The important thing to understand is that the case for pollution control isn't based on some kind of aesthetic distaste for industrial society. Pollution does real, measurable damage, especially to human health.

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

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

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.

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.

Under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.

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