Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

  • Economic Facts and Fallacies

  • By: Thomas Sowell
  • Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
  • Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (157 ratings)
Offer ends May 1st, 2024 11:59PM GMT. Terms and conditions apply.
£7.99/month after 3 months. Renews automatically.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Economic Facts and Fallacies cover art

Economic Facts and Fallacies

By: Thomas Sowell
Narrated by: Jeff Riggenbach
Get this deal Try for £0.00

Pay £99p/month. After 3 months pay £7.99/month. Renews automatically. See terms for eligibility.

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Listeners also enjoyed...

Black Rednecks and White Liberals cover art
Applied Economics cover art
Dismantling America cover art
Discrimination and Disparities cover art
Intellectuals and Race cover art
Knowledge and Decisions cover art
Social Justice Fallacies cover art
The Housing Boom and Bust cover art
The Quest for Cosmic Justice cover art
The Vision of the Anointed cover art
Wealth, Poverty, and Politics cover art
Basic Economics, Fourth Edition cover art
Intellectuals and Society cover art
$100M Offers cover art
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism cover art
Economics in One Lesson cover art

Summary

Economic Facts and Fallacies is designed for people who want to understand economic issues without getting bogged down in economic jargon, graphs, or political rhetoric. Writing in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics, Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues, including many that are widely disseminated in the media and by politicians: fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, academia, race, and Third World countries.

While all of these fallacies have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power, this makes it even more important to carefully examine their flaws. Sowell holds these beliefs under the microscope and draws conclusions that are sure to inspire rigorous debate.

©2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Sowell is fearless and invariably so far ahead of the curve in discussing economics or politics or pretty much anything that the rest of us are left with eating his intellectual dust. I can't think of a higher compliment that that." (Fred Barnes, Executive Editor, Weekly Standard)

What listeners say about Economic Facts and Fallacies

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    125
  • 4 Stars
    22
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    4
  • 1 Stars
    3
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    102
  • 4 Stars
    21
  • 3 Stars
    8
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    104
  • 4 Stars
    16
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    3

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • JP
  • 08-07-20

Must listen!

Gives a good insight into why #BLM is a massive marxist con. Well worth paying attention.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Another great Sowell book

Another great Sowell book although there is a lot of overlap between this and Sowell's Basic Economics.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Some good points but clearly biased

Most of the information is presented with relevant studies cited but there is an implicit assumption that everything is a commodity and that productivity and profit takes precedent at all costs. A convincing argument is presented for the gender pay gap issue citing there is more than just saying x% of this and y% of that, but then there is a mention of disproportionate proportion of liberal minds in academia as faculty without any analysis like what was done with the pay gap issue. An unbiased analysis, in my view, would dive deep into this issue like how the author talks about the gender pay gap, since for all we know, it is possible that liberal minded people prefer to forgo higher salaries and teach the next generation due to their sense of wanting to help others more compared to conservative minded people who would choose industry where there is better pay on average

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

logical simple to follow...

this book breaks down the problem of making decisions based on preconceived notions without prior proper investigation necessary in many important matters in our society..

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic. highly recommend.

This book provides a fantastic critic on many long standing issues.
Sowell is libertarian. I’d especially recommend this book to people who are more socialist by leaning as it gives a very cogent argument for libertarianism which you may not have been exposed to.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The importance of reading data in the right way

“Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics!”
The importance of digging deeper into any assertions and statistics, is made clear, in this very important and impressive book.
Whether you’re on the Left or on the Right; there are lessons that you can learn from this.

Go back and analyse some of your personal assertions and beliefs; whether on immigration, man-made climate-change or racism …

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Essential listening

Although this book is more than a decade old it’s still relevant to our current times.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

A libertarian take which mostly misses the mark

As quickly becomes clear the writer approaches everything from a far right “libertarian” position. On economics, which is what I came to this book for but is only really in the first chapter, the writer makes little to no attempts to balance his views so that the listener can reach an informed conclusion. The fallacies presented obscure and poorly explained while the facts are his own opinions often contradicted by real world events he chooses to ignore.

For some of his views, such as those rent control policies, he uses actual examples to support his opinion and makes a compelling case. Unfortunately, this is the minority. The writer peddles long disproved right-wing views and passes them off as economic fact. The lowlights include:

• Minimum wages are bad because they increase unemployment (in fact, endless case studies have shown that a sensible set minimum wage has no noticeable impact on unemployment and improves living standards of the poor)
• Housing is unaffordable and it’s the Government fault for intervening in the housing markets by setting up planning laws to protect green spaces and historic buildings, setting minimum housing standards, subsidising affordability schemes, etc. The author uses examples that make no sense when you think about them. Of course, it is true that we could knock down all our old buildings, concrete over all our parks and build identical prefabricated concrete skyscrapers in no time. It would certainly make the homes in that area more affordable as nobody would want to live there anymore.
• All public transport is a waste of time. We should all just use cars instead. I’m not even joking, and the reasoning used is ridiculous.

As has always been the problem with libertarian’s, they assume employers, housebuilders, landlords, etc. are all lovely people who are ever so keen to do the best they can for the good of the general populous. If only the pesky Government wouldn’t make all these laws ensuring minimum standards, affordability of living, employee rights, etc., then everything would be great. If only indeed.

The writer moves onto various other subjects which don’t fall under the category of economics, nor fallacies. Some of which qualifies as interesting, and some good points do get made which raise the book up to two stars, but little written here is new or insightful.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic

Fantastic listen which really expands on core economic concepts, using real world examples in laymans terms. Narrator did a great job.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Somewhere between stupid and evil

Arguing in the first chapter that all transactions are beneficial for both parties completely ignores the endless scenarios in which people don’t have a choice (when there’s a monopoly for example). The premise of libertarianism which this book heavily relies on is that everyone are equal in power and no one is stupid or evil. Can anyone seriously argue this reflects reality?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!