One of the constant refrains you hear from people opposing trade liberalization is that, sure, it sounds good in theory, but in reality free trade is a disaster for America because the USA simply cannot compete with low-wage countries like China, and thus “outsourcing” will crush the American worker while enriching fat-cat industrialists. But does this argument jibe with reality? In short, no.

Through a process of extortion, coercion, and vote buying, a population too dumb to figure out what is really going on becomes addicted to the nanny state. The only ones who benefit are the politicians and the nanny employees. They are in bed with each other. Unfortunately, misguided souls buy into the propaganda of the politicians and the public unions and clamor for more “nannyism” even though the process makes slaves out of everyone. Students are especially prone to supporting the nanny state in return for student loans that make those same students debt slaves for life.

I don’t think the Obama administration is actually trying to hurt our economy. But on a remarkable number of fronts, they are taking exactly the actions that one would choose if one were trying to damage the economy.

This is one of the reasons that we can’t fix all our budget problems with higher taxes on the rich–if we do that, revenues are going to collapse dangerously every time there’s a recession.

It’s almost reached the point where we hardly dare open the curtains up here, as the folly of following Keynesian economics for decades rebounds around the world, gathering momentum and terror as it strikes its hapless victims, most of whom turn helplessly to more Keynesianism to ‘solve’ the problem.

30% of loans in foreclosure have not made a payment for at least two years. 47% of those in foreclosure have not made a payment for at least 18 months.

A powerful, general mode of reasoning is just what mathematics can and should offer to the world. In contrast, the high-stakes tests’ offer what American physicist Richard Feynman might have called cargo-cult mathematics. They use numbers and mathematical operations, they look like mathematics, but the substance is missing. By teaching to these tests, we are teaching students disconnected notes and calling it a Bach fugue.

The past 10 years have gotten a bad rap as the “Naughty Aughties” – and deservedly so, it seems, for a decade that began with 9/11 and the Enron scandal and closed with the global financial crisis and the Haiti earthquake. In between, we witnessed the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, SARS and swine flu, not to mention vicious fighting in Sudan and Congo, Afghanistan and, oh yes, Iraq. Given that our brains seem hard-wired to remember singular tragedy over incremental success, it’s a hard sell to convince anyone that the past 10 years are worthy of praise. But these horrific events, though mortal and economic catastrophes for many millions, don’t sum up the decade as experienced by most of the planet’s 6-billion-plus people. For all its problems, the first 10 years of the 21st century were in fact humanity’s finest, a time when more people lived better, longer, more peaceful, and more prosperous lives than ever before.

Human nature and the structure of reality itself doesn’t change. Only the gizmos we use change. We can become poorer or we can become richer. But the fundamental facts of how the world is built are immutable. Things are scarce but the possibilities for economic creation are infinite in a world of trade, boundaries, law, and private innovation.