learn some basic economics. The reason for Social Security is to make sure old people have money to buy stuff. That's not because we care about old people, although some of us do. It's to make capitalism work better. Redistribution of wealth downward (which SS, like most government taxation and spending does) from the wealthy to the poor enhances the system's ability to consume what it produces, thereby avoiding, or at least making less severe, recessionary forces. That helps capital sell what it makes and keeps people employed. That benefits everyone, capital, labor and the elderly.

One of the truly amazing aspects of economic discourse over the past 25 years or so is that the people who benefit most from this redistribution, capitalists, are the most deadset against it. You would think they had to be taught the same old stuff again and again. Come to think of it that's exactly right. We learned this in the 30s, only to have to relearn it in the present. But they've got their ideology and they're stickin' to it. Just amazing.

Another landmark in the intellectual dishonesty of the WSJ editorial page is its fealty to the Laffer Curve. I got an early education in WSJ editorial weirdness when Max Boot cited the Laffer Curve for the proposition that it "proved" that cutting taxes yielded optimal tax revenues. Boot (a) didn't know that the Laffer Curve is entirely hypothetical, i.e. not based on empirical data and (b) didn't notice that, according to the graph of the Laffer Curve accompanying his piece, effective tax rates would have to be substantially increased to achieve optimal tax revenue. But why worry that your evidence is made up or that it doesn't support your premise? That's stuff that 7th-grade teachers worry about, not the WSJ.

is an excess of goods compared to the money available to consume them. Therefore, either the amount of unsold goods has gone up or the amount of money has gone down. Fifteen years of "free trade" agreements sending American jobs overseas, plus steadily increasing American productivity, plus tax cuts for the wealthy placing a greater tax burden on the poor and middle class argue strongly that the U.S. is unable to consume what it produces. Replacing high-paying American jobs with low-paying Chinese jobs has meant the global economy is in the same fix as the American one. We've seen a long period of stagnating wages; now we're about to see a period of stagnating prices. Home prices have already begun the trend.

All of this was avoidable by simply sticking to what we knew to be true - that enhancing aggregate demand is necessary to the optimal functioning of a capitalist economy. But the nutcases in the Chicago School of Economics decided they could repeal those laws and the political system followed them down the path and off the cliff, leading the rest of us by the hand.

Joseph Stieglitz has said that when he became chief economist at the World Bank, he expected the staff economists there to bring him studies showing that the new economics worked, that it did what it said it would do - achieve broad-based prosperity by freeing capital to find the lowest bidder for labor. He was disappointed; there were no such studies; it's all theoretical. And guess what? The theory turns out to be wrong. Ignoring what we know works in favor of an untested hypothesis hasn't worked out so well.

But after years of anti-Keynes propaganda, do we have the intellectual honesty to go back to what we know is right? Obama at least seems to have a clue, but whether he has the power to buck the lobbying by the world's wealthiest interests remains to be seen. The answer is higher taxes on the wealthy, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and putting that money into massive infrastructure upgrades. That would reduce the deficit and provide well-paying jobs that can't be sent overseas. Look for those three things and if your elected representative doesn't support them, tell him/her that you demand nothing less.

You're correct. McCain was referring to the carte blanche the phrase "health of the woman" gives to physicians to perform abortions. That has become a big deal to the anti-abortion crowd.

But I'd like to point out how this excerpt and Broadsheet's take on it distort the abortion debate and, I believe, do the pro-choice position no favors. (I feel constrained at this point to mention that I've been pro-choice for over 30 years.) First, the message on the screen makes it look like McCain said "health of the mother crap," which he didn't. He simply explained that he thinks that term has become a catchall excuse to get around any type of abortion restriction, and that's at least a defensible position. Second, Broadsheet expands this to "John McCain doesn't care about women's health," which is arrant nonsense. C'mon, you can do better than that. McCain really doesn't care about the health of, say, his wife, or any of the other 51% of the population? Really? That's false and frankly silly, and it certainly doesn't encourage anyone to respect your position on the issue.

I have no use for John McCain, but it's this type of factually false and intellectually dishonest discourse that makes sane discussion of abortion impossible.