The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell

I wanted to share a few quotes from Thomas Sowell that I recently came across:

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.  The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."

"If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves."

"Liberals seem to assume that, if you don't believe in their particular political solutions, then you don't really care about the people that they claim to want to help."

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

"If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago, and a racist today."

"I have never understood why it is 'greed' to want to keep the money you've earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else's money."

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

Great quotes from a great man....

Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax"

Here is an interesting piece by Thomas Sowell on the "Hunger Hoax" (credit to Shawn Ritenour for pointing me to the article). Sowell sees it as a symptom of a bigger problem:
"An arrogant elite's condescension toward the people — treating them as children who have to be jollied along — is one of the poisonous problems of our time. It is at the heart of the nanny state and the promotion of a debilitating dependency that wins votes for politicians while weakening a society.

Those who see social problems as requiring high-minded people like themselves to come down from their Olympian heights to impose their superior wisdom on the rest of us, down in the valley, are behind such things as the hunger hoax, which is part of the larger poverty hoax."

I can see applications to the "childhood obesity epidemic" as well. We are all individuals and we all have the God-given ability to think for ourselves. To assume that the government must do something about peoples' problems, must help them to change their habits, the way they think, is demeaning. Some people may make poor decisions, but they are individuals with freedom and they should be allowed to make those choices for themselves. The role the government has taken in helping these people should belong to private charities only. They cannot force someone to change (though neither can the government), but if someone shows the inclination to change charities can help him to make a start and follow through.

Once again, Thomas Sowell hits it out of the park

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/27/dismantling_america_98883.html