The post-stimulus macroeconomy is panning out pretty much the way Austrians said it would. Unemployment is still high, and now that the Census workers are fired, jobs are being shed. Home construction is declining. Manufacturing growth is falling. Stocks: don’t make me laugh.

Only about 10 percent of the cost of each Chinese factory is attributable to labor. A retail price in the West is three to four times China’s export price. Hence, China’s labor cost is about 8 to 9 percent of a retail price in a western store.

The only way to prove a theory is by logic, specifically (synthetic) a priori inquiry. This is the great discovery of the Austrian theory scholars, especially Ludwig von Mises. Mises developed an entire methodology of human behavior based on this form of reasoning. It’s not that Austrians don’t believe in mathematics or empirical research, it’s just that empirical research is a very limited tool for proving or disproving economic truth. And a priori reasoning is the better method of understanding human behavior. In my opinion the best thinking comes from the Austrians. But it’s tough to grasp and study. As you say, such thinking is hard, very hard.

In 2005, compared with 1955, the average human being on Planet Earth earned nearly three times as much money (corrected for inflation), ate one-third more calories of food, buried one-third as many of her children and could expect to live one-third longer. All this during a half-century when the world population has more than doubled, so that far from being rationed by population pressure, the goods and services available to the people of the world have expanded. It is, by any standard, an astonishing human achievement.

Now, the CBO seems to have drawn the same conclusion that I would, which is that we do not have the luxury of worrying about the outlook from 2035 to 2080. Instead, we are on a path to have a crisis by 2035.