Before serving the steak, he spent an hour and a half recounting his personal story of business failure and dismissing other financial options as too risky. “Stock brokers hate me,” he claimed. He also said he doesn’t take fees for his advice or services. “Hmm, something for nothing!” I thought.

Knowing that risk and payment for real value are unavoidable in life, I was curious.

His offer was some kind of life time annuity. You give him a lot of money, and he promises to send you checks the rest of your life. Something like Madoff. The check amount would vary with your age, of course. The waiters told me that the steaks were scheduled to come before he let anyone ask crucial questions, so I left hungry.

What are the crucial questions? First, what is his monthly payoff rate, and how do they compare with annuities offered by TIAA-CREF and well-known insurance companies?

That would probably be revealed in a “free” office visit, when people might not have time to inquire about the competition. Secondly, how does this individual and his new company guarantee those payments until the end of your life, say 30 years from now? There is no insurance against another bankruptcy in his business life.

I do think lifetime annuities might well be part of everyone’s retirement planning. That’s what Social Security is. I urge all my friends to get competent and disinterested advice and not buy snake oil for every problem in our lives.

The TPP and a related trade and investment partnership with our European friends can add at least $200 billion a year to our economy and double that to them, according to reasonable estimates. Freer trade in services could mean cheaper banking, health, and educational services for us, just as free trade has already meant cheaper import (clothing, electronics, etc.) for all consumers. Indiana has an interest, for example, in exporting more food grains to Japan, just as we export auto parts to our NAFTA partners. Free export of energy to Europe would make sense, too.

These likely results would be one way to address the rising inequality that has marked the US and most other developed economies in recent years. NAFTA is thus not the main cause of lost manufacturing jobs; worldwide technological change is. Progressives have rightly pointed to the stagnation of incomes of the middle-class, but protectionism is not the right answer. Since better jobs increasingly require more skills, we need to invest more in education by improving internet access and providing extra help and hours for literacy and math, without cutting out the arts and humanities. We are now a multicultural and internationalized society, and the outlook of all our citizens must adapt to that reality. That means our interests will forever be tied to those across the oceans.

Research and development should be restored to give rise to new industrial jobs, too. Reduced military spending, much of which has been wasted this last decade on failed wars, will make room for these investments, as will paring tax benefits for small groups of the rich and outsourced profits.