America’s Vanishing Economic Freedom

[Valin]

NRO: We’re on a slippery slope.

Michael Tanner

9/19/12

 

The 2012 Economic Freedom of the World report was released this week by the Cato Institute and Canada’s Fraser Institute, and it showed that the United States has plummeted to 18th place in the ranked list, trailing such countries as Estonia, Taiwan, and Qatar. Even such notorious welfare states as Finland and Denmark, not to mention Canada, have freer economies than we do.

 

Actually, the decline began under President George W. Bush. For 20 years the U.S. had consistently ranked as one of the world’s three freest economies, along with Hong Kong and Singapore. By the end of the Bush presidency, we were barely in the top ten.

 

And, as with so many disastrous legacies of the Bush era, Barack Obama took a bad thing and made it worse.

 

(Snip)

 

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