As a scholarly discipline, economics has always suffered from physics envy.

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

For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance.

Technological change is beneficial only when other jobs replace the ones lost.

George Stigler Nobel laureate and a leader of Chicago School was asked why there were no Nobel Prizes awarded in the other social sciences, sociology, psychology, history, etc. "Don't worry", Stigler said, "they have already have a Nobel Prize in ...Literature"

But of course you can have your cake and eat it, too - if you decide to to bake a second cake. And you may well find that baking two cakes does not take twice the work of baking one.

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.