Canada gets an Eh-plus for freedom and Old Glory lags behind for the fifth straight year, almost in free fall. Do we even need to say whose America this is?
The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal published the 20th annual Index of Economic Freedom Tuesday, a world guide based on quantitative and qualitative measurements of various ‘freedoms’ like property rights and fiscal burdens from the government. The report includes 186 countries — and of those, the United States has slid to 12th, categorized as ‘mostly free’ and “the only country to have recorded a loss of economic freedom each of the past seven years,” the index states.
“Can you imagine if our Secretary of Defense announced that we were mostly strong, or kind of strong as a nation?” Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint said at an event for the guide’s unveiling. “I don’t think we would sit still for that as a nation.”
The ranking of 12 marks the first time the index has rated the United States outside the top 10. The index highlighted the growth of government and scandal at the federal level as reasons why the nation has slipped.
“Substantial expansion in the size and scope of government, including through new and costly regulations in areas like finance and health care, has contributed significantly to the erosion of U.S. economic freedom,” the report reads. “The growth of government has been accompanied by increasing cronyism that has undermined the rule of law and perceptions of fairness.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who keynoted the Tuesday event, hit on those same themes and more in his remarks, saying that tax burdens and the government’s new role in health care — what he called “the largest loss of freedom of choice in 50 years” — have sent America in the wrong direction.
“You know, if you like your freedom, you can keep it — or maybe not,” he joked at the top of his talk.
Across individual categories measured for the index’s composite ranking — there are 10 in all — the country rates particularly high for labor freedom and business freedom, and relatively low for fiscal freedom and government spending. In fact, of the 183 countries scored for government spending, the U.S. ranked an appalling 137th.
Ahead of the United States in the overall scores are capitalist paradise Hong Kong, number one for the 20th straight year; our neighbor to the north, Canada, which is 6th; and nations in every other inhabited continent, including Australia (3rd), Switzerland (4th), Chile (7th) and the African island country of Mauritius (8th).
“If we want America to prosper again, we must reflect upon why we continue to fall in the Economic Freedom Index,” Paul remarked. “Until we understand that freedom and prosperity go hand-in-hand, our future remains clouded. Our kids need worry if America will continue to be the land of the free and the economic engine of the world.”
Read the full report here.
