Thanks for sharing. What a bizarre interview. 

Brilliant. Thank you!

Great post. And a wonderful topic.

Morality is a necessary component of economic policy. Our institutions of personal liberty, property rights, and limited government were chosen first on the basis of moral virtue. That these institutions would provide for great economic prosperity was secondary, and likely unanticipated. 

I have several friends that are currently teaching, many of them through TFA. I appreciate very much your comment regarding the "ideas" that are thrown at you from government officials. It seems to me that ideas aren't the problem. If you ask any teacher or any parent to think of ten ideas to improve their school, I'm guessing they could all produce ten great ideas in short order. And I bet they'd all be similar. The problem is that there's no mechanism for those ideas to be implemented and for the good ones to be selected.

Mister D, as a teacher, do you agree with my claim that the system will likely be reformed soon?

There are so many good comments here, I don't know where to begin. Ricochet is a wonderful forum, not only because folks can explore their own ideas, but also because they learn so much from the feedback of other members.

Some take issue with my term "redistribution" when referring to capital investment in the free market. It's true that "redistribution" suggests a "redistributor", and of course in the free market there is none. But the terminology is intentional. 

Capital is just income that has been saved and invested. Taxed income is spent, so it doesn't become capital. In my post, I wanted to point out that every dollar you tax is a tradeoff between income and capital. When you tax income of high earners to be redistributed to lower earners, you reduce the amount that can be "redistributed" to (read invested in) productive enterprises. 

The nature of pro-growth economic policy (tax and spend vs. save and invest) is subject to a time honored debate. I don't mean to re-argue the supply-side principles, I just mean to point out that the rhetoric of President Obama, Elizabeth Warren, etc. does not even acknowledge the tradeoff.