Politeness and consideration for others is like investing pennies and getting dollars back.

Someone recently pointed out how much Barack Obama's style and strategies resemble those of Latin American charismatic despots - the takeover of industries by demagogues who never ran a business, the rousing rhetoric of resentment addressed to the masses and the personal cult of the leader promoted by the media. But do we want to become the world's largest banana republic?

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 the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be greedy, while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show compassion.

Ego trips by coteries of self-exalting people are treated in the media as idealism, rather than the petty tyranny it is.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

Lunches don't get free just because you don't see the prices on the menu. And economists don't get popular by reminding people of that.