Nov. 12, 2025

MM#446--From Harlem To Hoover: Thomas Sowell’s Ideas That Cut Through Noise

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Headlines can heat the blood; evidence steadies the mind. We step back from election drama to explore Thomas Sowell’s lifetime of clear thinking on prices, incentives, culture, and the hard truth that there are no solutions—only trade-offs. From a hardscrabble childhood and a GED to Harvard, Chicago, and the Hoover Institution, Sowell’s journey shapes a method: test claims against outcomes, not intentions. That approach leads us in...

FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message

Headlines can heat the blood; evidence steadies the mind. We step back from election drama to explore Thomas Sowell’s lifetime of clear thinking on prices, incentives, culture, and the hard truth that there are no solutions—only trade-offs. From a hardscrabble childhood and a GED to Harvard, Chicago, and the Hoover Institution, Sowell’s journey shapes a method: test claims against outcomes, not intentions. That approach leads us into the politics of “affordable” promises, why price signals matter, and how well-meaning policies can shrink the very prosperity they aim to expand.

We dig into Sowell’s early work at the Department of Labor and his influential findings on minimum wage effects for low-skilled workers, especially black teenagers. We read from The Thomas Sowell Reader to unpack the affordability fallacy and trace the historical costs of price controls that produced shortages and hunger. Then we widen the lens: the welfare state’s incentive problem, the constrained versus unconstrained visions from A Conflict of Visions, and what Hayek’s knowledge problem tells us about why markets outperform central planning by discovering information rather than pretending to possess it.

Culture, too, plays a pivotal role. We discuss patterns highlighted in Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the portability of skills across migrant communities, and the controversy and clarity around affirmative action mismatch and outcomes after California’s Prop 209. Through it all, we keep returning to Sowell’s style: relentlessly empirical, comparative across countries and centuries, and immune to flattery or faction. If you’re ready to think harder, start with Basic Economics, then move to A Conflict of Visions, and let the data change your mind where it should.

If this conversation sharpened your thinking, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves big ideas, and leave a review so more curious listeners can find us.

Key Points from the Episode:

• Sowell’s early life, military service, and academic rise
• Lessons from labor economics and minimum wage data
• The “affordable” fallacy and the role of price signals
• Historical failures of price controls and shortages
• Trade-offs versus intentions in welfare policy
• Constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature
• Culture, skills, and group outcomes across countries
• Affirmative action mismatch and graduation rates
• Hayekian knowledge, markets, and adaptation
• Recommended books and a reading path for newcomers

Other resources:

Want to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly!

00:00 - Opening And Election Fallout

00:31 - Critique Of “Affordable” Politics

02:07 - Thomas Sowell’s Early Life

03:20 - Education And Academic Rise

04:01 - Government Work And Minimum Wage Findings

05:04 - Prolific Writing And Method

05:58 - The “Affordable” Fallacy Reading

09:07 - Historical Costs Of Price Controls

11:10 - No Solutions Only Trade-Offs

12:28 - Visions: Constrained Versus Unconstrained

14:05 - Culture, Race, And Outcomes

16:10 - Affirmative Action And Mismatch

17:21 - Basic Economics And Distributed Knowledge

18:34 - Style, Evidence, And Comparisons

WEBVTT

00:00:07.280 --> 00:00:21.199
Welcome to the Theory to Action Podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books and less time to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.

00:00:21.440 --> 00:00:25.359
Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

00:00:25.760 --> 00:00:30.320
Hello, I am David, and welcome back to another Mojo Minute.

00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:43.439
Based on the horrific results of last week's elections, today we are going to cover and bask in some intelligent thinking.

00:00:44.159 --> 00:01:15.599
Because clearly the voters of New York City in their mayor's race by electing a Marxist Socialist Mayor and the voters of Virginia by electing a new attorney general who literally threatened the life of the sitting elected speaker of the House, the Virginia House, and further with that endorsed political violence after we had just saw the result of political violence and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:23.040
Clearly, both New York City and the old Dominion voters have lost their collective minds.

00:01:25.120 --> 00:01:34.879
Despite all the warnings, the voters in both North or both New York City and Virginia frankly just didn't care.

00:01:35.359 --> 00:01:42.400
And most likely have grown up reading Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States.

00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:47.120
That's how we are in this position.

00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:52.959
And as a side note, if you think that's good history, you're sadly mistaken.

00:01:53.359 --> 00:01:55.920
The book will likely lead to our second U.S.

00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:01.439
Civil War because of the crazy talk contained within its pages.

00:02:02.159 --> 00:02:07.200
But that is where we find ourselves in November of 2025.

00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:18.000
So to actually regain regain some intelligent thinking, we're going to do a deep dive into a national treasure.

00:02:18.639 --> 00:02:29.039
Deep dive into the life and the ideas and the enduring influence of one of America's greatest living intellectuals, Thomas Sowell.

00:02:30.159 --> 00:02:32.319
But let's start at the beginning.

00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:41.680
Thomas Sowell was born on july 30th, 1930 in Gastonia, North Carolina, right in the teeth of the Great Depression.

00:02:41.919 --> 00:02:48.479
His mother died when he was young, and he was raised by his great aunt in Harlem, New York.

00:02:49.280 --> 00:02:54.639
Poverty, instability, and he dropped out at 17.

00:02:55.840 --> 00:03:00.479
There was no silver spoon and no safety net for Thomas.

00:03:00.879 --> 00:03:02.639
But he did get his GED.

00:03:02.800 --> 00:03:06.719
He worked odd jobs, and eventually he walked into Howard University.

00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:09.759
From there, Harvard.

00:03:10.879 --> 00:03:12.639
When Harvard was actually good.

00:03:12.879 --> 00:03:18.080
Graduated Magnum Cumlauda in economics in 1958.

00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:21.680
And then he got his master's at Columbia of all places.

00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:28.879
And finally a PhD from the University of Chicago under two Nobel Prize winners, Milton Friedman and George Stigler.

00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:31.759
That's not luck, folks.

00:03:31.919 --> 00:03:39.520
That's grit, that's an intellect, and a refusal to be defined by circumstance.

00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:46.479
Earlier in his career, Thomas Sowell worked as a government economist at the U.S.

00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:47.439
Department of Labor.

00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:50.800
I did not know that, even though I've been a devout follower of Mr.

00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:53.199
Sowell for so many years.

00:03:53.919 --> 00:04:00.879
And that's where we first saw the unintended consequences of well-meaning policies.

00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:12.879
He studied the minimum wage and concluded based on the data, not feelings, that it is priced low skilled workers, especially black teenagers out of the job market.

00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:16.240
More unemployment, not more dignity.

00:04:16.480 --> 00:04:19.279
That finding would shape his entire worldview.

00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:22.879
Good intentions are not enough.

00:04:23.279 --> 00:04:24.879
Results do matter.

00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:29.519
Sol then Todd at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst, and others.

00:04:29.759 --> 00:04:37.279
But in nineteen eighty he joined the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he's been a senior fellow ever since.

00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:40.399
And the man writes.

00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:43.199
Oh does he write?

00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:52.639
Over forty books, hundreds of columns, syndicated in Forbes National Review and newspapers across the country.

00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:57.920
He doesn't just opine, he marshals evidence like a prosecutor.

00:04:58.319 --> 00:05:04.319
In fact, let's go to one of his books right now and check out one of those columns.

00:05:04.639 --> 00:05:09.040
Go on to the book The Thomas Soul Reader.

00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:17.600
Many of the can't words of politics are simply evasions of reality.

00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:26.160
A prime example is the notion of making housing, college, health insurance, and other things quote affordable.

00:05:26.959 --> 00:05:37.360
Virtually anything can be made affordable in isolation simply by transferring resources to it from elsewhere in the economy, and having most of the costs absorbed by the U.S.

00:05:37.439 --> 00:05:38.160
Treasury.

00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:46.000
The federal government could make a Rolls-Royce affordable for every American, but we would not be a richer country as a result.

00:05:46.240 --> 00:05:58.879
We would in fact be a much poorer country because of all the vast resources transferred from other economic activities to subsidize an extravagant luxury.

00:05:59.360 --> 00:06:18.560
Of course, it might be nice to be sitting at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce, but we might be sitting there in rags and tatters and gaunt with hunger after having squandered enormous amounts of labor, capital, and costly materials that could have been put to better use elsewhere.

00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:31.439
That's simply that doesn't happen in a market economy because most of us take one look at the price tag on a Rolls-Royce and decide that it is time for another Toyota.

00:06:32.720 --> 00:06:39.199
The very notion of making things affordable misses the key point of a market economy.

00:06:39.360 --> 00:06:51.839
An economy exists to make trade-offs, and a market economy makes the terms of those trade-offs plain with price tags, representing the relative cost of producing different things.

00:06:52.560 --> 00:07:04.160
To have politicians arbitrarily change the price tags so the prices no longer represent the real cost is a defeat to the whole purpose.

00:07:05.759 --> 00:07:14.399
And we saw so much made of the term affordable in the New York City mayor's race.

00:07:14.560 --> 00:07:16.000
Everything is about affordable.

00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:18.560
Affordable buses, they need to be free.

00:07:18.879 --> 00:07:22.319
Affordable rent, it needs to be greatly reduced.

00:07:22.480 --> 00:07:26.879
And the Marxist Socialist Man Dani will do it.

00:07:27.279 --> 00:07:29.279
We'll see how that works out.

00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:32.399
Let's go back to the book to find out what Mr.

00:07:32.560 --> 00:07:38.879
Soule thinks is going to happen with this term affordable.

00:07:40.959 --> 00:07:50.800
History, in fact, shows all too many instances of governments trying to keep food affordable, usually with disastrous consequences.

00:07:51.040 --> 00:08:05.360
Whether in France during the 1790s, the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution, or in newly independent African nations during the past generation, governments have imposed artificially low prices on food.

00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:14.959
In each case, this led to artificially low supplies of food and artificially high levels of hunger.

00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:26.639
People who complained about the prohibitive cost of housing or of going to college, for example, fail to understand that the whole point of the cost is to be prohibitive.

00:08:27.680 --> 00:08:40.879
Why do we go around through the whole rigmarole of passing around dollar bills and writing each other's checks except to force everyone to economize on the country's inherently limited resources?

00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:43.120
What about basic necessities?

00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:45.840
Shouldn't they be a right to?

00:08:46.879 --> 00:09:10.240
The idea certainly sounds nice, but the very fact that we can seriously entertain such a notion as if we were God on the first day of creation, instead of mortals constrained by the universe we find in place shows the utter unreality of failing to understand that we can only make choices among alternatives actually available.

00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:17.120
For society as a whole, nothing comes as a right to which we are entitled.

00:09:17.840 --> 00:09:27.600
Even bare subsidence has to be produced and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history.

00:09:27.840 --> 00:09:34.320
The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him.

00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:42.879
The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work, and the more others have to carry their load.

00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:49.600
That doesn't mean more goods are available than under ordinary market production, but less.

00:09:50.320 --> 00:09:58.320
To believe otherwise is to commit the Rolls-Royce fallacy on a more mundane level.

00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:06.080
And there you have just a sampling, an appetizer of the brilliance of Thomas Sowell.

00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:10.320
He is indeed a national treasure, but let's zoom out.

00:10:10.399 --> 00:10:12.720
Let's talk about his big ideas.

00:10:13.279 --> 00:10:16.240
First, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

00:10:16.399 --> 00:10:19.200
That's not cynicism, that's clarity.

00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:24.559
Every policy, every reform, every grand plan has cost to it.

00:10:24.879 --> 00:10:28.320
The question is who pays them and are they worth it?

00:10:28.799 --> 00:10:30.080
Take the welfare state.

00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:38.559
Sol points out something stunning that black poverty was dropping faster before the Great Society programs of the 1960s than after.

00:10:38.879 --> 00:10:39.519
Why?

00:10:39.919 --> 00:10:51.360
Because those programs, however noble in intent, disrupted family structures, they rewarded dependency and eroded work incentives.

00:10:52.399 --> 00:10:58.159
He doesn't say this to scold, he says it because the data demands it.

00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:06.559
In his fascinating book, A Conflict of Visions Soul lays out two fundamentally different ways of seeing the world.

00:11:07.039 --> 00:11:13.440
The constrained vision, held by many progressives, that says human nature is malleable.

00:11:14.799 --> 00:11:22.159
With enough experience, expertise, education, and government action, we can perfect society.

00:11:23.279 --> 00:11:30.720
The constrained vision, soul's view, by the way, says human beings are flawed, they're selfish, and they're limited.

00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:33.120
And we don't fix people.

00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:38.240
We design systems that channel self-interest toward the common good.

00:11:38.639 --> 00:11:45.440
Traditions, incentives, and markets aren't perfect, but they beat top-down control.

00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:49.200
And that's a good thing.

00:11:49.519 --> 00:11:53.279
Then there's his race and cultural trilogy.

00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:58.480
And here's where Thomas gets controversial, but yet brilliant.

00:11:58.799 --> 00:12:07.360
Sol argues that cultural habits, not just racism and colonialism, explain why some groups thrive and others struggle.

00:12:07.679 --> 00:12:20.799
You look at the Lebanese in West Africa, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, and the Jews in Europe discriminated against everywhere, successful almost everywhere.

00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:22.000
Why?

00:12:22.559 --> 00:12:28.559
Portable skills, strong families, a culture of education and entrepreneurship.

00:12:29.039 --> 00:12:32.720
Meanwhile, he traces what he calls the redneck culture.

00:12:33.200 --> 00:12:45.039
Originally from the British borderlands, brought to the American South by poor whites and later adopted in the parts of the black ghetto culture, not because of slavery, but because of cultural transmission.

00:12:45.679 --> 00:12:46.799
Is that bold?

00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:48.080
You betcha.

00:12:48.639 --> 00:12:51.039
Is it backed by history and data?

00:12:51.360 --> 00:12:52.639
Absolutely.

00:12:53.039 --> 00:12:56.080
Sowell's no fan of affirmative action.

00:12:56.240 --> 00:13:09.679
He calls it a mismatch, pulling and putting students in elite schools where they are academically outmatched just leads to their frustration, their dropout, and their resentment.

00:13:10.159 --> 00:13:20.080
After California banned racial preferences with Prop 209, black graduation rates at the University of California schools went up.

00:13:21.120 --> 00:13:23.600
That's not a theory, that's evidence.

00:13:24.480 --> 00:13:29.279
Finally, in his book, Basic Economics, which is a masterpiece, by the way, highly recommend it.

00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:38.879
There's no graphs, there's no jargon, just crystal clear explanations of how prices and incentives and knowledge shape the world.

00:13:39.200 --> 00:13:50.000
He actually builds on Hefe FA Hayaks insight that no central planner can possibly know what millions of people need and want.

00:13:50.799 --> 00:13:55.600
That knowledge is scattered, it's local, and it's constantly changing.

00:13:56.000 --> 00:14:01.120
Markets don't require omniscience, they just require freedom.

00:14:02.240 --> 00:14:05.600
And how is Thomas Sowell's style to read?

00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:09.679
Well, I love it because it's relentlessly empirical.

00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:21.840
He compares countries to centuries to immigrant groups, and he asks the simple but profound question What actually worked?

00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:25.279
Not what sounded good in the faculty lounge.

00:14:25.919 --> 00:14:35.360
So three books I would highly recommend The Vision of the Anointed, Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Intellectuals in Society.

00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:43.360
The Vision of the Anointed is a takedown of intellectual elites who think they are smarter than reality.

00:14:43.519 --> 00:14:54.159
And it's a Black Rednecks and White Liberals, where he makes the case that cultural patterns, not victimhood, actually drive the outcomes.

00:14:54.480 --> 00:15:01.679
An intellectuals and society is a warning about the dangers of unelected thinkers with unchecked influence.

00:15:03.279 --> 00:15:08.639
And then personally, Thomas have has lived an incredible life.

00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:15.600
He served as he served in the Marines during the Korean War as a photographer.

00:15:15.840 --> 00:15:17.120
He has been married twice.

00:15:17.279 --> 00:15:18.559
He has two kids.

00:15:18.879 --> 00:15:21.600
Reportedly, he has a photographic memory.

00:15:21.759 --> 00:15:22.480
Didn't know that.

00:15:22.720 --> 00:15:25.919
He can read up to three books a week.

00:15:26.559 --> 00:15:37.519
And at the ripe old age of 95, he is still writing columns, still updating his books, and still refusing to pander.

00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:42.720
Critics call him cold or worse, a traitor to his class.

00:15:43.440 --> 00:15:48.240
But so doesn't flatter anyone, not blacks, not whites, not conservatives, and not liberals.

00:15:48.480 --> 00:15:50.240
He follows the evidence.

00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:53.279
And that's why we trust him and we like him.

00:15:53.679 --> 00:16:12.480
And people people like Clarence Thomas, Glenn Laurie, and millions of others who have never taken an economic class, but know that when someone is speaking as eloquently and as empirically driven as Thomas Sowell, that someone is telling the truth.

00:16:12.720 --> 00:16:17.919
One of his best lines is the first lesson of economics is scarcity.

00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:25.360
The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:29.919
That's Thomas Sowell in a sentence, clear, sharp, and unafraid.

00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:38.720
If you've never read him, start with basic economics, then go to his masterpiece, A Conflict of Visions.

00:16:39.600 --> 00:16:46.240
You won't agree with everything he writes, but you'll think harder and it will make you a better thinker.

00:16:46.559 --> 00:17:03.519
And in a world drowning in slogans and bad history, as we have seen from the elections in New York City and in the old Dominion, Thomas Sowell offers us the evidence and better thinking.

00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:37.119
So in today's mojo minute, as the US is being pushed by a radical Democratic Party, unlike anything we have seen since the 1850s in the lead up to the US Civil War, you could spend your time much better not reading the news about that radical Democratic Party, but about a man, a national treasure in Thomas Sowell, who will give you the empirical data and a very good history to come along with it.

00:17:37.839 --> 00:17:48.480
And if you read him, you will indeed be on the path to a flourishing life because you will be flourishing in your reading, because that is good reading.

00:17:49.039 --> 00:17:54.240
As always, and until next time, keep fighting the good fight.

00:17:57.039 --> 00:17:58.720
Thank you for joining us.

00:17:58.880 --> 00:18:01.920
We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast.

00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:11.279
Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademy.com, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources.

00:18:11.519 --> 00:18:14.480
Until next time, Keep Getting Your Mojo.