The Level Of Economic Freedom In The United States Is At An All-Time Low

 

World economic freedom averaged a record 60.3 out of 100 in 2014, with the U.S. dropping to 12th position, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom shows. As Bloomberg's Niraj Shah points out, Ireland is the most economically liberal nation in the euro area and Hong Kong the most liberal in the world. Greece, Italy, France, Cyprus and the U.K. had lower scores than 20 years ago.

But it is the ongoing tumble in the US that is of most relevance and concern...

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Americans have never had less economic freedom than they do right now. The 2014 Index of Economic Freedom has just been released, and it turns out that the level of economic freedom in the United States has now fallen for seven consecutive years. But of course none of us need a report or a survey to tell us that. All we have to do is open our eyes and look around. At this point our entire society is completely dominated by control freaks and bureaucrats. Our economy is literally being suffocated to death by millions of laws, rules and regulations and each year brings a fresh tsunami of red tape. As you will see below, the U.S. government issued more than 80,000 pages of brand new rules and regulations last year on top of what we already had. Even if we didn't have all of the other monumental economic problems that we are currently facing, all of this bureaucracy alone would be enough to kill our economy.

Yes, every society needs a few basic rules. We would have total chaos if we did not have any laws at all. But in general, when there is more economic freedom there tends to be more economic prosperity. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was during a time when the federal government was much smaller, there was no Federal Reserve and there was no income tax. Most Americans do not know this.

Those that founded this nation intended for it to be a place where freedom was maximized and government intrusion into our lives was minimized.

If they were still alive today, they would be absolutely horrified. We are literally drowning in red tape.

The photo posted below was shared by U.S. Senator Mike Lee on his Facebook page. Study it carefully...

The following is what he had to say about this photo...

"Behold my display of the 2013 Federal Register. It contains over 80,000 pages of new rules, regulations, and notices all written and passed by unelected bureaucrats. The small stack of papers on top of the display are the laws passed by elected members of Congress and signed into law by the president."

I didn't even see the small stack of paper at the top of the cabinet until I read his explanation. Most of the time everyone is so focused on what Congress is doing, but the truth is that the real oppression is happening behind the scenes as unelected federal bureaucrats pump out millions upon millions of useless regulations that are systematically killing our economic freedom.

On Tuesday, an article about the 2014 Index of Economic Freedom was published by the Wall Street Journal. As I mentioned above, the United States has fallen for seven years in a row...

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