In the wee hours of Monday morning here in the United States, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that it had awarded the 2017 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to a single recipient, the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler, for his work in behavioral economics. Thaler’s work raises important questions about the state’s influence over human action.

Unlike the other Nobel prizes which tend to recognize, relatively speaking, recent discoveries and achievements, the economics prize has historically been presented to economists in recognition of their body of work which, over time, has significantly altered the path of theoretical and empirical research in a lasting way. Stated another way, the economics laureates typically do not win the prize in celebration of isolated accomplishments; instead these legendary economists often challenge and undo prevailing paradigms in ways that influence all future inquiry. The laureates help us understand the economic order of things better than we previously had.

Developed nations are increasingly haunted by doubts about the legitimacy of their economic structures. This paralyzing anxiety crosses all lines of ethnicity, religion, class, party and ideology. It played a prominent role in the startling presidential victory of former fringe figure Donald Trump, and in the equally startling political success of former fringe figure Bernie Sanders. Before them, it fueled both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, as well as economic attitudes among millions of ordinary, apolitical Americans.

This is not a mere selfish concern about who gets how much of what. It is a moral anxiety, a concern about what kind of people we are becoming. Is America still a country where it pays to “work hard and play by the rules,” in Bill Clinton’s famous phrase? Or have we become the kind of place where cheaters consistently get ahead and slackers get a free ride—where working hard and playing by the rules is for chumps?

All around us we see business practices that extract money without creating value for the customer. We see crony capitalism that uses illicit collusion or government favoritism to enrich big firms and political cronies at the expense of customers, investors, small business...

You may already be aware that many state and local public pensions are in trouble. By one estimate, the nation’s state, county, and municipal governments face a combined funding shortfall of about $5 trillion.

How did this happen? It depends on who you ask, but one can point to various culprits that include roller-coaster stock prices since 2001, the fact that baby boomers are moving into retirement, a drop in tax revenues driven by the Great Recession, and the nation’s recent household and business migration patterns—including the exit of both from historically vibrant cities like Detroit. After Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013 its pensioners saw their benefits cut considerably.

Now it’s not unreasonable to think that our elected officials and their agents bear a share of the blame, too. I suspect that various politicians and bureaucrats in charge of such funds don’t plan for others’ futures as carefully as they might plan for their own—especially when it comes to individuals who will enter retirement long after a given politician has left office.

But what you may not know is that many private pension funds are in trouble, too. 

In case you missed it – understandably – in the barrage of news stories and Saint Patrick’s Day posts last week, a group of 106 faith leaders have collaborated on a letter they have signed and sent to the Democrat and Republican leadership of both houses of Congress. The letter implores Congress not to reduce the size of the U.S. International Affairs Budget, and was occasioned by President Donald J. Trump’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year.

Since the final passage of the Budgeting and Accounting Act of 1921, the president has been charged with delivering a proposed budget to Congress no later than the first Monday in February. Far from final, this “executive budget” usually serves as a starting point for budgetary discussions and negotiations.

In Trump’s proposed budget, he asks Congress for a $10.9 billion reduction – roughly 28 percent – of the funds currently allocated to international diplomatic and aid programs, and channeled through institutions such as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Though these numbers sound large, keep in mind that the overall federal budget lies north of $3 trillion, making the share of federal budget funds devoted to...