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

Pass down values every day through your actions, your words and your time with your kids.

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.

We could curtail private spending by several trillion dollars a year without requiring painful sacrifices from anyone. That would be more than enough to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and eliminate government indebtedness once and for all.

When the economic pie grows larger, it's always possible for everyone to have a larger slice than before. So it's really in all of our interest to make the economic pie larger by eliminating waste whenever and wherever possible.

Many decry rising inequality because it makes those who've fallen behind feel impoverished. But it's done much more than cause hurt feelings. It has also raised the real cost to middle-income families of achieving many basic goals. The process begins with the completely unremarkable fact that top earners have been spending at a substantially higher rate than before. They've been building bigger mansions, staging more elaborate weddings and coming-of-age parties for their kids, buying more and better of everything.

Getting the economy back on its feet is properly viewed as an investment in future prosperity. When businesses and consumers confront attractive investment opportunities, often the only way to seize them is by borrowing. The same is true for government. Contrary to the pronouncements of critics of economic stimulus, these investments will not impoverish our grandchildren. Continuing to allow the economy to languish in recession is the surest way to impoverish them.