[JackC]

This is a great point. Not to get political myself, but if you compare this talk to Elizabeth Warren's "The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class"[1] from a few years back, it's night and day. Before she made economic claims, she described her exhaustive process with government agencies to get reliable data; the ways she tested the data when it seemed implausible; the various theories she tested and rejected to explain the data ... it's gripping stuff, because she develops insights based on research and hard-nosed science. That's what TED should be about.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A