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| International |
| Eclipsed by the Golden Globes - WSJ releases Freedom Index - a bunch of our favorites won |
| 2004-01-27 |
| EFL The Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have just published their 2004 Index of Economic Freedom. This index ranks countries on the basis of how open their economies are. The 10 categories the index measure are: trade policy, fiscal burden of government, government intervention in the economy, monetary policy, foreign investment, banking, wages and prices, property rights, black markets, property rights. Those countries with a higher ranking in this index also show higher per capita incomes and a higher standard of living. There is a close correlation between this index and the Human Development Index generated by the United Nations. There is also a close correlation between these economic and social indexes and the type of political regime the countries have. Dictatorships, repressive governments, in general, countries in the hands of primitive bullies, such as Zimbabwe, Libya and North Korea, have very impoverished and ignorant societies. This index subdivides the 155 countries analyzed in four groups of economies: Free, Mostly Free, Mostly Unfree and Repressed. While Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom and the United States have free economies, countries like Nigeria and Haiti are examples of mostly unfree economies. Further down the ladder, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Libya, North Korea and Venezuela are examples of repressed economies. In a regional basis most of Latin America countries lowered their scores, Venezuela becoming the worst country in the hemisphere, below Haiti and Cuba. Our country [Venezuela] deserved the position 147 in the group of 155 countries, only marginally better than Iran, Burma, Laos, Zimbabwe, North Korea and Libya. |
| Posted by:Super Hose |