That the United States of America was this week demoted from its formerly “Free” categorization by The Heritage Foundation to that of “Mostly Free” should come as no surprise to any semiliterate, moderately contemplative individual. Americans living under the tyranny of a Big Brother-style government hardly needed a Washington-based think tank and a Wall Street Journal to tell them what they don’t want to hear. They can flick through a thousand channels of cable television and find plenty of that. Still, the report does raise some points worth discussing.
“The US government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 have significantly undermined economic freedom and long-term prospects for economic growth,” the foundation wrote. “Economic freedom has declined in seven of the 10 categories measured in the Index.”
According to their website, the foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom “measures 183 countries across ten specific freedoms such as trade freedom, business freedom, investment freedom, and property rights.” This year’s publication was the first time in the index’s, albeit somewhat brief, 16-year history that the Land of the Free dropped out of the “Free” category. The US now ranks a still respectable 8th on the list, one spot behind Canada and at the head of a group that includes Bahrain, Georgia and Botswana. Perhaps more alarmingly, the nation experienced the steepest decline in score (since last year’s index) out of any of the world’s largest 20 economies. Poland, Mexico and Turkey enjoyed the biggest advances.
Think tank indexes aside, it would be a great loss to all if The United States of America, a constitutional republic endowed with an abundance of natural resources, unparalleled entrepreneurship and a Declaration of Independence that positively enshrines each and every man’s unalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” were to fail despite itself.
More here.
