Heritage Foundation publishes, on a regular basis, its index of economic freedom. This chart is for 2010. You can find this graphic at http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking, and it’s worth visiting. The website allows you to drill down into the data and discover much more about the rankings.
What’s very disheartening is the U.S. ranked 8th overall, actually falling 2.7 points from the previous score. That’s the wrong direction. Not only is our overall score troubling, but so is our score in relation to other countries. Some of these might surprise you.
On “Trade Freedom”, 37 countries bested the U.S. Some of those countries were Israel, Romania, and Turkey.
On “Property Rights”, 19 countries fared better than the U.S. Countries beating us were Chile, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong.
Our lowest score was a 58 for “Government Spending”. Our highest score was “Labor Freedom” at 94.8. In our quest to become “safe and sound”, we are actually becoming less free. We are trading liberty for the appearance of safety. We are allowing our government to take what’s most precious, all in the name of “safety” or “it’s good for you”.
“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” ~ Thomas Jefferson.
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