Protecting the rich at the expense of the poor isn’t just immoral, says this economist—it is a recipe for economic disaster.

Charles Clark probably doesn’t win a lot of friends in his chosen profession when he says that most economists don’t really understand the economy. But even though he earns a living teaching economics at St. John’s University in New York, Clark believes that understanding how the economy really works requires more than just a classroom education.

Buyer beware: That low-priced shirt might have cost someone their life.

New York City made it easier to eat healthier a few years ago by requiring that calorie counts be included on restaurant menus and display boards. What a revelation! Sixteen hundred calories for that moldering pile of corn syrup-infused noodles; 1,300 for the “light” tuna platter? Who knew? Armed with more data, many New Yorkers now wave off that momentarily tempting triple-bacon calorie bomb and opt for something less likely to lead to an early coronary.

While the history of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 truly begins with the founding of the United States, the common practice of slavery, and the Civil War, the legislative history of the law began 100 years before the Voting Rights Act even existed.