Freedom Line Blog

In last week’s Liberty Update, we highlighted the Heritage Foundation’s 2022 Index of Economic Freedom, which shows that Joe Biden has dragged the U.S. down to 22nd, our lowest rank ever (we placed 4th in the first Index in 1995, and climbed back up from 18th to 12th under President Trump).  As we noted, among the Index’s invaluable metrics is how it demonstrates the objective correlation between more economic freedom and higher citizen standards of living, which this graphic illustrates:

As the 2020 election gets closer and calls for more and more government intervention increase, a handy visual reminder from Heritage that freedom, not intervention, means prosperity:

Freedom = Prosperity

How do socialism and free markets compare in the real world?

In our recent Liberty Update piece entitled “Socialist Paradises?  More Scandinavians Migrate to America than Vice-Versa” we show how Scandinavian countries aren’t the socialist paradises that Bernie Sanders fans seem to think.  This week brings just the latest illustration that free economies work, while socialist economies fail.

In the latest annual Index of Economic Freedom, Singapore ranks second-freest in the world, slightly below Hong Kong and ahead of New Zealand, Switzerland and then Australia.   Coming in nearly last at 176 of the 178 nations measured was socialist Venezuela.  And the real-world result?  A new Bloomberg piece notes that Singapore now enjoys the lowest (i.e., best) spot on the worldwide misery index.  Meanwhile, socialist paradise Venezuela holds the top (i.e., worst) spot:

Singapore has dropped below Thailand on the so-called Misery Index for the first time since December 2014, meaning the city-state has the lowest combination of consumer-price inflation and unemployment in the world.  Singapore’s most-recent CPI rate was negative 0.5 percent and its official jobless rate was 1.9 percent, ranking it 1.4 percent on the misery scale, compared with 1.5 percent in Thailand and 2.9 percent in Japan, based on the latest-available official figures.  Venezuela ranks as most miserable among more than 70 countries on which Bloomberg compiles data, as the South American country battles triple-digit inflation.”

As they would say in Latin, res ipsa loquitur – “the fact speaks for itself.”

This week, the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released the 2011 edition of their Index of Economic Freedom.

Once again, the facts speak for themselves:  Economic freedom means not only more prosperity, but also greater overall wellbeing.  In calculating economic freedom and ranking the world’s economies, the Index examines 10 criteria:  business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labor freedom.  The correlation between economic freedom and living standards is once again made clear:

Despite varying degrees of economic freedom across the regions, the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity remains constant within the regions.  Per capita incomes are much higher in countries that are economically free.  Not surprisingly, overall human development also thrives in an environment that is economically free…  Higher economic freedom induces greater overall human development as measured by the United Nations Human Development Index, which assesses the combined progress of life expectancy, literacy, education, and the standard of living.”

The good news is that 117 of the world’s economies improved over the past year, whereas only 58 declined.  For Americans, the bad news is that we fell from 8th to 9th.  On that front, note the Index’s comments about the  importance of reducing government spending:

Countries that reduced government spending had economic growth rates almost two percentage points higher in 2009 than countries whose government spending scores worsened, and countries with the highest rates of government spending had gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates 4.5 percentage points lower on average than countries where government spending was best contained.”

Will the new 112th Congress help reverse that decline?  As we approach the 2012 elections, that will prove a critical question.