The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.

Life has many good things. The problem is that most of these good things can be gotten only by sacrificing other good things. We all recognize this in our daily lives. It is only in politics that this simple, common sense fact is routinely ignored.

You may scoff at the Tooth Fairy if you like. But the Tooth Fairy's approach has gotten more politicians elected than any economist's analysis.

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.

Government's power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us.