Free Republic

Hong Kong has been dropped from The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom this year because its economic policies are controlled by Beijing. Hong Kong topped the list for 25 years till 2019. Financial experts in Hong Kong believe that the Chinese communist regime’s rapid encroachment on Hong Kong’s freedom has accelerated the deterioration of Hong Kong’s economic environment. On Mar. 4, the Heritage Foundation released the index for 2021. Singapore ranked as the world’s freest economy for the second year. Both Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions of China that are no longer included in the Index...

It's been a year since the world encountered COVID-19. On December 31, 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. On January 21, the virus made it to the U.S. As the events unfolded, we've seen the Trump administration being just as effective as the Democrat governors and legislators were inadequate. Mainstream media portray the Chinese virus as some kind of zombie apocalypse with an imminent death awaiting everyone who dares peek a nose outside his basement. To get a picture of how ridiculously and...

The debate in the United States over whether to move away from free markets and toward socialism may change dramatically as the latest coronavirus spreads throughout the world. That’s because in the fight against the global pandemic, we’ll likely witness one of the most compelling arguments in our lifetimes emerge in favor of free-market systems – and lives will be saved in the process. The pandemic will demonstrate that nations with the freest markets and freest people tend to have the health care systems with the greatest capacity to handle such a crisis. Free-market incentives have produced health care systems...

On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), sat for a discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. She dropped a number of shocking statements -- statements that elicited nothing but murmurs of agreement from Coates. AOC claimed: "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." How, pray tell, are American billionaires responsible for such massive theft? According to AOC, the very mechanisms of capitalism mandate such theft. In her view, successful businesspeople simply exploit their workers while maximizing their profits. Hypothetically speaking about billionaires making widgets, she said: "You didn't make those widgets! You sat on a couch while...

NEW YORK — A little freedom goes a long way, especially when it comes to reducing poverty. The Atlas Network recently recognized several free-market think tanks that have helped move people dramatically from disadvantage to entrepreneurship to employment and toward prosperity.The Atlas Network supports and/or collaborates with some 500 pro-liberty organizations in the USA and 95 countries. On principle, Atlas Network does this with strictly private funds. These three think tanks have distinguished themselves in combating poverty and improving the atmosphere for human flourishing in developing nations.The Atlas Network bestowed the $100,000 Templeton Freedom Award for 2019 to the Foundation...

A recent survey conducted by the Victims of Communism and polled by YouGov, a research and data firm, found that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist and that one in three millennials saw communism as "favorable." Let's examine this tragic vision in light of the Fraser Institute's recently released annual study "Economic Freedom of the World," prepared by Professors James Gwartney, Florida State University; Robert A. Lawson and Ryan Murphy of Southern Methodist University; and Joshua Hall, West Virginia University, in cooperation with the Economic Freedom Network. Hong Kong and Singapore maintained their lead as the world's most...

Why does most of Africa stay poor while other parts of the world prosper? People blame things like climate, the history of colonialism, racism, etc. But I say Senegalese businesswoman Magatte Wade gives the right explanation: too many rules. “Once you hire someone, good luck getting rid of them for any reason,” Wade complains. Her government must approve every firing. “Then the tax code is so complicated… worth at least two or three truckloads of paper.” Wade started a lip balm company. Some of her ingredients are not made in Senegal, so she imports them. To “protect” Senegalese manufacturers, the...

Hugo Chavez was one of the most evil socialist dictators ever. He took the richest country in Latin America, Venezuela, and turned it into a disaster of misery and poverty in only five years. How bad? The people had no food or toilet paper. And critics of Chavez were tortured and murdered. Isn't socialism wonderful? But it gets worse. Just like Fidel Castro, Chavez got filthy rich based on the misery of his own people. His family made billions. Then this evil dictator died of cancer. He turned the country over to his handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro. Maduro ran the...

If someone were to ask you to name the economically freest country in the world, what would you say? Probably the United States. Even many non-Americans would likely give that answer. Unfortunately, they’d be wrong. The economy that enjoys the highest level of economic freedom is thousands of miles away. It’s Hong Kong. The United States, surprisingly enough, isn’t even in the top 10 of the latest “Index of Economic Freedom,” an annual data-driven research project that scores and ranks almost every country. So where does the U.S. finish in the 2019 Index? No. 12. That puts us between Iceland...

Two hundred and forty-one years ago, this country was wrestled away from the tyrannical forces of the British Empire. The United States founders planted the seeds of enlightenment principals that have lasted all these years later. Enlightenment principals include things such as freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to defend yourself and the overall ownership of yourself. Basically, these principals protect individuals from oppressive government rule. These ideas also manifested in the form of economic freedom, in which you are free to carve out your own path by making voluntary transactions. Unfortunately, governments stand in...

Americans readily accept two opposing ideas about the first Thanksgiving — one bright and highly idealized, the other gray and somber, but closer to the truth. Jean Leon Gerome Ferris captured the first idea in a painting completed in 1915, some three centuries after the actual event. In his First Thanksgiving 1621, we see prosperous, black-clad Pilgrims in the company of new-found friends — bare-chested Indians in feathered war bonnets (one of several historical inaccuracies). The “thanks” here are for a bountiful harvest and the early realization of America as a land of milk and honey.But how could it have...

The annual Economic Freedom of the World report has been released and it shows a slight improvement in the rankings for the United States. The report is copublished by the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada and more than 70 think tanks around the world. The criteria used to determine which countries enjoy the most economic freedom include sound money, rule of law, and security of property rights, among other factors. The US ranking had been in steady decline for the last few decades which contrasts with the ranking we enjoyed in the 1980s and early 90's when we were...

Lovers of socialism didn't like my column last week. I wrote that Venezuela's collapse shows the cluelessness of celebrities like Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and Noam Chomsky, who'd praised Venezuela's leader. Chomsky called me "an utter coward" for mocking him and said he expected "an abject apology." He won't get one. As Venezuelan-born filmmaker Thor Halvorssen puts it, "Chomsky provided cover for a regime where 11,500 infants died from lack of medical care." But assigning blame matters less than what should be done now. After the regime collapses, what comes next? How about trying capitalism? That's what Erick Brimen suggests....

The Index of Economic Freedom is my favorite annual publication from the Heritage Foundation. It’s a rich source of information, using dozens of data sources, about economic liberty around the world. I first wrote about the Index back in 2010 and shared the bad news that the U.S. score dropped dramatically in Obama’s first year. Well, the new Index lets us see the net effect of Obama’s entire tenure. The worse news is that the U.S. score has dropped to 75.1 on a 0-100 scale. And the worst news is that this represents America’s lowest score in the twenty-plus years...

Calls are my favorite, this one though is one of the best EVA! Juan is the man, and his common sense exudes forth like a graduate degree with attitude. What a great call!

Hooray, we’re number . . . 16!? The latest Index of the Economic Freedom of the World was released last week, and the United States held its ranking as the 16th freest economy (see page 8 of the report), the same ranking as last year. I suppose it could have been worse. The Economic Freedom of the World report is put together every year by a consortium of more than 70 think tanks from around the world. It rates countries on a variety of policies from the size of government and the tax and regulatory burden to the soundness of...

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, when in fact the results never change, is one definition of insanity. That definition works for economic insanity, too. Over the past seven-and-a-half years, President Obama has maintained a steady course of burdensome new regulations, significant tax increases, and massive federal spending on so-called infrastructure. He has unconstitutionally ordered executive actions, favored labor over business, attacked banks, insulted successful corporate leaders, and backed federal-government mandates on business. And with all this, strong economic recovery from a deep recession -- which has been an American tradition -- never came...

Justin Trudeau, Canada’s new prime minister, is currently visiting Washington to deepen ties with President Barack Obama and make headway on an ambitious left-leaning agenda on a wider range of issues. From an economics perspective, the summit is basically like Trudeaunomics-meets-Obamanomics, which can double the risk of undermining Canada’s economic freedom and dynamism. […] The U.S. has fallen from the 6th freest economy in the world, when Obama took office, to 11th place in 2016. America’s declining score in the index is closely related to the Obamanomics, which has been hurting the economic livelihood of the poor and minorities the...

Millions of people around the world are emerging from poverty thanks to rising economic freedom. But by sharp contrast, America's economic freedom has been on a declining path over the past decade. According to the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual publication by The Heritage Foundation, America's economic freedom has tumbled. With losses of economic freedom in eight of the past nine years, the U.S. has tied its worst score ever, wiping out a decade of progress. The U.S. has fallen from the 6th freest economy in the world, when President Barack Obama took office, to 11th place in...

An activist government can wreak havoc on the free market. From our nation's earliest days, it was heard that "the power to tax is the power to destroy." But Americans should be especially wary of when the government steps beyond setting rules for the marketplace and seeks to set the marketplace itself. This is the risk when government regulators overplay their hand with pending mergers and acquisitions. Consumers are served best by free markets, even when market forces drive some competitors to consolidate or merge. 2015 was the biggest year ever for corporate mergers, with roughly $4.7 trillion in mergers...