Britain, with the most completely socialized health system in the West, now spends the lowest fraction of GNP on health care of any major nation. There are frequent complaints of excessive waits for elective surgery and other inconveniences, but British citizens live slightly longer than Americans, on average, and our overall health conditions are comparable.

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

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.

By default, we have created a "system" of nursing-home care for the aged in which middle-class people pay exorbitant rates to for-profit nursing-home entrepreneurs - and then when private resources are consumed and the patient qualifies as a pauper, the nursing home begins billing Medicaid. This is precisely the antithesis of social citizenship; instead of the poor being accorded the dignity associated with the middle class, equality of treatment is achieved by making the middle class undergo pauperization.

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 advance often thrives in sheltered and subsidized markets, which defy free trade.

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