A well-designed welfare state can actually encourage people to take chances with their jobs and be more, not less, open to changes.

Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

Low inflation and government prudence may be harmful for economic development.

The free market doesn't exist. Every market has some rules and boundaries that restrict freedom of choice. A market looks free only because we so unconditionally accept its underlying restrictions that we fail to see them.

Culture changes with economic development.

Rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.

Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rick as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.