Thomas Sowell has studied and taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions that include Cornell University, UCLA, and Amherst College. Now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sowell has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is a revised and expanded second edition of Economic Facts and Fallacies.

“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly,” states Sowell in his latest book. Here, he demolishes some accepted “facts,” ranging from housing (“The biggest economic fallacy about housing is that ‘affordable housing’ requires government intervention”) to race and economics (“Race doesn’t account for difference in black-white income”) to race and culture (“the current fatherless families so prevalent among contemporary blacks are not a ‘legacy of slavery.’”) (33:37) Video transcript

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• start video from beginning Thomas Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, discusses, with Hoover research fellow Peter Robinson, whether affordable housing requires government intervention.
• start segment 2 at 6:44 Thomas Sowell discusses common misconceptions about race and racism.
• start segment 3 at 12:57 Thomas Sowell discusses secular increases in crime and fatherless black families. Sowell blames the problems on the social programs implemented in the ’60s.
• start segment 4 at 19:11 Thomas Sowell discusses many common fallacies about income and income inequality.
• start segment 5 at 26:15 Thomas Sowell discusses why he remains perennially pessimistic.