The life insurance policies advertised on the radio with the line "You cannot be turned down for this coverage!" are actually saying, "For policies this small, it would cost us more to decide whom to turn down than simply to accept everybody - and make them pay through the nose."

Rule of thumb: The more trimmings an insurance plan has and the harder someone is pitching it, the faster you should run.

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.

Hay fever suffers tend to be above average in intelligence.

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

One of the advantages of the book's having been out there for more than a quarter century is that there's been time for people to report back on what it's done for them.

Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage (including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.