The U.S.A., once number one for economic freedom, has sunk to number 12 per the Heritage Foundation. (Top seven: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Chile.)
Somewhere, some leftist is going “Yeah cool! Because economic freedom sux!” Well then. The U.S.A., once number one as a place to be born, has sunk to number 16 in The Economist magazine’s more Europe-friendly rankings. (Compare to 1988 ranking, here.)
What about political-social freedoms, like freedom of the press? The U.S.A., once number one for that, has sunk to number 49. Behind South Africa, Slovenia, even Germany.
As Reporters Without Borders puts it:
In the United States, 2014 was marked by judicial harassment of New York Times investigative reporter James Risen in connection with the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer charged under the Espionage Act with giving him classified information. US journalists are still not protected by a federal shield law that would guarantee their right not to name their sources or reveal other confidential information about their work. Meanwhile, at least 15 journalists were arbitrarily arrested during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against black teenager Michael Brown’s fatal shooting…
And where would RPB rank us, if they could consider that our tax authority specially targets our domestic political dissidents (Tea Party conservatives)?
“Thanks, Obama!”
Why shouldn’t reporters who ignore lawful orders be arrested?
And from what I saw many of the Ferguson “reporters” were instigators and organizers, not neutral reporters.
Are you more highlighting the flaws in RPB’s ranking method? or more contending that the U.S. still has excellent political/press freedoms?
(continued) In other words, while RPB’s point about Ferguson may be bad as you say, their points about James Risen and shield laws seem valid. Also worthy of mention would be Obama administration spying on reporters in general.
The Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index for the U.S. is actually increasing again. We may have finally come out of the freedom decline that started back in 2008, but we need more data to see if we start trending upwards again, or if we continue to plummet.
Out of curiosity, how difficult is it for American citizens to obtain Canadian citizenship? Just trying to keep my options open in case things really go south.
“The Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index for the U.S. is actually increasing again.” – Sure of that? Why would it increase? Asking because I’m pretty sure that 12, as a comparative ranking, is a new low.
I interviewed with a Canadian company this morning.
The IRS doesn’t just audit conservatives. In fact outspoken democrat Tracy Lauren Marrow has said he was audited every year Obama has been in. He is better known by his stage name ICE T
@ ILC: Yes, we’re 12th in the world overall. But if you go to their site, you can see that we made an increase of 0.7 on the overall index from 2014- that’s a sizable score change. Of the countries ahead of us, Denmark, Mauritius, Ireland, and Estonia are within a point of us on the overall index. Estonia had a 0.9 increase over their 2014 score. It’s not a matter of us continuing to fall, it’s a matter of other countries improving longer and/or faster than we are.
Get Scott Walker in the Oval Office, and the U.S. will certainly return to being the freest economy in the region.
Let’s hope!
ILC — both. Journalists can commit crimes — and take part in rioting — just like anyone else. And the press is still free in the US.
Yes, they’re corrupt, but they’re still free to report what the government doesn’t want heard.