When you think of policies that are going to address inequality of wealth, you have to be very thoughtful about what economists call "incidence of taxes." If most of the savings is being done by capitalists, and you tax the return on capital, then they will have less to invest. That would mean, over the long run, that the rate of interest would go up. That would therefore undo some of the intent to lower the income of capitalists.

It is unlikely that others would even demand their money back overnight, for doing so would lead to the value of the dollar plummeting; what they would get back with be worth little. But what we are already seeing is an erosion of confidence of the dollar, which is seeing the dollar fall in value.

There is a growing consensus that the European systems have worked better than the American: They have been able to deliver better health care to more people at lower cost.

The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.

GDP tells you nothing about sustainability

I understand why political leaders in the beginning want to be cheerleaders to generate optimism. But to admit that they didn't understand the depths of the problem afterwards, I found a little bit surprising.