Last week, Dr. Thomas Sowell–brilliant economist, erudite scholar, prolific and wide-ranging author–announced his retirement from writing his popular syndicated column.
The announcement came with little fanfare amidst the holiday season flurry of celebrations, college football bowl games, reminiscences of famous people who left this world in 2016, and so on. Dr. Sowell, whom I met only once, is a modest man, who wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself. He much prefers to let his works speak for him.
Ah, those works–they are classics already. His output has been prodigious–40 books and thousands of columns. We haven’t “lost” him as some of his admirers have stated, for that large corpus of work remains to debunk myths and correct sloppy thinking, to enlighten, inform, explain, and teach.
Let me acknowledge just a few of Dr. Sowell’s shining attributes:
- He is an exemplary economist. In a time when the economics profession is sinking into evermore arcane, esoteric, and (far too often) irrelevant abstractions, Sowell lives by the principle that if the idea can’t be expressed in plain English, then it isn’t of any significant value to human beings.
- Indeed, Sowell’s writing is characterized by its unusual clarity and accessibility. Although informed by obviously extensive research and knowledge, and suffused with common sense and rare wisdom, Sowell never writes down to his readers. He shares his deep understanding of vital issues in terms that any reasonably intelligent person will find interesting and can grasp readily.
- Over the last ten years, I used Sowell’s best-selling book Basic Economics (editions three, four, and five) as the principal text in my Principles of Micro-economics course. It is the clearest introduction to economics I have yet encountered. My students love it. As a professor of economics, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met who, once they find out what I teach, have said, “Oh, I took an economics course when I was in college,” before adding a comment like “...but I hated it” or “I didn’t get it” or “It was beyond me”. My goal as a professor has been to teach an introductory course in a way that doesn’t turn off students to what is a fundamentally interesting and vitally important subject, and I have largely succeeded with the help of Professor Sowell’s book.
- Thomas Sowell is a great economist and a great thinker. He proved that to me by embracing one of the key tenets of the Austrian school of economics – the subjective theory of value – even though his academic training was pure Chicago school. After pointing out the insuperable deficiencies of an objective theory of value in the early editions of Basic Economics, Sowell explicitly stated for the first time in the 4th edition that value must be subjective. He included in that paragraph a clear, succinct, and definitive explanation of why value could not possibly be objective, no matter what is designated as the objective basis.
- Sowell’s writing on race sets the standard for all writers, whether conservative, liberal, libertarian, or socialist. He has no axe to grind, he doesn’t dilute his explanations with pious political correctness; instead, he fearlessly goes wherever facts, data, and experience lead him. My own mentor, the late Hans F. Sennholz, taught me that an economist’s function is to be a truth-teller in a world where politically expedient errors abound. Thomas Sowell has been a consistent and uncompromising truth-teller.
- Finally, having written 13 books in the last decade alone (while maintaining his twice-(and sometimes more)-a-week syndicated column, he has proven how productive a scholar can be when past the usual retirement age. Now 86 years young, Dr. Sowell once again has shown great wisdom in stating that a four-day trip to the peace-and-quiet of a national park several months ago reminded him that there is more to life than politics and participating in the public debate. It is now time for younger writers to shoulder the load that Thomas Sowell has borne so heroically for so long. It is time for this good man to enjoy some well-deserved peace and fun as he pursues his interest in photography.
Thank you, sir, for all you have done for the cause of truth, liberty, economic sanity, and the well-being of the American people. Godspeed!
