pitzerwm
Active member
“A free and prosperous world through choice, markets and responsibility”
That’s the motto of Canada’s Frazier Institute, a respected free market think tank that studies the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on individuals and society.
But that agreeable motto bears little resemblance with what has happened to the United States economy... and Frazier offers proof.
Annually the Institute publishes its Economic Freedom of the World Report, which reviews the policies in each country that either support or harm economic freedom.
The basics measured are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of privately owned property.
The specifics include...
1) Size of government: expenditures, taxes, and enterprises
2) Legal structure and security of property rights
3) Access to sound money
4) Freedom to trade internationally, and
5) Regulation of credit, labor, and business.
In 2000 the U.S. was ranked 3rd in the world behind only Hong Kong and Singapore; in the 2011 report, the U.S. is ranked 10th behind countries such as Canada, Chile, Australia, and even the United Kingdom.
Certainly, four million American homes are in foreclosure, millions more are “under water,” the real unemployment rate is nearly 16%, George Bush, Barack Obama and a complicit U.S. Congress have wasted 10 trillion of our tax dollars on big business, union and bank bailouts, while Wall Street rewarded itself with an astounding $160 billion in bonuses the year after the global financial crisis they helped to create.
Compliments to a newsletter from Sovereign Invester, that I get.
This is the 2011 report, but covers up to 2009, something to think about.
