Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience.

If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.

It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.

Governments do not necessarily act in the national interest, especially when making detailed microeconomic interventions. Instead, they are influenced by interest group pressures. The kinds of interventions that new trade theory suggests can raise national income will typically raise the welfare of small, fortunate groups by large amounts, while imposing costs on larger, more diffuse groups.

The fact is that the two years or so after 9/11 were a terrible time in America – a time of political exploitation and intimidation, culminating in the deliberate misleading of the nation into the invasion of Iraq. It’s probably worth pointing out that I’m not saying anything now that I wasn’t saying in real time back then, when Bush had a sky-high approval rating and any criticism was denounced as treason. And there’s nothing I’ve done in my life of which I’m more proud.

So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment.

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.