Some major problems can be solved by our political process and our leaders. Others can be solved only when there is popular demand and insistence and politicians feel at risk of unemployment if they ignore the groundswell.

Free enterprise democracy has proven the best system by far for maximizing freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Dictatorship, Soviet style communism, and hereditary aristocracy have proven about the worst environments for people to achieve all three of these goals.

On inequality, I contend that far too much of the nation's wealth and income is gravitating to too few. This undermines the democracy we all cherish and the overall social cohesion necessary to maintain our wonderfully successful society.

College has become unaffordable for most of the kids who attend, and, while most of the population won't ever graduate from college, our high schools don't prepare students for that reality by providing vocational and occupational training.

Our educational system just doesn't work as well as it should any more. 70% of people are never going to go to college, and we don't give them the vocational or occupational training they need before we throw them into a work force where too often they find they don't fit. The 30% that do go to college find themselves graduating with debts that may cripple them for years.

Some major problems can be solved by our political process and our leaders. Others can be solved only when there is popular demand and insistence and politicians feel at risk of unemployment if they ignore the groundswell.

Other than my marriage, the decision to get a Ph.D. was probably the best decision of my life.