Under Obama, income growth has been confined almost entirely to those at the top of the income distribution, continuing a pattern that began under President George W. Bush. – Timothy Noah
The hometown economic elite – rich local families or individuals whom people used to praise or revile, read about in the society pages, and gossip about incessantly – disappeared from most American cities decades ago. – Timothy Noah
The central con of the political coalition assembled by Ronald Reagan and maintained by his successors was that government was a common enemy. – Timothy Noah
When Democrats lose, they’re pathetic. When Republicans lose, they’re bitter and mean. – Timothy Noah
Bottom line: A market approach to national defense would give us a lousy national defense. – Timothy Noah
Politicians have such large egos that it usually takes them an inordinately long time to grasp when they’ve become a pathetic joke. – Timothy Noah
There’s a growing consensus that the best way to defeat communism in Cuba is to get its citizens hooked on American goods. – Timothy Noah
There is no better example of social and economic policy discussion as an idle pastime for the rich than the World Economic Forum at Davos. These guys make the millionaire schmoozers at the Aspen Ideas Festival look like short-order cooks. – Timothy Noah
One of the enduring mysteries of America’s occupation of Iraq is why a nation that so little relishes peacekeeping nonetheless refuses to turn the job over to the United Nations. – Timothy Noah
Whenever a president nominates somebody to a high-profile post, there is always the risk that some skeleton, real or imagined, will emerge from the nominee’s closet and doom the whole enterprise. – Timothy Noah
One of my lifelong hobbies has been to collect ‘aptronyms’ – the newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams’s term for people whose names were curiously appropriate to, or provided ironic comment on, their occupations. – Timothy Noah
The Kurds were the only people in Iraq who were completely unguarded in expressing their gratitude to the United States for setting them free. – Timothy Noah
What I’ve come to believe is that psychological advice isn’t worth much if it isn’t rooted in personal experience. – Timothy Noah
Economic inequality is less troubling if you live in a country where any child, no matter how humble his or her origins, can grow up to be president. – Timothy Noah
Why does Medicare have such difficulty accommodating a cut – no, wait, a trim to its annual spending increase – of two measly percentage points? Two words: baby boom. – Timothy Noah
The white working class likes being pandered to even less than it likes being insulted. – Timothy Noah
It’s no surprise that Mitt Romney bent himself into a pretzel to disavow the portions of Obamacare that derive from his own reform in Massachusetts. – Timothy Noah
Whenever a Kurd wants to measure the depth of some foreign leader’s commitment to Kurdish autonomy, he listens for one particular word. That word is ‘federal.’ Anyone who will say he favors Kurdish federalism can be counted a friend of the Kurds. – Timothy Noah
With so much to be aware of, awareness bracelets have reverted to signifying nothing more than color itself. Idealism has devolved into fashion. – Timothy Noah
The House of Representatives eliminated the filibuster way back in the 19th century, and somehow it managed to survive. – Timothy Noah
The embourgeoisement of China’s proletariat may be the inevitable result of its industrialization, but ‘inevitable’ isn’t the same as ‘speedy.’ – Timothy Noah
Electing Barack Obama president was a glorious Jackie Robinson moment for the United States of America. Obama didn’t just win; he became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular-vote majority. – Timothy Noah
Without the three-fifths rule, there wouldn’t have been a Constitution of the United States – not one that governed the American South, at any rate – because the South wouldn’t have ratified it. – Timothy Noah
We live in a diverse nation, but it isn’t that diverse. If any one state showed results so dramatically different from the results in each of the other 50 states, the likeliest explanation would be that someone had tampered with the polls. – Timothy Noah
If you want to slow medical inflation in the private sector, it makes sense to expand the government’s investment in private health care. – Timothy Noah
The promise of Obama’s presidency, in many people’s minds, is partly that America will move toward becoming a post-racial society. It’s pretty clear, though, that we aren’t there yet. – Timothy Noah
Democrats view elections as a means to an end, while Republicans view an election as an end in itself. – Timothy Noah
Being a teacher is back-breakingly difficult work. It is also extremely important work. – Timothy Noah
Whatever the reason, American Muslims appear far less inclined to support the global jihad than their European counterparts. – Timothy Noah