If private-equity firms are as good at remaking companies as they claim, they don't need tax loopholes to make money.

Companies, like people, don't much like to change.

One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.

In practice, downsizing is too often about cutting your work force while keeping your business the same, and doing so not by investments in productivity-enhancing technology, but by making people pull 80-hour weeks and bringing in temps to fill the gap.

Corporate welfare isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Unlike fuel-economy standards, the most common method of reducing demand for oil over the past thirty years, a gas tax doesn't tell people what kind of car to drive. It simply raises the price of gasoline and lets people adjust their behavior accordingly.