There was a busy little town called Bumblyburg. One day Mayor Blueberry received a phone call from Larry the Cucumber who claimed to have come up with an amazing invention. The mayor invited her neighbor to discuss the issue over lunch. Larry explained that he had developed software that would revolutionize several of Bumblyburg's industries. Blueberry had just completed a community education course on economics and did a quick cost-benefit analysis.

Outsourcing is a commercial practice that began in antiquity. Entrepreneurs have always sought ways to minimize costs. Though higher profits were their goal, they provided, unintentionally, consumer benefits such as broader choices and lower prices. The increased profits resulted from improved efficiency, using inputs of lower value and transforming them into outputs of higher value, thus making societies wealthier.

I address my commentary today to all benevolent politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. It points to just a few of the things that our government can do better than the people but probably shouldn't mess with.

First, we do not want you to fix prices in education. We want you out of education as a provider. Take the various boards of education bureaucrats off the path of new schools like mine and let us compete for the dollars that families save to send their children to college.

Last week I exposed, not for the first time, President Obama as a mercantilist. Alas, he is not the only one out there. It is time we all learn three truths about international trade.

This year's State of the Union address was full of reheated slogans from previous media appearances. It was not surprising that the event had attracted significantly less interest than last year's speech. "You can't fool all of the people all of the time," said Abraham Lincoln, and it seems that an increasing number of the American people are realizing that the president is exhausted as a visionary and a leader.