Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics Questions

Miscellaneous General
1

I’ve heard good things about Sowell’s Basic Economics, and I plan on buying it, but have a few questions first.

  1. Would you recommend this book?

  2. How is the book overall, and also from an Austrian perspective?

  3. I see he has a new version out, yet it’s a little too expense for my taste, would an older version do just fine? If so, what version?

Thanks in advance!

2

  1. Highly, HIGHLY reccomend this book. I recommend it to a lot of people who are wholly economically ignorant as well. Sowell does a great job of teaching you think beyond stage one economically, which is at the root of so much economic lunacy on the part of politicians (meaning to project the effect of the effect of your policy and beyond, not just the immediate effect you hope to achieve). The book also explains how policies intended to achieve one effect often end up achieving their opposite. You’ll also get an understandable explanation of basic economics, naturally, with only one graph in the whole book.

  2. I don’t know if it’s explicitly Austrian, but I consider myself an Austrian and I loved it. Probably the issues contained within are too basic to fall into controversial territory (unless you’re a blind Keynesian). It definitely jives with Austrian policies.

  3. Sure, go with the older version. Whatever you can afford. Probably all that’s changed is updated examples. I’ve read this one, and the follow-on Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.

3

hi

4

In the highest terms. It is the book that started me on my road to Austrian Economics.

I believe Sowell is Chicago school but, all in all, his approach is very Austrian in tone. As a rule of thumb, Sowell is right on the mark on everything he addresses in the book. As a Chicago school economist, I would assume that he is wrong on monetary theory so you might take anything he says on monetary theory with a grain of salt.

Clayton -

5

  1. Yes.

  2. He’s not an Austrian, but close enough that it’s fine from an Austrian perspective. The book doesn’t really get into the stuff where the Austrian school and the Chicago school disagree much.

  3. The 3rd edition would be fine, but the 2nd and 1st editions are a lot shorter.

6

  1. Yes, definitely. It’s excellent. And as mentioned earlier, Applied Economics is also strongly recommended. Some have even said that one is better than Economics in One Lesson.

  2. The book is great overall. Again, as others have said, Sowell is Chicago School-trained (studied under Friedman & Stigler), but the book is called basic economics…so there isn’t really much covered that Austrians would really object to. You really don’t get into bad territory in Chicago until you get to monetary theory, but that’s mostly outside the scope of the book anyway.

  3. What exactly is your taste? You can get it under $18 on Amazon (be sure to go through goodsearch.com to have money donated to LvMI)…and if you’re cool with audio or digital, you can get it for even less, thanks to intelligenT people who don’t Pretend Bullshit copyright is legitimate :wink: But yes, if you want to go even cheaper for a physical copy, as Nero said, the 3rd edition would be fine, but the 2nd and 1st editions are significantly different.