Forum Archive Index - December 2001

["capitalist" <capitalist@paradise.net.nz>]

I thought some here might enjoy this from free market economist Thomas Sowell, senior fellow at the Hoover Inst. Stanford University.

 

"Penetrating the Rhetoric

 

-All statements are true, if you are free to redefine their terms.

-Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster.

-A can always exceed B if not all of B is counted and/or if A is exaggerated

-Most variables can show either an upward trend or a downward trend, depending on the base year chosen.

-The same set of statistics can produce opposite conclusions at different levels of aggregation.

-For every expert, there is an equal & opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal & opposite fact."

 

cheers,

capitalist

"Socialists maintain that we shouldn't take all the money away from all the people since all the people don't have money. We should only take all the money away from the people who make money." PJ O'Rourke