Simple Doesn't Mean Stupid. Thinking That It

The Fact Is That The Two Years Or So After 9/11 Were A Terrible Time In America – A Time Of Political Exploitation And Intimidation, Culminating In The Deliberate Misleading Of The Nation Into The Invasion Of Iraq. It’s Probably Worth Pointing Out That I’m Not Saying Anything Now That I Wasn’t Saying In Real Time Back Then, When Bush Had A Sky-high Approval Rating And Any Criticism Was Denounced As Treason. And There’s Nothing I’ve Done In My Life Of Which I’m More Proud.

So What Are The Effects Of Increasing Minimum Wages? Any Econ 101 Student Can Tell You The Answer: The Higher Wage Reduces The Quantity Of Labor Demanded, And Hence Leads To Unemployment.

The Great Thing About Fiscal Policy Is That It Has A Direct Impact And Doesn't Require You To Bind The Hands Of Future Policymakers.

Most People, I Suspect, Still Have In Their Minds An Image Of America As The Great Land Of College Education, Unique In The Extent To Which Higher Learning Is Offered To The Population At Large. That Image Used To Correspond To Reality. But These Days Young Americans Are Considerably Less Likely Than Young People In Many Other Countries To Graduate From College. In Fact, We Have A College Graduation Rate That's Slightly Below The Average Across All Advanced Economies.

As An Economics Professor I Am By Nature Inclined To The View That The Truth Isn't Out There, It's In Here - That Usually You Learn A Lot More By Thinking Really Hard About The Data Than You Do By Sniffing Around For Supposedly Inside Information.