenses of the minimum wage usually amount to the assertion of the fact that wages are higher than the minimum in some places. It may in some cases actually boost all workers wages, but this is very rare, and yes, it does generally boost some workers wages but only at the expense of other workers.

If this thread has proved anything is that Veeky Forums doesn't know how to entertain opposing views.

This is how every person thinks

Right wingers are fucking retarded, who cares.
>muh values muh degeneracy
Freedom is great and leads to productivity, unlike conservatism. Go eat a brick.

>Eu

Ought there be no floor for income in America?

Only Keynes is his equal in importance during the 20th century. Not many economists ought to be mentioned alongside him.

>Minimum wage laws are disproportionately harmful to unskilled and inexperienced workers because those laws take away their one competitive advantage, which is price. In a free market, an employer might choose to hire a lower-priced and less productive worker and train them for the job. Minimum wage laws make this unaffordable for many employers.
And what use is it being employed at such a low wage, when even the current minimum isn't enough to actually live on?

He has some catchy quotes and he's a token black guy
That's about as much as I can tell

Who said they had to live on it?

1. Children and teens are commonly those pushed out of the market by the minimum wage. They are dependents of their parents who are the main wage earners of the household.

2. Welfare payments may still distribute to a wage earner who is below the threshold income.

3. Work channels people into productive activities and so the labor of one's neighbor is a benefit to society as a whole. It is better for one to work for a small amount of money and to provide a small amount of value, then it is to do nothing at all.

well it would solve the immigration problem fast enough, singapore is surrounded by huge jungles filled with uneducated brown muslims, yet somehow they don't get flooded with "refugees" the same way europe does...they have no welfare and no minimum wage.

>Children and teens are commonly those pushed out of the market by the minimum wage.
No, children and teens are kept out of the market by laws against underaged labour.

>Welfare payments may still distribute to a wage earner who is below the threshold income.
So a "threshold" is fine but a "minimum" isn't?

>Work channels people into productive activities and so the labor of one's neighbor is a benefit to society as a whole.
Or, in reality, to the corporation's profit margin.

if you think the minimum wage sucks so bad feel free to work on mechanical turk for $4 an hour as much as you like, nothing is stoping you or anyone else

>>Welfare payments may still distribute to a wage earner who is below the threshold income.
>So a "threshold" is fine but a "minimum" isn't?

this should rustle the jims of any conservative who stops to think for two seconds instead of parroting walton family talking points...

if you give welfare payments to people who work for below poverty wages that would otherwise be unlivable then you are asking productive taxpayers to subsidize the labor force of a profitable but stingy enterprise

Nah America was the land of opportunities before welfare.

He has some solid ideas. When I first stumbled upon him, I had to watch quite a few videos about him before I began to catch glimpses of the parts of his belief system with which I would disagree.

>Nah America was the land of opportunities before welfare.

yeah, back then europeans came here because in europe there wasn't any welfare state yet, available farmland, and in the case of places like ireland food

You just described the conditions of Syria and Iraq. There will always be people in search of a new start.

Milton Friedman was in favor of both a basic income and abolishing the minimum wage. I'm in good company. If society deems it necessary to provide a "living wage" then the cost should be borne by society as a whole rather than specific industries.

As it stands we already provide the impoverished, working and unemployed, with subsidies. If some of the unemployed are the type of person who was priced out of the market by the minimum wage, then by abolishing the minimum wage, they can too engage in productive activity. It's an improvement on the current system. No new taxes need to be raised therefore no hits to productivity will be incurred.

I hope you didn't just offer up that undemocratic sprawling mess of a beaurocracy as an example of an efficient system

It'll collapse in the next 10-20 years anyway

I guess the road to serfdom

Sure thing bub.

>if you are economically literature.

Impressive

can somebody give me a quick rundown on this guy? I'm new to the scene

He's an old school conservative.

youtube.com/watch?v=nxygmc_SMAU

>Minimum wage laws are disproportionately harmful to unskilled and inexperienced workers because those laws take away their one competitive advantage, which is price.

You're assuming that this is a competition that unskilled labourers would even want to partake in, when such a deregulated reality will always be a race to the bottom of both wage rates and working conditions, to the point that the unskilled will also eventually become overworked, disenfranchised, and contemptuous of their lot and of surrounding society that could be preventing it.

A common thread that I always see in fanatic free marketeer types like Sowell is the assumption that low wages, or the threat of low wages, is some sort of healthy, life-affirming, and character-building experience, when it is so often an inefficient and degrading polar opposite.

Obviously, you can easily go too far in the other direction and give too much welfare or establish too high a minimum wage, but I would contend that this shouldn't mean buying into its opposite extreme.

t. gets all his opinions from Daily Show

>when such a deregulated reality will always be a race to the bottom of both wage rates and working conditions

Why do you believe this is true? If this were how it actually worked we would see a similar "race to the bottom" even with the minimum wage. What incentive is there for companies to pay more than the minimum wage, why don't they just enter a secret agreement and collectively choose not to pay workers more than the minimum? The answer is that nobody is forcing people to accept wages they can't live off of, and this causes companies to compete with each for those workers. They compete with each other by offering higher wages and abolishing the minimum wage will not change this.

The types of jobs that are destroyed by the minimum wage are the perfects sorts of jobs for people just entering the workforce, like teens still living with their parents. It's how people used to gain skills and experience so they can later demand higher wages and the institution of the minimum wage has destroyed this. Now the only path for people to gain good employment is to go into massive debt for college. There's no real middle ground to be had here because it's a wholly failed policy.

Not the person you're replying to.
>What incentive is there for companies to pay more than the minimum wage
Because as the ability you are looking for in your work force becomes more scarce, so does the supply. This brings in competition among labour demanders (companies), which is is stark contrast to the competition among labour suppliers (workers).

When there is a surplus of supply, there can be a race to the bottom. Where scarcity of labour supply is the name of the game, you need to offer more in compensation in order to avoid losing your valuable workers; when the work you perform is valuable, competitors tend to try and lure you away if your compensation is below par.

right, its much better to be wholly dependent on the government because they actually care about your well being and sustenance. Conservatives are so dumb lol.

>singapore is surrounded by huge jungles filled with uneducated brown muslims,

Yes it is.

It's 15% brown Muslims. That's more than Sweden and Germany

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Singapore

Ayy lmao

In Sweden and Germany its 6% Muslim.

Singapore is more than 2x more Muslim

*reads Economics in one Lesson once*

> If this were how it actually worked we would see a similar "race to the bottom" even with the minimum wage.

Yes, and we do. However, the presence of a market distortion like the minimum wage keeps the lowest earners (and those with the threat of becoming one) not only with a small morale boosting guarantee that the market will not be the sole decider on how low they will be pushed, but also affords them a level of buying power in the economy that they wouldn't be guaranteed to have in a purer free market in which the lowest wage rates would constantly be fighting for some equilibrium with the costs of living - often inaccurately or too slowly.

Obviously, this problem can exist when you have a minimum wage as well, but when the problem arises of lowest earners not being able to cover basic costs on a state-sanctioned minimum wage, it is usually a more obvious result of negligence, and possible to actually rectify as opposed to the constant shortfalls that would happen in a deregulated labour market.

>teens still living with their parents.

Unless they want to go down the inadvisable road of not going to college, why would we even want teenagers entering the workforce except for brief summer jobs and the like? As for the modern college debt racket, that is just an unnecessary folly of the modern US system, and another example of what deregulation and lack of government investment can do - even in a developed country with the amount of natural advantages that the US has in this domain.

Again, I hear the tone in some of your points that we are preventing unskilled people from doing what they want, when surely it should be obvious from previous examples that these unskilled workers, in the absence of a state minimum wage guarantee, will eventually realise they would be mutually better off forming aggressive unions to protect against constant downward pressure on their wages and set a higher guaranteed wage for themselves via the collective bargaining route anyway.

One of the most important intellectuals of our time.

The real minimum wage is zero.