Freedom ?

Mary Anastasia O'Grady wrote a great article in the Jan. 4th issue of the Wall Street Journal - I encourage you to get a copy.

It deals with the 2006 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal. The annual report surveys 157 countries, grading property rights protection, the regulatory environment, tax rates, fiscal policy, etc. assigning each a numerical rating.

Each country falls into one of four categories: "free," "mostly free," "mostly unfree" and"repressed." The best are in this order: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Estonia, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Denmark, Iceland, Australia, Chile, Switzerland and U. S.

France came in 44th. Hello France. Estonia was the rising star. You would think a country like France or Germany might say "wow, wonder why we're in the second tier - we need to make some changes." Don't hold your breath. From the bottom up you find North Korea, Burma, Libya, Zimbabwe to name a few.

Some nations are so very, very bad they can't even be ranked such as Sudan. There is a positive correlation between economic freedom and personal prosperity. One especially interesting fact is in 1998 the U.S. was # 5 - in 2001 it was # 6 and today it's tied for # 12

I don't know if I trust the statistics quoted from the survey, but it doesn't surprise me that our freedoms have been eroding away over the past (8) years...