Hating Wall Street is an American tradition that dates back even to the days when Thomas Jefferson cursed that money lover Alexander Hamilton. And for centuries, the complaints about it have largely stayed the same: 'It does nothing! It creates chaos! It's a parasite that sucks hardworking Americans dry!'
If the American government can't stand behind the dollar, the world's benchmark currency, then the global financial system will very likely enter a new era in which there is much less trade and much less economic growth. It would be, by most accounts, the largest self-imposed financial disaster in history.
Lots of countries have great constitutions, but their leaders have a practice of ignoring the rules whenever they feel like it.
Holiday binge-buying has deep roots in American culture: department stores have been associating turkey gluttony with its spending equivalent since they began sponsoring Thanksgiving Day parades in the early 20th century.
A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it's pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while.
In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.
Most rich countries have reported increases in happiness as they become richer.
The America that I think most Americans would want, most economists on the right or left would want, is one in which a smart, ambitious, hardworking person without a huge amount of resources has a pretty good shot, in the end, of beating out a less smart, less ambitious, less hardworking rich person.
Economics is all about consumption. People either spend money now or they use financial instruments - like bonds, stocks and savings accounts - so they can spend more later.
Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.
We can fight over what the taxation levels should be, but the tax system should be very, very simple and not distortionary.
Whenever you hear news about jobless claims or the unemployment rate, you should translate that in your mind to one simple phrase: Stay in school.
To put it simply and a bit crudely: Our economy is demanding more well-educated workers than our schools are providing. To attract this scarce resource, communities have to offer more than just jobs.
