Index: United States Economic Freedom Slides To Historic Low
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After eight years of the regulation-happy Obama administration, the United States has undergone a huge slide into the 17th most economically free country in the world, according to the Heritage Foundation’s 2017 Index of Economic Freedom.
Under president Obama, the federal government issued over 600 major regulations, costing the U.S. economy hundreds of millions of dollars. Those regulations were placed on top of the 426 regulations introduced under eight years of George W. Bush.
Although Obama left the Oval Office confident in his legacy as a positive attribute to the U.S. economy, the proof which lies in the pudding couldn’t be any more contradicting.
For the 9th time in past ten years, the United States has become less economically free.
According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2017 index, the U.S. ranks 17th out of 180 rated economies, trailing behind economies such as Switzerland (4th), Australia (5th), Chile (10th), and the United Kingdom (12th).
The “land of the free” was placed into the “mostly free” category, the second-tier economic freedom status into which it dropped in 2010.
In 2016, the U.S. ranked 11th in economic freedom.
For over two decades the index has measured a nation’s commitment to limited government and free enterprise on a scale of 0 to 100 by evaluating four critical policy pillars, including rule of law and regulatory efficiency.
Anthony Kim of the Daily Signal writes of the Unites States’ new historic low in the index:
A substantial expansion in the size and scope of government under the Obama administration—including through new and costly regulations in areas like finance, health care, and the environment—has hit wide swaths of the economy, affecting almost every American in some way and reducing opportunities for nongovernmental production and investment.
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