In his recent commentary in the Financial Times, Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard, made a strong case for the importance of education in heading off future crises in capitalism: Societies need to find ways to make adult education, including economic and financial literacy, far more available and far more compelling. If voters are uninformed and easily swayed towards demagogues peddling short-term ill-considered policies, there is little hope for righting the course of capitalist economies. As someone who has spoken to all kinds of people in the wake …
Barron’s published its year-end roundtable discussion with 10 money managers and financial market experts on Saturday. The star investors voiced their concerns about three government-related problems that threaten economic growth and prosperity in this country. 1. Cumbersome government regulations are holding businesses back and discouraging investors from investing in American companies. Mark Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report in Hong Kong, warns, “The regulatory environment is bad under the current administration. I don’t see a lot of people wanting to invest in the U.S. Statistics …
Heritage and the Wall Street Journal released the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom on Thursday, ranking 179 countries on 10 benchmarks that gauge their economic success. This year Heritage introduced a new interactive feature that gives you the opportunity to create a comparative graph. This week’s chart shows how the United States stacks up against Canada and the United Kingdom. As recently as 2009, the United States led both countries in economic freedom. But after four years of decline, the United States is heading in the wrong direction. This year …
Yesterday, Heritage’s 2012 Index of Economic Freedom was released, and Africa features prominently. With an average score gain of 0.2 points, reflecting a net gain of economic freedom in 22 countries, sub-Saharan Africa is once again the most improved region. While scores of Western nations have seen their ratings plummet (including the United States), Africa has made noticeable progress. The small island nation of Mauritius (#8) is the first African country to break into the top 10 rankings. Botswana (#33), Rwanda (#59) and Cape Verde (#66) have also made substantial …
President Obama recently lectured Americans on economics during a campaign stop in Osawatomie, Kansas. The New York Times congratulated President Obama’s speech as a potent blow against market economics. Cal-Berkeley professor Robert Reich called it the most important speech of his presidency. The Kansas City Star gushed over his good policy and good politics. In reality, President Obama disastrously misdiagnosed the source of U.S. economic problems: Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and it’s made it easier for them …
The slogan “War breeds war. Peace breeds prosperity” has become a favorite idea of the anti-war faction on the right. Unlike their anti-war allies on the left, who favor protectionism, those like Congressman Ron Paul (R–TX) are rightly committed to economic freedom. Their mistake lies in thinking that commerce and security are separate issues. Nothing could be more at odds with the experience of American statecraft. In 1789, the blessings of liberty secured by the Constitution began to manifest themselves (see chart) as imports (light blue) and exports (dark blue) …
The Acton Institute is leading a new initiative called PovertyCure to help the poor in developing countries. Their approach is to rethink poverty by putting the human person at the center of the discussion. PovertyCure is an international network of organizations and individuals seeking to ground responses to global poverty in a proper understanding of human dignity and flourishing. According to their new Web site: When we put the person at the center of our economic thinking, we transform the way we look at wealth and poverty. Instead of asking …
Recently, radical environmentalists have waged a campaign to stifle free enterprise and economic freedom. Here are some of their recent skirmishes, ranging from crop destruction in Australia to attacks on toy companies like Lego and Disney: Photos of Greenpeace activists destroying an experimental crop of genetically modified (GM) wheat earlier this month in Australia. They apparently decided that they have the right to act lawlessly and destroy work by scientists designed to feed a hungry world. Even The New York Times rebuked Greenpeace’s actions and argued that the GM wheat …
On June 20, the government of Belize expropriated the 70 percent ownership interest in the Belize Electric Company (BEL) held by the shareholder-owned, Canada-based energy giant Fortis. Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL), a hydroelectric business that Fortis also owns, has not been expropriated—yet. Fortis has invested more than $400 million in Belize. BEL is insolvent and $27 million in debt. BEL officials blame the insolvency on the government of Prime Minister Dean Barrow, saying they were forced to sell electricity in Belize at rates lower than the cost to acquire …
Economic freedom, enhanced by limited government, is critical to economic dynamism and job creation, as documented in the Index of Economic Freedom, an annual cross-country policy analysis by The Heritage Foundation. The individual economies of our 50 states are no exception to that. The strongly positive linkage between economic freedom and economic dynamism holds true for states as well as nations. High-stakes policy battles are going on in all 50 states about whether to move toward more limited government and greater economic freedom. According to a 2011 state-level study by …
