Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

The problem with digital books is that you can always find what you are looking for but you need to go to a bookstore to find what you weren't looking for.

The public has no idea that the deficit has been falling like a stone.

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.

Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment.

These days, however, the main problem comes from the right - from conservatives who, unlike most economists, really do think that the free market is always right - to such an extent that they refuse to believe even the most overwhelming scientific evidence if it seems to suggest a justification for government action.

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.