[E]conomics—despite the extensive use of mathematics—will not be a rigorous discipline until it is based... on verifiable empirical evidence. - John Komlos

The US became a dual economy... which generated a lot of despair. Half the population is doing well and the other half is getting by... or getting by in very difficult circumstances... Trump would not have won otherwise in 2016. That's the basis of the Trump revolution... against... the political elite, the foreign policy elite, the intellectual elites.

Taxes are not all bad. ...[T]axes are used for infrastructure investments, for schooling, for basic research, and to bail out markets when they go haywire.

[P]er-capita income can be an ambiguous measure of welfare during the early stages of economic development unless it moves in the same direction as the biological standard of living...