There's an enjoyable review of Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society in the American Spectator. The book was quite widely reviewed when first published almost a year ago. Reviewer Jeremy Rabkin is sceptical about Sowell's argument but nevertheless seems to have liked reading the book. He writes:

“As Sowell was trained as an economist, the chapter on
intellectuals and the economy is, naturally, among the most
illuminating. So, for example, commentators have repeatedly told us
in recent years that the gap between rich and poor has been
widening. It is true, if you compare the income of those in the top
fifth of earners with the income of those in the bottom fifth, that
the spread between them increased between 1996 and 2005. But, as
Sowell points out, this frequently cited figure is not counting the
same people. If you look at individual taxpayers, Sowell notes,
those who happened to be in the bottom fifth in 1996 saw their
incomes nearly double over the decade, while those who happened to
be in the top fifth in 1995 saw gains of only 10 percent on average
and those in the top 5 percent actually experienced decline in
their incomes.”

This certainly doesn't at a stroke undermine all the arguments being made about the political and social effects of widening inequality, as these are social and not individual phenomena. It does, though, offer a useful caveat about being too swift to draw conclusions about welfare. So much discussion about social welfare makes the mistake of forgetting that welfare attaches to individuals, and nowhere is this more true than in discussions of inequality. (Francois Bourguignon and I once wrote a paper making this point in the context of global inequality.) Anyway, I'm always pleased when writers (whatever their politics) argue for the more careful use of statistics. Nor do I dispute with the argument that many people who engage in public debate – call them intellectuals – are statistically illiterate.

Rabkin's conclusion is that we need, not fewer intellectuals, but better ones. He might be right but I can tell him from down in the trenches of economics that the argument, 'No, we need lots of economists, we just need better ones,' doesn't have much traction at the moment. His review rather made me want to read the book. Other reviews are far more discouraging – The New Republic, for example, was perhaps unsurprisingly very negative about it. Still, as I'm part way through Will Hutton's marvellous rant about inequality, perhaps I should look at Sowell's counter-rant as a corrective.