It is easy to criticize the US healthcare system, but we should be clear on one thing: it is not "free market" or "private" healthcare. A free market in healthcare would be more efficient and innovative, and offer better quality products and services, with lower prices than is currently the case.

In addition to the US government's obvious socialist interventions with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, there are a multitude of other measures that hinder innovation in healthcare — and we can expect only increased involvement under ObamaCare.

With all of the talk of how charismatic Barack Obama is, or of his oratory ability—and especially given his recent presidential victory—it is time to engage in a deeper economic critique of Obama's actual policies. Once we see the true effects of his policies and the incentives they create, we will see that his leadership skills and abilities make him more of a threat to freedom than if he were less articulate.

In this article we will start with a small part of Obama's program to "create" jobs, with the aim of tackling poverty. We find the following claim on Obama's website:

Barack Obama will expand access to jobs. Obama and Biden will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce.

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It seems the Austrian economist possesses more truth in his pinky finger than Paul Krugman in his entire Nobel Prize–winning body. What other explanation can there be for Krugman's consistent policy "solutions" to the current economic crisis, which would actually exacerbate the problem and lead to a deepening and prolonging of a recession? Austrians not only predicted the current financial crisis but can accurately diagnose it and prescribe the proper antidote. Krugman's recent New York Times article, "Depression Economics Returns," continues to demonstrate his ignorance of economic truth by presenting even more antidepression policies as solutions. In this article, we will analyze Krugman's recommendations and provide the Austrian cure, including what government can do to cure the recession.

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One of the most harmful of Barack Obama's public-private partnerships (PPPs) has to do with his support of entrepreneurship in an attempt to "spur job growth." I would like to show why this is not only a particularly bad idea but also a destructive one, leading to exactly the opposite of the result sought by the program.

Mr. Obama plans to create a business-incubator program to help more individuals start their own business. Obama's goal is the following:

Create a National Network of Public-Private Business Incubators: support entrepreneurship and spur job growth by creating a national network of public-private business incubators and investing $250 million per year to increase the number and size of incubators in disadvantaged communities throughout the country.

Business incubators aim to help entrepreneurs in the startup and early stages of growth by creating an infrastructure of resources for a company. This may include providing the company with an office, access to a network of mentors, help with regulatory requirements, and access to funding. It is important to note that in the United States over 70% of business incubators are funded by government or government-funded institutions (e.g., economic development organizations, universities), while only 4% are for profit.

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Barack Obama plans to initiate public-private partnerships (PPPs) on a grand scale. While the media focuses on Obama's First Dog or his left-handed jump shot, behind the scenes he is planning how to become president of the world. Therefore, it is worth enumerating many of his proposed partnerships so as to expose his actual policies, and then offer an Austro-libertarian analysis of these partnerships. As we will see, a mix of public and private ownership is a socialist arrangement, and a sly tactic employed by those looking for increased power, albeit under a different name: the public-private partnership.

PPPs are essentially contracts between a public agency and a private company where assets, risks, and rewards are shared in providing a good or service to the public. The rationale is typically that private enterprise provides greater efficiency and quality of service, while the government agency furnishes additional capital. They areclaimed to (potentially) lead to "happy employees," better educational opportunities, and better public safety. Government agencies reportedly realize cost savings of 20 to 50 percent by using PPPs.

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Austrian economists have long been critical of the static, unrealistic models of neoclassical economics and instead take a dynamic, causal-realist approach. Similarly, the role of government, while receiving heavy analysis from Austrians, is taken as a given in most neoclassical models and textbooks, used today in almost all university economics courses.

Laying aside the Austrian critique of neoclassical models, an analysis of the role and characteristics of government — within the neoclassical framework — will show that this institution most closely resembles the model viewed as least efficient in terms of production and allocation of scarce resources.

The government is not a deus ex machina. The question of where the government fits into the neoclassical framework demands an answer. It cannot just be assumed that any market "inefficiencies" (in the neoclassical sense) could be limited or eliminated by government, when government itself is arguably the most inefficient of all institutions.

In the neoclassical view, there are four market models that can exist in a society, all of which are described as having degrees of costs and benefits. Based on this analysis, the models could be ranked according to how efficiently goods are produced and allocated. The role of government in such models is usually taken as a given — it is an existing institution, smuggled in with many (false) assumptions, unexamined, and excluded from economic analysis.

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We live in ludicrous times of rewarding good appearance for evil action. President Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while his war efforts intensify. But those who are true promoters of peace need attention, for they will never likely receive such ostentatious recognition for their noble efforts. Such individuals are those who take risks in a world of uncertainty, and who save or borrow capital to start a business. Such entrepreneurs promote peace by serving the customer better than the next entrepreneur through voluntary transactions in the market, rather than commanding bureaucracy in government.

As part of my entrepreneurship courses, I have students who want to start their own business listen to new entrepreneurs discuss their background, their reasons for starting the business, and of their effort to establish the business. Students usually find these speakers fascinating and inspiring, but also come away with a sense of the enormous amount of effort, capital, risk, and uncertainty that is involved in starting a business. Many of these students decide they no longer want to start their own business. They realize that entrepreneurs, too, have a boss: the customer. Mises put it this way: "Ownership of the means of production is not a privilege, but a social liability."

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A recent teachers' union strike that included economists and other business faculty members at my university — ironically and yet unsurprisingly led by an economics lecturer — has motivated me to consider the intended consequences of these strike actions.

Economists are prone to call the consequences of many decisions "unintended," and thus assume the actors are genuinely ignorant of these effects or would otherwise not choose the actions that cause them. However, I must give these economists qua economists credit for a minimum knowledge of the effects of unions and strikes, and assume they knew the likely outcomes of their actions. If they did not understand these consequences, they surely cannot be worthy of what some consider a noble title: economist.

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It is near impossible to imagine any private company not enjoying the "problem" of high demand for its products and services. Yet there are some products that are repeatedly reported as shortages. There is one thing these products have in common: government intervention, typically in the form of price controls.

This is especially the case with water in Melbourne, Australia, and has been for at least a decade. While supply of water is in many ways a complex issue, understanding economic shortages is not.

It turns out that Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is going around town breaking windows by, well, demanding they be built. There are over 35,000 construction and maintenance projects planned across Australia over the next 12 months. This includes AU$49 (US$39.4) billion dedicated to "nation building infrastructure," or crudely AU$2,200 in taxes for every man, woman, and child residing in Australia.

Are such decisions financially wise during economic recessions? Let's put Keynesianism aside and instead rely on common sense. While on an individual level you might think saving would be a good idea, apparently governments just want to build stuff. "We can always figure out later what to do with it or even just employ people to knock it down and build it again" is the unspoken idea. When "full employment" is the goal almost any type of labor will do. PM Rudd's Labor party is thus aptly named; as they state, "jobs are in our DNA."