Ben Stein is a comedian, so perhaps it's all part of an elaborate joke. What Ben Stein isn't is an economist, or even a well-informed amateur. However, for no better reason than the fact that his father (Herb Stein) was a well-known economist, the New York Times is in the habit of publishing Ben Stein's meditations on economic matters, to the great detriment of the Times' readers and its reputation. Usually, I ignore this waste of valuable media real-estate, but this morning, reading Times articles on my hand-held gizmo, I was duped into reading an article all the way to the end, only to find Ben Stein's byline tucked away at the very bottom.

At which point I said to myself: "Oh, that explains everything."
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When I was very young, among my favorite books were a couple of juvenile sci-fi novels called Sprockets: A Little Robot and Rivets and Sprockets. I hadn't thought about them in years, but this morning they happened to pop into my head while I was in front of an internet-connected computer, with the natural result: a trip to Wikipedia.

It turns out that these novels were written by Alexander Key, who is better known for writing Escape to Witch Mountain (which, in its filmed incarnation, was also a childhood favorite).

Alas, the Sprockets books are out-of-print and have gone into "rare book" status.