Many of the words and phrases used in the media and among academics suggest that things simply: happen: to people, rather than be being caused by their own choices and behavior. Thus there is said to be an 'epidemic' of teenage pregnancy, or of drug usage, as if these things were like the flu that people catch just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are only two economists in Congress and hundreds of lawyers. Does that explain why the government is in such a mess?

The kinds of people we need in government are precisely the kinds of people who are most reluctant to go into government -- people who understand the inherent dangers of power and feel a distaste for using it, but who may do so for a few years as a civic duty. The worst kind of people to have in government are those who see it as a golden opportunity to impose their own superior wisdom and virtue on others.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Any statistics can be extrapolated to the point where they show disaster.

It is so easy to be wrong-and to persist in being wrong-when the costs of being wrong are paid by others.

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.