Yes, over the centuries economic progress has reduced some gross disparities - modern Americans are relatively unlikely to simply starve to death (though it can happen), so in that sense the gap between rich and poor has narrowed. But the question isn't whether society is, in some sense, more equal than it was in 1900. It's whether it is radically more unequal than it was in 1970. And of course it is.

The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn't require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.

The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.

If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.

The trouble with poverty, as an issue, is that it has basically exhausted the patience of the general public.

There has been plenty to criticize about President Obama’s handling of the economy. Yet the overriding story of the past few years is not Mr. Obama’s mistakes but the scorched-earth opposition of Republicans, who have done everything they can to get in his way - and who now, having blocked the president’s policies, hope to win the White House by claiming that his policies have failed.

The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World.