If government is inevitable, the challenge is to come up with the most effective one possible.

No one could argue with a straight face that the couples getting married today are much happier just because their wedding celebrations cost three times as much as those in 1980. Bigger mansions and costlier parties are wasteful in the same sense that larger antlers on all bull elk are wasteful. The good news is that simple changes in the tax system can eliminate much of this waste without having to deny people the right to decide for themselves how best to spend their money.

Life is graded on the curve. It's not how big you are, how strong you are, how smart you are. It's how good you are at the things that count relative to the people around you.

As economists have long noted, the puzzle is not that so few people vote, it's that so many do. After all, no individual's vote has ever tipped the balance in a presidential election.

The fact that many private expenditures are mutually offsetting actually happens to constitute a remarkably good bit of fiscal news. Mutually offsetting spending patterns are wasteful in the same way that military arms races are. In such situations, if each party spends less, nothing is sacrificed, yet resources are freed up that can be put to much better uses.

One reason that might motivate a worker to accept a riskier job at higher pay, for example, would be that doing so would enable him to bid more effectively for a house in a better school district. But if other workers did likewise, none would achieve the goal they were striving for.

The most common mistake we make as teachers is attempting to tell our students too much.