To fix Social Security, we should first stop using the Consumer Price Index to adjust benefits for inflation. Using the C.P.I. overstates the impact of inflation and has also led to larger increases in benefits for Social Security recipients than the income gains of typical American workers.

The largest number of jobs likely to be created by the JOBS Act will be for lawyers needed to clean up the mess that it will create.

Eye-popping tales of growing income inequality are hardly new. By now, nearly every American must be painfully aware of the widening pay gap between top executives and shop floor laborers; between 'Master of the Universe' financiers and pretty much everyone else.

The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds.

Money is not everything. We don't need billions and trillions of dollars.

Now that I'm gettin' old enough to get some money, I'd like to have some money. I don't get much made, I need to conquer a big chunk of money. Not quit playin' but quit playin' so hard.

The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term.

We know that's the bottom line: if money is made, the powers that be pay attention.