There is a famous (apocryphal) story about Milton Friedman visiting a canal-building project in China and seeing that the workers were using picks and shovels instead of modern earth-moving equipment, even though it was available. “Why aren’t you using the machines?” Friedman asked the project supervisor. “Because we know how to create jobs!” came the reply. Friedman considered for a moment, and asked, “Then why not use spoons?”


Bill de Blasio has a big idea for creating jobs: use spoons. And tax efficiency.

The etymology of “sabotage” that we all learned from that Star Trek movie turns out to be folk linguistics, but de Blasio proposes to act as a saboteur in that tradition. Joe Biden may be cracking up before our eyes, but he still is not the man in the Democratic primary race most entirely disconnected from reality.