Stopping illegal immigration would mean that wages would have to rise to a level where Americans would want the jobs currently taken by illegal aliens.
Thomas SowellRead
Our economic problems worry me much less than our political solutions, which have a far worse track record.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the concern over political solutions to economic issues, suggesting that politics often creates more problems than it solves.
In this quote, Thomas Sowell expresses his belief that while economic problems are significant, he is more concerned about the political solutions proposed to address these problems. Sowell implies that the history of political interventions has often resulted in ineffective or harmful outcomes, making him skeptical of relying on politics to resolve economic issues.
Themes
EconomyPoliticsSolutionsProblemsTrack Record
In practice
Example use cases
During a debate on economic policy, I might quote Sowell to emphasize the importance of scrutinizing political proposals.
More from Thomas Sowell
All quotes βBlacks were not enslaved because they were black but because they were available. Slavery has existed in the world for thousands of years. Whites enslaved other whites in Europe for centuries before the first black was brought to the Western hemisphere. Asians enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved other Asians. Africans enslaved other Africans, and indeed even today in North Africa, blacks continue to enslave blacks.
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One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.
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You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.
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The real problem, both in discussions of mass shootings and in discussions of gun control, is that too many people are too committed to a vision to allow mere facts to interfere with their beliefs, and the sense of superiority that those beliefs give them.
Thomas SowellRead
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
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Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.
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Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.
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Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.
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