In writing about socialist medical care like they have in Canada, one of my points has been that socialist systems tend to be undercapitalized, as in such a system, capital becomes a liability rather than an asset. For example, the county where I work has about 80,000 residents and has as many MRI machines as does Montreal, which has several million people living in the area.

Congress passed a 90% tax on bonuses given by bailed-out companies, and thus does Congress underscore the important principle: when government steals money and decides to hand it out again, the recipient holds a politically conditioned loan that can be taken back at any time. It means that if you are subsidized, you are nationalized in principle.

In a recent debate, prominent Keynesian professor and blogger Brad DeLong claimed that the Austrian explanation of the business cycle “does not work as an intellectual enterprise.”1

DeLong quotes Paul Krugman who, back in December, apparently dealt the Austrian diagnosis a crushing defeat on both theoretical and empirical grounds.

Michael Pollaro says: “A $2.5 trillion deficit will create quite a waterfall on this graph, don’t you think?”

Here is the waterfall-deficit graph (with an attitude). I created it when the projected red ink was “only” $1.6 trillion, after which Obama was to cut it in half by the end of his first term.

The 18 or so articles I’ve written about “intellectual property”–elaborating on a book I consider to be a seminal work of our epoch, Against Intellectual Monopoly–generated floods of email like I’ve never seen on any topic. The thing that gets people going is the conclusion: in a free market, there should be no legal grants of patent or copyright.