Poverty is clearly one source of emotional suffering, but there are others, like loneliness.

For many people, commuting is the worst part of the day, and policies that can make commuting shorter and more convenient would be a straightforward way to reduce minor but widespread suffering.

Deficits are like putting dynamite in the hands of children. They can get out of control very quickly.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

Banking is a very treacherous business because you don't realize it is risky until it is too late. It is like calm waters that deliver huge storms.

We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you'd need infinite precision in order to predict future events. With sociopolitical or economic phenomena, we don't have anything like that.