Steve, you got that right. The members of Congress, as well as our business leadership and the public in general seem to have adopted the qualities you describe...(lack of) inertia, denial, allergy to complexity, and preference for short-term gratification, irrational and self-serving behavior to a very high degree. Those seem to be cultural failures, but they sure have had a negative effect when applied to our economy.

So nothwithstanding the simple, clear words of the Constitution, whatever has gotten us to where we are now over the last 30-40 years obviously needs to be changed. Plain old economics (or the "neo-classical" economics described in the article) sure isn't working. If the President's application of "behavioral economics" can get the country thinking straight again, I'm all for it.

And Bucco, I laughed when I saw your interpretation of the subject matter. I knew when I posted the article that somehow you would twist it into another Saul Alinsky theory. Wow! If that's the case, there must be a whole lot more senior members of the administration and the Congress that studied under the wing of Mr. Alinsky. Let's see, he died over 35 years ago--a whole lot of members of Congress would remember fraternity parties a whole lot more than the teachings of Saul Alinsky. But like I said to Steve, if Alinsky's tactics can be used to re-align the cultural mores of the country, I'm all for them.

Clearly something needs to be done, and unless someone can present a better solution to our current problems than doing nothing while holing up with a copy of the Constitution, I'll go along with whatever program might create some needed change.