Fraser’s Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report 2022. It reports on the economic freedom for the year 2020. Hong Kong remains in the top position, though its rating fell an additional 0.28 points. Singapore, once again, comes in second. The next highest-scoring nations are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, United States, Estonia, Mauritius, and Ireland. The rankings of some other major countries are Japan (12th), Canada (14th), Germany (24th), Italy (43rd), France (54th), Mexico (65th), India (90th), Russia (94th), Brazil(114th), and China (116th). [via Atanu Dey]
Russ Roberts: “”I came to realize that economists…tend to focus on things that can be measured. Dignity is hard to measure. A sense of self is hard to measure. Belonging is hard to measure. A feeling of transcendence is hard to measure. Mattering—that you are important, that people look to you. [These sorts of things are] about the life well-lived and they’re not about getting the most out of your money. They’re not about what the interest rates are next week. And economists truthfully have virtually nothing to say about these things.” [via Reason]
Samuel Gregg: “[G]overnment use of industrial policy undermines the market’s ability to furnish the accurate information needed by entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses to identify the most optimal economic path for each of them to follow – a process which constantly allows millions of piecemeal improvements to be made across the overall economy. By contrast, if industrial policies become a central feature of economic life, inefficiencies will grow throughout the economy as people act on the basis of increasingly bad information.” [via CafeHayek]
