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.

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.

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they're down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

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

I don't think I've had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.

There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.

When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they've shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful.