Indias rigid social structure limits intergenerational economic mobility and fosters acceptance of vast wealth disparities.

Finally, let's keep well in mind the most important lesson of the auto rescue: While government should stay away from the private sector as much as possible, markets do occasionally fail, and when they do government can play a constructive role, as it did in the case of the auto rescue.

Most troublesome is the legalization of 'crowd funding,' the ability of start-up companies to raise capital from small investors on the Internet.

During my 30 years on Wall Street, taxes on “unearned income” have bounced up and down with regularity, and I’ve never detected any change in the appetite for hard work and accumulating wealth on the part of myself or any of my fellow capitalists.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.

Slapping a catchy acronym like the JOBS Act on a piece of legislation makes it more difficult for politicians to oppose it - and indeed that's what happened with the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health-care resources more prudently – rationing, by its proper name – the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.