One of the clearest books on economics out there. Sowell smashes long-held thoughts and beliefs with inscrutable logic and common-day English. It's the everyman's economics book with a punch.

opened strong, last two chapters weren't great

A quick and easy read. I would have liked more in depth review/analysis of examples relevant to his theses.

I was slightly disappointed with this, to be honest, as it seemed to me that Sowell didn't think beyond stage one of some of his conclusions. At one point when arguing against government provided health care he makes the point that "waiting for medical care is particularly costly in human terms, not only because of the needless pain that may be suffered by waiting, but also because the underlying malady may be getting worse..." So the cost of delaying health care is not good. But then he dismisses the uninsured with essentially three paragraphs, including the great sentence: "The most poverty-stricken person living on the street will be treated in an emergency room, with or without insurance." He does not address who pays for that, which seems to be a pretty important beyond stage one question. He also doesn't address all the delayed procedures resulting from uninsured individuals, which surely result in the same costs (if not worse) he describes above. Oddly, later in the book he compares the costs of the same procedures to individuals with and without insurance. Those without will pay almost twice as much in some cases, which seems like it would lead to delays in medical care.

He seems to contradict himself in the insurance part of the book as well, at one point railing against efforts to make things (cars, for example) safer, and then talking about the benefits of insurance companies and product testers making things safer.

Later, when discussing the economic development of nations, talks about Japan's remarkable recovery after World War II in spite of its lack of natural resources, never once mentioning the assistance the Allies gave Japan (similar to the Marshall Plan) following the war.

There are some editing gaffes in here as well. I don't know...the book just didn't live up to my expectations.

Not as dry as an academic text, not as curmudgeonly as some of his polemic stuff, and not as flashy as freakonomics, but pretty good for being free on audible. Here, Sowell is just applying his (old-school conservative) economic ideas to some current issues, seeing how economics can cause surprising policy outcomes or alter the course of history. It's quite good to be able to weigh nice, Liberal policies against what (in his opinion) their unintended consequences will be.

Thomas Sowell eloquently and logically narrates the consequences of bad economic decisions. But its information-packed pages are tedious and overwhelming.

Things are rarely as simple as they seem on the surface but there are definitely some principles that can be applied to clarify complex issues. Thomas Sowell's wisdom in advising the need to think beyond stage one (immediate/short term impacts) to see the long range impacts of any given decision is spot on. Although this is the first of his books that I have read in it's entirety and I am hungry for more. Watching his interviews and clips on YouTube has inspired and encouraged me to be more methodical and thorough in evaluating economic issues. I look forward to continuing to refine my understanding. I highly recommend his works.

Very interesting facts on economics. Slight repetition between this and other works of the same author.

This book was a joy to listen to, as I had the chance to do so during my recent trip to California with a couple of friends/relatives.  A large part of what made the book a joy was the way that the author thoughtfully examined various subjects of political interest in a way that allowed his insights to easily supplement that of the reader or listener (as the case may be) in their own conversations on political matters.  Additionally, the book as a whole is full of the sound reasoning and attention to detail and nuance that makes Sowell's works as a whole a joy to read.  In this particular volume the author is on sound ground not only as an economist, but also someone whose knowledge social and political issues around the world is deep and profound and whose understanding of cultural patterns is similarly impressively deep. Yet despite the author's considerable knowledge, he shows a great deal of patience in methodically demonstrating how it is that good intentions and efforts at dealing with unpleasant realities often make those realities worse as a result of a lack of wisdom and attention when it comes to the perverse incentives that are created by one's interventions.

This particular book is organized in a thematic fashion over nine discs, with the author examining in turn the economics of politics, housing, medical care, crime, discrimination, and the economic development of nations, among other subjects.  Throughout the course of these discussions the author looks at the difference between political and economic aspects of reality and the way that attempts to ameliorate conditions can often lead to negative externalities that exacerbate the original problem one was trying to solve.  For example, laws that seek to control rent prices lead to a reduction in housing stock as fewer rental units are built and maintenance decreases in existing housing in a predictable fashion.  The reduction or removal of such maladroit policies then leads, almost as if by magic, to more housing being built because it is again profitable to do so.  Throughout the book the author contrasts the great mass of people, especially leftist politicians, who are only able to think in stage one terms, and those whose knowledge extends to an understanding of the responses that people are going to make to given policies and regulations that allows them to thoughtfully oppose such follies and to seek to properly harness the motivations that exist in beneficial directions.

And ultimately that is what this book succeeds at the best, the conveyance of the difficulty of managing social change in a way that benefits society as a whole as well as its members.  It is easy to conceive of interventions that to those who lack knowledge and insight can coerce desired social change, but it requires more thoughtfulness to recognize the way in which those actions may lead to a decline in the well-being of those groups that one claims a desire to support.  The author is, as usual, unsentimental in his approach and unsparing in his criticism, commenting on the way that we prefer socially beneficial agents to be in competition with each other but prefer criminal elements to be in cartels where the anarchic violence of individual members of the criminal class can be restrained by the rational calculations of crime lords who do not wish for scrutiny on their profitable but socially undesirable operations that would be inhibited by popular hostility to their firms.  Not everyone is amenable to thinking in a sound economic fashion, but for those who are, this book is definitely an achievement.

If you've taken any business course, this book is a waste of your time. It is a dumbing down/simplification of supply/demand economics.

Sowell has exactly what you'd expect. Nuanced perspectives and criticism of supposed statistics policies and ideas in vogue. The sections on insurance, "general immigration", and geographical limitations of developing nations were particularly interesting. It's a great resource for anyone looking for hard math to back up suggestions on economic policy. This book has taught me to think beyond the initial response to economic changes.

While this purports to be a follow-on to the author's Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy, it felt more like a re-hashing of the supporting from that earlier volume.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, as we almost all need to "think beyond stage one" in our quest to achieve economic and/or political goals. Sowell treats this problem well, generally avoiding saying what is 'right' versus 'wrong' in a moral sense, but instead focuses on explaining the trade-offs and knock-on effects (the "stage two" effects, which most tend to ignore).

Worth reading more as a standalone book than to read if you've already taken in Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy or some other basic/intro economics book.