Slate's Dialogues

I enjoy good-spirited debates between smart people. I believe that a truth-seeking inquiry must confront opposing views as directly as possible. Written debates force parties to clearly expose their points of view and candidly tackle their disagreements. A good source of good debates is the online magazine Slate. Notably, it has a feature called "Dialogues" that is very informative, though its quality is uneven. A classic dialogue is this one between Jason Furman (a current member of President Barack Obama's National Economic Council) and Barbara Ehrenreich. Mr. Furman applies Econ 101 principles to completely destroy Ms. Ehrenreich's starry-eyed critique of Wal-Mart. Read and learn.