Dakota Beacon

A headline caught my eye from The Agenda (a publication from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank). “Failing Grade: US Drops to 25th Place in Index of Economic Freedom.” That headline reported the release of Heritage’s 2024 INDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM.

A related and equally troubling headline stated, “2024 Index of Economic Freedom: World Economic Freedom Reaches a 23-Year Low; U.S. Economic Freedom Continues to Diminish.”

The first question that pops into a person’s mind might be, “What is this Index of Economic Freedom published by The Heritage Foundation?” A fair question.

In a few words, economic freedom is the fundamental right of every human to control his or her own labor and property. In an economically free society, individuals are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way they please. In economically free societies, governments allow labor, capital, and goods to move freely. These countries refrain from coercing or constraining liberty beyond the extent necessary to protect and maintain liberty itself.

Heritage Foundation measures economic freedom annually based on twelve factors grouped into four sets. The Index considers every component equally important. (See https://www.heritage.org/index/pages/report for the complete report and a discussion of the methodology.)

  --Rule of Law (property rights, government integrity, judicial effectiveness);

  --Government Size (government spending, tax burden, fiscal health);

  --Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom); and

  --Open Markets (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom).

Indexing of the countries follows a simple and straightforward methodology. Each of the twelve economic freedoms within the four sets is graded on a scale of 0 to 100. A country’s overall score is derived by averaging these twelve economic freedoms with equal weight given to each freedom.

Scores for the 2024 Index of Economic Freedom were based on data covering the second half of 2022 through the first half of 2023. To the extent possible, the information considered for each variable was current as of June 30, 2023.

Economic freedom correlates significantly with a country’s overall wellbeing including health, education, innovation, societal progress, and democratic governance. For the US, economic freedom, not the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) agenda, makes the nation cleaner, safer, and better governed.

The bad news for the US, once esteemed in the index as "mostly free," continues to diminish. This year the US reached the lowest level in the 30-year history of the Heritage index at 70.1. Accordingly, the U.S. continued its global ranking of the 25th freest in the 2024 index declining slightly from the 2023 index. The Biden administration's misguided anti-growth economic and entrepreneurial policies and the US mounting deficit spending fueled this decline as examined in the report. The US debt now stands at $35 trillion and is climbing.

Countries rated most economically free at the top of the index include #1 Singapore (83.5), #2 Switzerland (83.0), #3 Ireland (82.6), and #4 Taiwan (80.0).

Countries at the bottom of the index, as would be expected, include #176 North Korea (2.9), #175 Cuba (25.7), #174 Venezuela (28.1), #173 Sudan (33.9), and #172 Zimbabwe (38.2). These countries remained the world's least economically free states.

Ronald Reagan, 40^th president of the US, once observed, “You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

For better or worse, economic freedom does not arrive gratuitously. Economic freedom must be earned and sustained by each generation.

As goes the culture, so goes freedom. Sadly, as an objective and measurable truth, the US continues to glide downward in economic freedom.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).