Why shouldn't America be as high on freedom ratings as any place else? Actually, America SHOULD strive to be #1!
Don't you get huge fines in those countries for dropping your gum or cigarette stump on the ground? How can such a harsh regime go hand in hand with economic freedom...
Capacity utilization, a measure of slack in the economy, edged down to 74.7 percent, 4.2 percentage points above the year-ago level but still 5.9 points below the 1972-to-2009 average. ______________________________________________________ Keep watching these Production numbers. Fell again in % of output. Lets see if NOV 2nd comes to light to stop the Dems. If the DEMS loose big you may see these numbers reverse to the positive in a huge spike. The Economic freedom rating is a joke. The US has lost a lot more "Freedom" in producing than any report will show. It starts with TAXATION and Regulations from OCEA and EPA. Also, the Rating number is skewed as only 30% of our GDP comes from Manufacturing, if that compared to pre and during WW2. Post WW2 manufacturing is gone. 70% gdp is from Consumer Spending. Real numbers are never reported.
but thats different from economic freedom. AFAIK, capital gains are taxed 0% in both hkg and Singapore, Singapore has abolished the estate tax, maximum tax bracket is only 18% and all foreign sourced income are not subject to taxation.
Unless they fit a certain view, right? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- A lot of the "accounting" methods are flawed and out dated. It does help the numbers fit a "Certain View". But more than that, the US GOV. is behind the 8 ball in the way the try and figuer the numbers. And yes, there is manipulation IMHO.
I think there's something critical missing from that statistic; the fact that the US has an order of magnitude larger population size than any other country in the top ten. Large populations are inherently much more diffucult to govern effectively. New Zealand, for example, has 4.3 million people and new/creative financial/social systems can be implemented in relatively short time frames. The government in NZ can realistically determine the effects of new legislation in a matter of years as the implementation and result is immediate when compared to the US. If we look at a country's path towards prosperity as a trial and error exercise, for every trial the US must spend much more time to determine the effectiveness. The bigger the beast the slower it moves... but, it does get there, eventually. Mike
<IMG SRC=http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?bgcolor=%23B3CDE7&chart_type=line&drp=0&fo=ve&graph_bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&height=378&mode=fred&preserve_ratio=checked&recession_bars=On&txtcolor=%23000000&ts=8&width=630&id=OUTMS&scale=Left&range=Max&cosd=1987-01-01&coed=2010-04-01&line_color=%230000FF&link_values=false&line_style=Solid&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&lw=1&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&transformation=pc1&vintage_date=2010-10-18&revision_date=2010-10-18> So even though taxes were higher in the 90's than in the 80's, output was higher. The US had more manufacturing in the 40's-70's yet taxes were a lot higher than at any point in the past 30 years. I don't think there is a link between taxes and manufacturing output. Why are people from Texas so dumb?
Your argument has merit with respect to fundamental changes. But in the context of this article and "economic freedom", I think the main point to look at is the USA is moving toward LESS economic freedom, not slowly moving toward MORE economic freedom. The trend matters.