America Now Less Free Than Canada

Sweet Land of Liberty, this was once called; and it will be again — provided our current government is run out of Washington. Under Comrade Obama, America is dropping like a stone on the Index of Economic Freedom.

This year, of the world’s 20 largest economies, the U.S. suffered the largest drop in overall economic freedom. … Scores declined in seven of the 10 categories of economic freedom. Losses were particularly significant in the areas of financial and monetary freedom and property rights. Driving it all were the federal government’s interventionist responses to the financial and economic crises of the last two years, which have included politically influenced regulatory changes, protectionist trade restrictions, massive stimulus spending and bailouts of financial and automotive firms deemed “too big to fail.” These policies have resulted in job losses, discouraged entrepreneurship, and saddled America with unprecedented government deficits.

In the world-wide rankings of economic freedom, the U.S. fell to eighth from sixth place. Canada now ranks higher and boasts North America’s freest economy. More worrisome, for the first time in the Index’s 16-year history, the U.S. has fallen out of the elite group of countries identified as “economically free” by the objective measures of the Index.

This is terrible news for patriots — and would be for liberals too, if they wanted what they say they want:

Citizens of economically freer countries enjoy much higher per-capita incomes on average than those who live in less free economies. Economic freedom also has positive impacts on overall quality of life, political and social conditions, and even on protection of the environment. Perhaps of most significance in these hard times, Index data indicate that freer economies do a much better job of reducing poverty than more highly regulated economies. …

President Obama professes desire to foster prosperity, environmental protection, poverty reduction and better health care. How ironic, then, that his economic proposals so consistently ignore or even undermine the one system — free enterprise capitalism — that has proven best able to achieve those goals.

Unfortunately liberalism is not about reducing poverty or preserving the environment, or liberals would embrace economic freedom. It is about control for the sake of control — or as George Orwell put it, “a boot stamping on a human face.”

Now America’s once high-flying economy is barely crawling forward. Americans deserve better, and they can do better — as soon as they reverse course and start regaining the economic freedom that made America the most prosperous country in the world.

If we don’t, we will continue plunging toward the bottom of the index, where North Korea has achieved last place by taking progressive politics farther than any other country. In this moonbat utopia, people shiver and starve in the darkness, terrified of their own government.

Thank you Massachusetts, for helping to lead us away from the abyss and back toward greatness by rejecting Obamunism and electing Scott Brown.

north-korea_dark.jpg
North Korea shows us our dark future if we don’t reverse course.

Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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