It says something about the dismal state of affairs in our country today by what outrages folks.

Sure, if we want to portray business as the root of our economic ills, outrage about executives getting bonuses at a company that received taxpayer bailout funds has political sex appeal. Or perhaps that some company that got bailed out sent their managers to a fancy retreat somewhere. Or that maybe a bailed-out company sponsored a golf tournament.

But where's the outrage about the circumstances that allow this all to happen to begin with? Where is the outrage about the ease with which politicians can expropriate hundreds of billions of taxpayers' funds to do these bailouts?

I have been looking through a new study, released by an organization called the Property Rights Alliance, called the International Property Rights Index. The study examines 115 nations worldwide and examines the correspondence between prosperity in a country and how secure private property is there.

It shows a practically perfect correlation. The more secure private property is in a given country, the more prosperous it is. Countries rated in the top 25 percent in secure and safe private property have on average nine times more income per person than those in the bottom 25 percent.

It's one of those things that makes so much sense that you wonder why you have to do a study to show it. The easier it is to steal in any given country the less likely the economy will function well there.

You really don't even need a fancy business degree to predict this. One of the Ten Commandments, transmitted so many thousands of years ago, instructs us not to steal. Continued...