Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

In the textbook industry, "progress" is signified by style over substance, with the goal apparently to achieve the look and feel of "USA Today." Books compete to have more charts, sidebars, highlighted sections, and, of course, the ever-necessary multimedia CD ROM. Into this wind spits Thomas Sowell, with his delightfully retro attempt to put the "text" back into textbook. Taking us back to the days before Samuelson, and indeed before Marshall, he presents economics in terms of logic, examples, and occasional data. Turning to substance, one might fairly ask, "Is this book an economics textbook or a right-wing polemic?" The answer is "yes." My college economics professor used to point out that the liberal Samuelson and the conservative Friedman believed in the same price theory. However, Friedman applied it to policy more aggressively. Sowell applies economic theory aggressively to policy, and the chips happen to fall well to the right of center. But what is there in "Basic Economics" to which a liberal economist might object? I can only think of a few things. 1. Sowell takes the monetarist view of macroeconomic fluctuations. He does not mention the savings/investment imbalance theory of Keynes. But even most liberal economists won't stick up for Keynes nowadays (I will). 2. Sowell points out that social security is an intergenerational transfer, and that its feasibility depends on the ratio of workers to retirees. Liberal economists agree with this view. But they still like social security, and Sowell does not deal with their rationale (weak as it may be). 3. Sowell points out that poverty is misrepresented in the media, and that economic growth and changes in lifetime circumstances erase much of what is reported as poverty. Again, liberal economists would have to agree, but nonetheless they would have put the issue of "income distribution" into Sowell's chapter on the proper role of government. He never quite meets them head-on. But I wish that liberals would learn "Basic Economics." One need only look at the California "energy crisis" to see the consequences of economic ignorance.