Fixing Fallacies

Now, perhaps more than ever, students enter economics courses with a perceived notion of how the economy functions. Historic bailouts, "The Great Recession,"debt ceiling debates, the "fiscal cliff," and perpetual political campaigns have put economic issues at the forefront of media coverage in the United States. Often, students formulate their economic perceptions based on biased public opinions or misleading statistics. Economics professors, therefore, have the added task of correcting fallacies that students bring with them into the classroom. This paper presents an approach for fixing major fallacies utilizing Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies.