Economic Facts and Fallacies

Explains why fallacies abound in economic thinking and why they have such political staying power. This title describes the essential types of fallacies - the zero-sum fallacy, which assumes that one person's gain is another's equal loss; the 'fallacy of composition', the assumption that what is true of the part is true of the whole; and, more.
In Economic Facts and Fallacies , Thomas Sowell exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues in a lively manner that does not require any prior knowledge of economics. These fallacies include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economic fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. Sowell shows that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power- and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important.