Essential reading for everyone.

An excellent, thorough economics primer. It’s both long and perhaps consumer-level in a way, but Basic Economics is still accessible and engaging. While many free-market principles repeat throughout, Sowell’s insights don’t get old because of the varied applications rife with historical anecdotes and statistics. It was eye-opening, and it’s one I could learn from by returning for a second listen. Regardless your politics, it’s a must-read.

If I had been forced to read this in high school or college I could have been rescued from having a lot of silly thoughts about how things work.

Listened on audio book over the course of a couple months on my way to work, so I probably missed/forgot some stuff. Will have to reread at some point!

This book was difficult to comprehend, and it’s length is relative to a Harry Potter novel. Although some ideas got through to me, I will definitely need to revisit it again. But over all a great book.

You see where this line meets that line? That's why poor people should starve

One of my favorite and probably one of the best books I've ever read!!! Thomas Sowell is an absolute American gem! Can't wait to read more of his books.

This is one of handful premier introductions to neoclassical economics, specifically the "Chicago School." There are some obvious limitations to the work, which is true of any popular work on macroeconomics. The works of Keynes, Hayek, Friedman, etc are have significant limitations too.

One of the great contributions from this work is mapping out the malign economic incentives created by rent control and other local regulation that disrupt residential development. This is a pressing political issue today, which could have been avoided by heeding Sowell's argument (not that he was the only one making it, but still a very prominent voice).

A decent summary of free market economics. But it fails to achieve the status of a true classic. One problem is that Sowell's attempt at free market basic economics find itself in tough company, compared to whom it looks slightly awkward. For one, it is not as concise and pocket-sized as, say, Hazlitt's comparable book, Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics. Nor is it as immediately relevant to everyday political concerns as, say, Friedman's Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Nor does it have the philosophical and historical depth of, say, Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty.

Another major problem is the title pick. Calling the book "Basic Economics" is a case of misleading if not outright false advertising. I would caution beginner students to be careful. The problem with the promise is that the book cannot function as an overall introduction to basic economic concepts, since many schools of economics, and many fundamental theories of neoclassical economics, are not properly explained, or, when they are, the author's opinions are contrasted with those "false" opinions. Theories are painted in good/bad colours and often not given due and full consideration.

Aside from the aforementioned problems of niche and ideological slant, further two problems are the length of the book, which is immodest in a bad way, and the writing style, which is dry and tedious. The book, for me, was surprisingly painful to slog through, unlike many of the author's other, more polemical books. I may not be the target audience of this book, since I am well-versed in both basic economic concepts (neutrally understood), and in free market economics of the Chicago school (slanted to the right), and this book didn't give me much that I did not already know in either of the two fronts. Perhaps someone else will find this book a perfect match. I found myself bored. The dry language of economics can take its toll even on its most ardent advocates.

The book plays almost too well the charade of masquerading as an Econ 101: it deals, very briefly, with everything under the sun, including a (very) brief history of economics, an overview of international trade, a criticism of labour regulation, etc. But none of these chapters go deep, and so the book cannot really play the role that it wants to play. It has a major identity crisis. If one wants the full picture, one still needs to read economists of different economic persuasion, as well. And if one wants a free-market overview of economics, there are better and shorter books out there.

That said, I appreciate Thomas Sowell tremendously as an economist and writer. And even though I disagree with the way this book is put together, it is by no means a worthless or never-useful tome. If you are happy reading an over-long selection of ideologically slanted, well-researched small snippets of commentary on various aspects of the economy, you could certainly do worse.

Excellent book! Thomas Sowell delivers on what he promised; a common sense book that describes and teaches economics without graphs or numbers. As you read the book you have no doubt he could use graphs and sheets of numbers to explain himself, and yet he resorts to the language of the common man and appeals to common sense. This might be one of Tom Sowell's greatest tools.

One thing that he brings up over and over is the price of decisions and the importance of knowing who gets to pay the cost. You may have the smartest people in the world but if you cannot ensure that you have decisions made in reference to or by the people who pay the price for their decisions we would have a world that is more accountable.

The book goes into a number of areas and explains why common thought and practice is flawed. Mr Sowell dispatches of the arguments he is facing with great ease and clarity. This book is a masterpiece

The book covers a wide range of topics and although not short, I found it concise, to the point, and clear. I liked how dispassionately and logically the author analyzes the problems. The book was amusing for me with many counter-intuitive ideas and insightful examples. I guess for almost any statements in the book there are ardent opponents as well as proponents. But at least for someone like me with little knowledge of economics, they seemed like a good first approximation.

I was uneasy that the subject matter of this book would be drab. In addition, I was a bit concerned that this book (written in 2003) would be a bit dated. Don't fool yourself, the examples given may have occurred nearly 2 decades past, and even a century prior, but the events are also excessively relevant to today's world. Mr Sowell did a great job of writing this in plain English - allowing the content to be readable and spell-binding based on our country's current state of affairs.

With socialist ideas on the rise, it is important, if not critical, that citizens understand economics and why a socialist system ineveitbly will collapse. The author does not politicize anything but merely cites examples using historical data and historical outcomes. You will learn (or be reminded) why rent contols, minimum wage, and other government controls lead to a weakened middle class and a greater amount of poverty.

I reserve 5 stars for those books I would consider reading again. This is one of them. I would encourage everyone to read this book. It will not only provide an opportunity to understand government policy but will likely help in making better personal monetary decisions.

92 out of 100

This was a truly fantastic book. It is a very thorough, thoughtful, and deep analysis of a topic presented in way that is both consumable and fascinating even if one is not in the field. And while the author has a fairly open right lean, he is so thoughtfully, with very specific and well-laid-out arguments supporting his belief, and with a thorough understanding and addressing of the points of the other side in many cases.

I will say though, in the end I found the book fantastic but was mixed on where I actually agreed or not. For example, the sections on rent control and the housing market in general were fantastic and I was fairly thoroughly on board. In comparison, the section on monopolies was well argued but felt to me to address the issue in a way that effectively presumed them away, and seemed to give no credence to their reality outside situations caused by government control. This seems to me somewhat far fetched, and if I have time I'd like to reread this section to narrow down more exactly where I disagree with the argument as laid out.

In other areas I was a bit more mixed as well, often agreeing and finding deeply useful the broader perspective on economics but in particular cases (e.g. predatory pricing) felt the treatment wandered a bit away from fair. The author was a pains to note that such can neither be proven nor disproven (fair point), but then proceeded to cast such skepticism on the idea being possible to a degree that felt unwarranted based on the evidence he was citing. In both this and the discussion of monopolies I was particularly struck with the sense that the effort/time involved to set up or create a business or situation was simply something he consistently underplayed, and the de facto monopolistic situations that often exist or the effective predatory pricing that can occur by virtue of economies of scale in the age of truly massive corporations on the whole got short schrift. Where I felt something was unfair or incomplete it often tended to be related to this point.

That said, even where I disagreed I learned, and as such would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a profoundly thoughtful, well researched and thoughtful description of how economics works from a right-leaning perspective. I might not agree with everything in here, but it seems unquestionable to me that the arguments here are powerful enough to treat with great consideration even when the conclusion is to disagree.