Thank You, Obama: U.S. Steadily Lost Ground On Economic Freedom Over Past 8 Years

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SOURCE: INVESTOR's BUSINESS DAILY

URL: http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/thank-you-obama-the-u-s-steadily-lost-ground-on-economic-freedom-over-past-8-years/


Economy: The U.S. currently ranks a dispiriting 17th on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. That's down from 6th when Obama took office in 2009. The question isn't whether President Trump can turn this dismal trend around, it's whether Democrats will let him.

The Heritage Foundation has been publishing this index since 1995. It measures things like property rights, fiscal health, business freedom, tax burden, government spending, rule of law and other indicators of economic freedom in 186 countries. Based on these, each country gets an overall freedom index score, which then can be ranked against other countries.

As Heritage points out, there is good reason to focus on these measures of economic freedom, since they directly correlate with a country's growth and prosperity. "The affirmative link between economic freedom and long-term development is unmistakable and robust," the report notes. "The higher a country's level of economic freedom is, the higher its income per capita also is."

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The U.S. now ranks behind Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand Canada, Taiwan, the U.K., Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Even Lithuania currently has more economic freedom than the U.S.