Economic Freedom of the World–Part One
Kurt Brouwer September 6th, 2007
Every year the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, British Columbia measures economic freedom in countries around the world. They have a good system for grading and measuring economic freedom, which they discuss in the executive summary (see page 27) of the full report [emphasis added]:
‘…The index published in Economic Freedom of the World measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries support economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of privately owned property. Forty-two data points are used to construct a summary index and to measure the degree of economic freedom in five broad areas: (1) size of government; (2) legal structure and security of property rights; (3) access to sound money; (4) freedom to trade internationally; and (5) regulation of credit, labor and business…’
I believe we take our economic freedoms for granted more than we do other freedoms. When was the last time, you heard someone praise our property rights or our access to sound money or freedom to trade abroad. Yet, each of these freedoms is essential to our prosperity and the strength and resilience of our economy.
The beauty of our economy is that we have a high degree of freedom, including the freedom to innovate, the freedom to start a business or to move to a new job or even to try and fail in business.
From our perspective, our system seems permanent, but when we get to Part Two, we’ll take a look at two countries–Zimbabwe and Venezuela–that are steadily losing their freedoms. And, we’ll see a list of countries, primarily in Africa, that have never had much freedom. A direct consequence of the low level of economic freedom in those countries is a debased or even dying economy.
Hat tip: BrothersJuddBlog
- Economy , Geopolitics , Money
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