A free and prosperous world through choice, markets and responsibility”-Fraizier Institute

A free and prosperous world through choice, markets and responsibility” The Canadian Frazier Institute, a respected free market think tank that studies the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on individuals and society. But that agreeable motto bears little resemblance with what has happened to the United States economy... and Frazier offers proof. Annually the Institute publishes its Economic Freedom of the World Report, which reviews the policies in each country that either support or harm economic freedom. The basics measured are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of privately owned property. The specifics include... 1) Size of government: expenditures, taxes, and enterprises 2) Legal structure and security of property rights 3) Access to sound money 4) Freedom to trade internationally, and 5) Regulation of credit, labor, and business. For 2011, Frazier reports that economic freedom has suffered around the globe. It’s worse for Americans... In 2000 the U.S. was ranked 3rd in the world behind only Hong Kong and Singapore; in the 2011 report, the U.S. is ranked 10th behind countries such as Canada, Chile, Australia, and even the United Kingdom. Certainly, four million American homes are in foreclosure, millions more are “under water,” the real unemployment rate is nearly 16%, George Bush, Barack Obama and a complicit U.S. Congress have wasted 10 trillion of our tax dollars on big business, union and bank bailouts, while Wall Street rewarded itself with an astounding $160 billion in bonuses the year after the global financial crisis they helped to create. Economic freedom indeed! The Frazier Institute says the decline in U.S. freedom is due to massively higher government spending and borrowing, increased regulation and especially, less secure property rights. Ballooning federal and state budget deficits have crowded out available private credit causing this particular rating to fall to 0.0 from 9.3 (out of 10) since 2000. Asset forfeiture laws, eminent domain abuse, the overreaching wars on drugs and terrorism, the PATRIOT Act and warrantless wiretaps have also diminished the security of property and all other rights. Under the current and past president, bailouts, debt crises, and political stalemates replaced balanced budgets, sound money, and privatization. Now Obama and his leftist allies blindly insist that free markets have failed, that trillions more be spent on government stimulus and subsidies, and that more regulations will somehow succeed when they have just proven to be abject failures.