American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.

The economic illusion is the belief that social justice is bad for economic growth.

What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong.

If social security depresses savings rates, it is only because it is unfunded.

Though editorialists at The New York Times and The Washington Post still don't get it, most Democrats in Congress finally do: Today's trade disputes are no longer mostly about tariffs, quotas, or free entry of goods. They are about the ground rules for capitalism. Are there to be only property rights? What about the other rights that liberal democracies have fought for since the 1880s?

Both rich and poor nations have a common stake in policies that put the globe on a sustainable development path. The conflict is less between poor and rich countries than between the broad interests of people and the narrow interests of extractive industries. We need to find our way towards some kind of global regime that reduces emissions of the greenhouse gases, but well-off nations need to transfer the technology to make this possible, rather than viewing this shift as one more opportunity for private industry to profit.

It is more than a little ironic that "capital accumulation" once a rather tendentious Marxian view of a supposed capitalist obsession, should have become - of all things - Wall Street's own slogan.