When to Rob a Bank: And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants

famously reluctant to give the agency more resources to do its job.

exaggerating by a factor of five

could collect more than $9 billion each year and spend only $296 million—or about three cents on the dollar—to do so

But what’s most striking to me

Which, if you think about it, is an optimistic view of the world.

For most government officials, there is much more pressure to look like you are trying to stop terrorism than there is to actually stop it.

Some of the best ideas in history—nearly all of them, in fact—sounded crazy at first. That said, a lot of crazy-sounding ideas truly are crazy

When You’re a Jet . . .” shows that once you start thinking like an economist, it’s hard to turn it off—

Let’s just give it a try

Dubner had always thought it strange that so many people would pay good money for a bottle of water. And yet they do, to the tune of roughly $100 billion a year