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.

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?

In practice, a good deal of the outcomes produced by the market reflect nothing more than luck - good or bad.

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

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.

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

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