Some years down the pike, we're going to get the real solution, which is going to be a combination of death panels and sales taxes. It's going to be that we're actually going to take Medicare under control, and we're going to have to get some additional revenue, probably from a VAT. But it's not going to happen now.

Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader.

Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.

The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century ... has taken place via globalization.

The French, unfortunately, actually believe what they say, and that has been very destructive.

Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.

For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.