There's More Than Meets the Eye

The term "There's more than meets the eye" is taken so literal when indulging yourself in the novel Freakonomics. The book "Freakonomics" was written by both Steven D. Levitt, Economics Professor at University of Chicago, and Stephen J. Dubner, journalist for The New Yorker and The New York Times. Everything that we as a society, have been exposed to has been sugar coated from their roots. "What this book is about is stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and seeing what is happening underneath" ( Levitt Dubner 548) This is a highly recommendable book that would be a great asset to the 13th Edition of The Conscious Reader. This writing illustrates real life situations and connects them back to how they affect any and everything. This piece of work is thought provoking and brings up plenty of controversy, which makes reading it so refreshing.

In a typical conversation concerning the New York City crime rates, people would not think to connect the rates dropping because of a "young woman in Dallas named Norma McCorvey... she was a poor, uneducated, unskilled, alcoholic, drug-using twenty-one-year-old woman" (Levitt Dubner 543) who wanted an abortion. Back in the 1990s, getting an abortion was illegal in most states, such as Texas. When Norma McCorvey was denied her wish to get an abortion her case made it to Supreme Court which today is known as the Roe v. Wade case. It took a while for the Supreme Court to rule in Norma's favor, but by that time she had already given birth to the baby and gave that child up for adoption.

Freakonomics linked the Roe v. Wade case back to the highs and lows of crime rates. Since the super court ruled in favor of Norma it made it possible for more women to get the procedure done without any hassle. Most of the woman seeking to get abortions were "poor, unmarried, or were teenage mothers" (Levitt Dubner 543). Being raised by mothers under those circumstances raised the possibility of those children becoming criminal when' they grew up. Now the reason crime rates in large cities like New York City decreased drastically is because those babies that were destined to cause nothing but trouble were no longer being born, which put a stop to an era of troublemakers.

Throughout this except of Freakonomics, it is implied that the rest of the novel will consist of thought provoking analogies comparing two completely opposite scenarios and connecting them in obvious ways that not most people would think to do. Professor Levitt and Dubner also use allusions throughout their writing to bring text to world connections. "Of all the truisms about politics, one is held to be truer than the rest: money buys elections. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Bloomberg, Jon Corzine - these are but a few recent, dramatic examples of the truism at work" (Levitt Dubner 546) this is one of the few examples used in this excerpt