Less Free

Friday 20 September 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Why the United States has fallen dramatically since 2000 as a country that had routinely been in the top 3 worldwide for economic freedom:

The authors [of the Economic Freedom of the World 2013 Annual Report] attribute the massive plunge with regard to Legal Systems and Property Rights largely to the “use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ram[i]fications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case.” But the U.S. has declined in all areas ranked by the index: Size of Government, Legal Systems and Property Rights, Sound Money, Freedom To Trade Internationally, and Regulation. In economic terms, the U.S. is not just a little less free than it was in 2000, but far less free. And it’s much less attractive to international investors and entrepreneurs as a place to try to build businesses and create wealth.

A decade of governments stealing from private landholders in order to sell said land to the politically connected, the community destroying war on drugs, the bank and individual freedom busting war on terror, government removing liability from private debt holders from having to pay their debts, blistering levels of government spending alongside massive growths in the size and scope of government, the obliteration of the dollar in an attempt to keep housing prices artificially high, and tomes of regulatory hurdles have made economic transactions of all kinds more expensive and more difficult. The common thread? Government. Please, Get. The. Fuck. Out. Of. The. Way.

And to rub highly regulated salt in to the wound? Those who rely on the taxes and regulatory burdens that the rest of us are suffering from are living phat. They’re ahead nearly 25% over the last decade while the rest of us actually suffer the consequences of their actions.

2013-09-20  »  madlibertarianguy