#5 - Applied Economics by Thomas Sowell

How many pastors out there are reading books on economics? I must be one of the weirdest pastors out there. But if you give me a chance, it's really not as crazy as it sounds! I just finished Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One by Thomas Sowell. He's written several other books, one of which I also read - Basic Economics.
First off, you have to love a man who looks like this.Second, and more important than how he looks, he writes and explains things so well and so simply. I think everyone could read this book and say, "Wow! That makes a ton of sense!" The book explains "why and how things have happened the way that they have" in the areas of medical care, housing, discrimination and the economic development of nations.

The point of the book is to explain processes and results beyond the intended design (stage 1) and to consider the unintended consequences over time despite the good intentions of people in positions of power and decision making. For example, "Political thinking tends to conceive of policies, institutions, or programs in terms of their hoped-for results = 'drug prevention' programs, 'profit making' enterprises, 'public interest' law firms, 'gun control' laws, and so forth. But for purposes of economic analysis, what matters is not what goals are being sought but what incentives and constraints are being created in pursuit of those goals. ..it is an open question whether drug prevention programs actually prevent or reduce drug usage, whether public interest law firms actually benefit the public, or whether gun control laws actually control guns."

"No economist is likely to be surprised when rent control laws, for example, lead to housing shortages and fail to control rent, so that cities with such laws often end up with higher rents than cities without them. But such outcomes may be very surprising to people who think in terms of political rhetoric focussed on desirable goals." If you want to know why and how that happens, you have to read the book, but think San Francisco and Manhattan.

Sowell is so well read and so learned that he brings up example after example of economic policy implemented in different countries and different time periods to illustrate the consistency of these unintended consequences. So many of the programs politicians argue about have been attempted across the continents and over the millennia with identical and obvious results. We really should learn our history and good economic policy to save ourselves from repeating these less than ideal consequences.

If you haven't read Sowell, you must. Of course, first read your Bible, and then Sowell.