Huge pinch of salt and 'citation needed' on this. The Heritage Foundation is a self-described conservative think tank, and just seems to be relabelling 'low tax' as economic freedom here.<p>The purported benefits: "Countries achieving higher levels of economic freedom consistently and measurably outperform others in economic growth, long-term prosperity..." really? From 2000-2008, Ireland held 3rd or 4th spot in the list[1], and is now 11th. Worked out great for them, what with the recession, the bailout, and the 2nd highest level of household debt in the world[2].<p>To those who would reply 'but that's outside forces, economics is complicated,', well, exactly. Reducing it to a list like this is wishful thinking.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932013_Irish_financial_crisis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932013_Irish_financ...</a>
I'm annoyed. I came here to point out who the heritage foundation is, but bazzargh has it covered: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7062656" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7062656</a><p>TFA complains about "marginal income rates of %43" as though this were the general case. For what it's worth, %43 is the highest capital gains rate, the highest income rate is %39, which is for incomes of over 1.8MM: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States</a><p>With that out of the way, the highest marginal tax rate was around %90 during the boom of the 50's and 60's, and is lower now than during Regan administration for example: <a href="http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-...</a><p>If one is a member of the very highest tax bracket, then one might be tempted to measure freedom by the myopic comparison of income tax rates. It would be unsurprising if the Heritage Foundation were concerned about the very highest tax rate in great disproportion to it's nominal consequence.<p>There are other economic freedoms: freedom from excessive gov't granted monopolies (patent/copyright), freedom from protectionism, tariffs, limited work visas, etc. Even rich guys driven to distraction by high tax rates ought to be able to find something say about these sorts of things in an article about economic freedom, but no specific structural reforms are proposed. News flash: partisan think tank doesn't like taxes, president.<p>For the rest of rest of us, real freedom also means not being imprisoned for interacting with other consenting adults in ways that are illegal, and not being denied due process in various ways such as: torte reform, civil asset forfeiture, being spied on by agencies who are immune from judicial review, etc. Could we take a break from wringing our hands about the welfare of the ultra-rich, and work some of that stuff too?
Hmm. You know those dozen or so countries even further down the list than the US do sorta seem like nice places to live. Germany, Sweden, Japan and so forth. Maybe there are just a lot of countries in the world, and not everybody can be in the top 10 for everything every year.<p>The reasons the author lists for why my freedom is suddenly so limited don't seem like they would really impact me all that much. So there's more health care regulation. And now I'm supposed to be panicking?<p>Perhaps not.
You can see a big difference when you look at Africa. Countries like Botswana and Mauritius really have seen great gains in economic growth through economic freedom, yet we think the whole continent is struggling. Compare that with Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbambwe at the bottom. For a while Botswana was outpacing Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea in economic growth rate.
Here's the actual index <a href="http://www.heritage.org/index/" rel="nofollow">http://www.heritage.org/index/</a><p>It's a pretty well made website. You can export filtered data in csv, there are profiles for each country, etc.
I think its two difficult to put the US and UK (as examples) on the same scale as other countries. Miller suggests that tougher regulation has caused the US to loose points. I would argue the US needs more regulation, compared to smaller countries, for stability.
Unscientific rubbish. Discourse about economic justice is "value laden" but talk of economic freedom is based on "economics without values."
That's kind of a silly list. Look at the 11 countries above the U.S. in 'economic freedom'..<p>First, there's Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Mauritius -- Mauritius...?!?!? -- Ireland, Denmark, and Estonia.<p>Really? You're really going to compare those postage stam...sorry, countries, and their so-called economic freedom to the U.S.? Really?<p>Australia, Canada, Chile, and New Zealand...OK, I can perhaps buy that. Particularly Australia and Canada.<p>Now look at the countries below the U.S. Included are:<p>Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Israel...all doing quite nicely on the capitalist front.<p>Not to mention Norway, Sweden, Finland, and several other countries with arguably higher standards of living and qualities of life than the U.S.<p>A silly list purporting to demonstrate an even sillier implication.
Seems like bullshit. Australia has ludicrous regulations on competition, including a massive minimum wage, with all sorts of knock-on distortionary problems, yet it makes the top five.