September 9, 2022
The Fraser Institute released their annual ranking yesterday. The results aren’t encouraging to anyone who cares about human well-being and economic growth.
The reason:
Over at AIER, Phil Magness and James Harrigan offer commentary. A snippet:
“While the United States has been kicking around in the top ten, even if falling, for decades, it is not doing all that well when compared to itself over time. Indeed, the US’s cumulative rating of 7.97 is considerably lower than its 1980 rating of 8.34. Digging into the recent data, the United States dropped in rank across all five indexed categories from 2019 to 2020. The most significant changes have been in the size of government and regulation categories, where the United States fell 7.32 to 6.79, and 8.68 to 8.11, respectively. Both measures directly reflect the COVID era’s unprecedented expansions of government, as federal spending was unleashed from any semblance of fiscal constraint and draconian regulatory intrusions on daily economic life reached every single American.”
Don Boudreaux comments indirectly:
“Just today, the Fraser Institute released its 2022 Annual Report on Economic Freedom of the World. In this data- and detail-rich assessment of economic freedom in 165 countries, Bangladesh ranks near the bottom, at 139. It’s one of the least economically free countries on earth. The U.S., in contrast, ranks as the world’s seventh economically free country. Unlike in the U.S., property rights in Bangladesh are highly insecure, corruption is rampant, and contract enforcement is among the sorriest in the world – worse even than in Venezuela.”
Here’s Fraser’s annual report and here’s the list.
As I recently commented, tongue-in-cheek, the U.S. is increasingly under-regulated.
“My concern is that the United States economy is becoming more deregulated and at an increasing rate. With the United States slipping in annual “freedom of the world” reports, the most important regulatory constraints are being gradually relaxed.”