Thanks to massive government intervention, modern capitalism hardly reflects the free market economy built up by entrepreneurs. What matters now in the business world is the access to those with political power.

WSJ: "To broaden access to private markets, we should first restore public markets for small and medium-size companies so that all investors have an array of public and private choices."

The sad result of a continuously fluctuating culture is a generation of young people who have no common cultural identity.

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… is from pages 272-273 of Casey Mulligan’s important 2012 book, The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy:

The 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is probably the single piece of legislation with the most provisions expanding the safety net. To name a few: it increased unemployment and food stamp benefits; it expanded eligibility for both programs with its “alternative base period” calculation of the unemployment benefit and by granting states relief from the food stamp program’s work requirements; it federally funded extended unemployment benefits, so that employers would not have to pay for the extended benefits received by their former employees. The act’s “recovery” and “stimulus” monikers are ironic because, like other legislation that expanded the safety net, the transfer provisions of the act helped keep labor hours low after the act went into effect.

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Phil Magness, on his Facebook page, shared a tweet by someone who believes that the New York Times, in its obituary of the consistently, wildly wrong Paul Ehrlich, was justified in describing Ehrlich’s mistaken predictions as “premature.”

Ehrlich in 1968 predicted that within a decade humanity would suffer massive worldwide starvation. 1968 was 58 years ago. It was before man landed on the moon. Before microwave ovens were commonplace. Before low-priced pocket calculators were a thing. Before Watergate. Before the Beatles broke up. Before most Americans owned color televisions.

For anyone in 2026 to attempt to justify describing Ehrlich’s whackadoodle, consistent-proven-spectacularly wrong predictions as “premature” is ridiculous. They were and remain wrong, not only in their specifics, but also on the broader point that Ehrlich incessantly sought to make.

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… is from page 335 of the “Random Thoughts” section of Thomas Sowell’s 2010 book, Dismantling America:

The reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied. They want villains to hate and heroes to cheer – and they don’t want explanations that fail to give them that.

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