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.

When you start off by telling those who disagree with you that they are not merely in error but in sin, how much of a dialogue do you expect?

People who thing that they are getting something for nothing, by having government provide what they would otherwise have to buy in the private market, are not only kidding themselves by ignoring the taxes that government has to take from them in order to give them the appearance of something for nothing.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

The economic disasters of socialism and communism come from assuming a blanket superiority of those who want to run a whole economy.

Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.

Most problems, decisions, and performances are multidimensional, but somehow the results have to be reduced to a few key indicators which are to be institutionally rewarded or penalized... The need to reduce the indicators to a manageable few is based not only on the need to conserve the time (and sanity) of those who assign rewards and penalties, but also to provide those subject to these incentives with some objective indication of what their performance is expected to be and how it will be judged... key indicators can never tell the whole story.