Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, an excellent question. That's a question I often get when I do talks around the state. And in defense of economists and policy makers, I would argue that we've been trying for a long time, and I think things are getting better. I think if you look over the broad span of history, the economy's performance has actually improved quite a bit over the last 70 years as compared to, say, the previous 100 years. But beyond that, people have to realize, we have a gigantic economy. Just here in the U.S., we have 140 million workers. We have $14 trillion of annual economic activity. We have millions of economic decisions being made every day. It stands to reason, those decisions are very hard to control. Now, yes, we could have some kind of an economic czar to coordinate everything, and countries have tried that, countries like the former Soviet Union. They have found that leads to disaster. I would argue, to paraphrase the great politician and prime minister Winston Churchill, that, yes, the economic system we have is a flawed system, but it's probably better than all the other systems that you could possibly have."