Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Congressional caucuses Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Social media Miscellaneous Other Thomas Sowell (/soʊl/ SOHL; born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, economic historian, social philosopher and political commentator.

Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War.

Since 1977, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy.

Sowell was an important figure to the conservative movement during the Reagan era, influencing fellow economist Walter E. Williams and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

[24] In his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, Sowell wrote that his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not know blond was a hair color.

[25] He recalls that his first memories were living in a small wooden house in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he stated was typical of most black neighborhoods.

[7] He worked a number of odd jobs, including long hours at a machine shop, and as a delivery man for Western Union.

[28][29] His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.

[32] What began to change his mind toward supporting free market economics, he said, was studying the possible impact of minimum wages on unemployment of sugar industry workers in Puerto Rico, as a U.S. Department of Labor intern.

[35] Since 1980, he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor.

[12] In addition, Sowell appeared several times on William F. Buckley Jr.'s show Firing Line, during which he discussed the economics of race and privatization.

[41] Themes of Sowell's writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education, and decision-making, to classical and Marxian economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities.

Sowell had a nationally syndicated column distributed by Creators Syndicate that was published in Forbes magazine, National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The New York Post, and other major newspapers, as well as online on websites such as RealClearPolitics, Townhall, WorldNetDaily, and the Jewish World Review.

[42] Sowell commented on current issues, which include liberal media bias;[43] judicial activism and originalism;[44] abortion;[45] minimum wage; universal health care; the tension between government policies, programs, and protections and familial autonomy; affirmative action; government bureaucracy;[46] gun control;[47] militancy in U.S. foreign policy; the war on drugs; multiculturalism;[48] mob rule; and the overturning of Roe v.

[16] On December 27, 2016, Sowell announced the end of his syndicated column, writing that, at age 86, "the question is not why I am quitting, but why I kept at it so long", and cited a desire to focus on his photography hobby.

[50][51] A documentary detailing his career entitled "Thomas Sowell: Common Sense in a Senseless World" was released by the Free to Choose Network in 2021.

Sowell has also written a trilogy of books on ideologies and political positions, including A Conflict of Visions, in which he speaks on the origins of political strife; The Vision of the Anointed, in which he compares the conservative/libertarian and liberal/progressive worldviews; and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, in which, as in many of his other writings, he outlines his thesis of the need felt by intellectuals, politicians, and leaders to fix and perfect the world in utopian and ultimately, he posits, disastrous fashions.

"[57] Friedrich Hayek wrote: "In a wholly original manner [Sowell] succeeds in translating abstract and theoretical argument into highly concrete and realistic discussion of the central problems of contemporary economic policy.

"[47] Sowell has supported conservative political positions on race, and is known for caustic, sarcastic criticism of liberal black civil rights figures.

[70]In Intellectuals and Race (2013), Sowell argues that intelligence quotient (IQ) gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups.

Sowell says this trait affected many historical figures who developed prominent careers, such as physicists Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Richard Feynman; mathematician Julia Robinson; and musicians Arthur Rubinstein and Clara Schumann.

In an interview in July 2020, he stated that "the Roman Empire overcame many problems in its long history but eventually it reached a point where it could no longer continue, and much of that was from within, not just the barbarians attacking from outside."

Sowell wrote that if Biden became president, the Democratic Party would have an enormous amount of control over the nation, and if this happened, they could twin with the "radical left" and ideas such as defunding the police could come to fruition.

In particular, he examines the experiences of blacks and other ethnic groups in the American education system and identifies the factors and patterns behind both success and failure.

[94][93][95] Sowell's publications have been received positively by economists Steven Plaut,[95] Steve H. Hanke[96] James M. Buchanan;[76] and John B. Taylor;[97] philosophers Carl Cohen[98] and Tibor Machan;[99] science historian Michael Shermer;[100] essayist Gerald Early;[4] political scientists Abigail Thernstrom[101] and Charles Murray;[92] psychologists Steven Pinker[102][103] and Jonathan Haidt;[104][105] and Josef Joffe, publisher and editor of Die Zeit.

"[106] Nathan J. Robinson stated that Sowell "is not given much attention by mainstream scholars in the academy, and few of his books are reviewed by major liberal-leaning publications.

[107] Economist James B. Stewart wrote a critical review of Black Rednecks and White Liberals, calling it "the latest salvo in Thomas Sowell's continuing crusade to represent allegedly dysfunctional value orientations and behavioral characteristics of African Americans as the principal reasons for persistent economic and social disparities."

[111] Economist Jennifer Doleac criticized Discrimination and Disparities, arguing that statistical discrimination is real and pervasive (Sowell argues that existing racial disparities are mostly due to accurate sorting based on underlying characteristics, such as education) and that government intervention can achieve societal goals and make markets work more efficiently.