For the first time in the 11 year history of the Index of Economic Freedom; the United States was not rated in the top ten. Out of the 17 countries rated as having “free” economies, the U.S. tied for 12th. This represents a low point in our countries economic history; although its not entirely unexpected. The country that was, at one time, the pinnacle of economic freedom has slowly been eroding away. The causes can be tracked to government spending, government regulation, and corporate welfare. This kind of news bothers me as much (or more) than news about the erosion of our civil liberties. Hopefully this will spur our countries leaders to pursue real tax and spending reform.
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I was just thinking about this yesterday, in fact: how can a country call itself a capitalistic society, free of government regulation, when our entire economy seems to be based on the whims of Alan Greenspan and how this one government representative dinks around with interest rates? How did we end up with the government setting interest rates int he first place? Isn\’t that antithetical to a free market?
In other news, Liz and I are seriously looking at buying houses – thus the interest in, well, interest rates. 🙂