The alliance between big government and big business should raise the hackles on the necks of ordinary citizens. In the cases of GM and Chrysler, we have seen a variety of wrongs committed with government power and taxpayer money. Harnessed to the power of government, big business can really get cracking. It can sell products to big government. It can bulk up on direct and indirect subsidies derived from the labor of ordinary citizens. It can take pressure off pricing by creating barriers to entry for potential competitors. It can mitigate the difficulty of persuading ordinary citizens to buy what they are selling at a price that reflects market value.

America is on a path to bankruptcy. It’s easy to get bogged down arguing about lots of small cuts, but we’ll only make progress by abolishing whole departments and entire missions. I hope the public understands it has to be done.

In a democracy with a competitive economy, power is hard to maintain without pleasing others.

Rather than signaling a problem, a bilateral trade “imbalance” is as predictable as finding fish in the ocean. Indeed, in this world of nearly 200 countries – and in which money can be invested as well as spent buying exports – it would be beyond freakishly odd if, month after month, the Chinese were to purchase exactly as many exports from America as Americans purchase from China. I challenge anyone to find in any respected international-economics textbook or scholarly economics-journal article even the remotest hint that, in a world of multiple countries, trade between any two of them should be “balanced.”

I have a plan to reduce the budget deficit. The essence of the plan is the federal government writing me a check for $1 billion. The plan will be financed by $3 billion of tax increases. According to my back-of-the envelope calculations, giving me that $1 billion will reduce the budget deficit by $2 billion. Now, you may be tempted to say that giving me that $1 billion will not really reduce the budget deficit. Rather, you might say, it is the tax increases, which have nothing to do with my handout, that are reducing the budget deficit. But if you are tempted by that kind of sloppy thinking, you have not been following the debate over healthcare reform.

Let us be absolutely clear what is happening in reality. Someone borrows money to buy a home, often putting little or none of his own money as a down payment. Subsequent to that, he stops paying the mortgage. A growing populist movement is saying that unless the bank which is foreclosing can prove beyond a doubt that every piece of paperwork is 100% perfect, then the court should rule in favor of the defendant—even when no one disputes that the defendant is in default. This essay is not an attempt to address the injustice of this, or the consequences to our society if no one will trust anyone else to lend them money. I want to address only the economic consequences of this.

Unemployment will fall only when new jobs – new opportunities – are created for the specific talents of workers now unemployed.

There is no economic system yet discovered that can outperform capitalism when it comes to producing a vibrant, growing, dynamic, and innovative economy. Capitalism provides the goods and services that people want, for the most part, at the lowest possible cost.