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 …
NASA’s shuttle program came to an end yesterday when Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Center after a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. Atlantis, which embarked on its first mission in 1985, spent 307 days in space and traveled nearly 126 million miles during its 33 flights. President Obama will take a break from debt talks today and welcome New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. The two will be discussing economic stability and national security issues. Key is also seeking progress on trade, but said yesterday the …
In 1966, God was pronounced dead. More recently, it was determined that God is back. But now a team of researchers has put him on the endangered species list. “Religion may become extinct in nine nations,” says a BBC headline today reporting on a presentation made at the American Physical Society meeting. Based on census data showing increased religious non-affiliation, the study “indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.” “The idea is pretty simple,” says one of the researchers. “It posits that social groups that …
In economics, signaling to convey information about can come in a variety of forms. You can signal in job interviews by what you reveal on your resume; you can signal to people just by the type of car you drive. In New Zealand, the parliamentary committee is suggesting the country should implement carbon caps to signal to the rest of the world, even if it does nothing to improve the environment, that New Zealand is “doing something.” The Wall Street Journal reports: To the annals of global warming lunacy, add …
While liberals in Congress are turning away from free trade with Colombia, South Korea, Peru, and Panama, China is busy inking deals with the rest of the world. The International Herald Tribune reports: New Zealand’s Parliament on Thursday passed into law the first bilateral free trade deal between China and a developed western economy, in a move that will give the country fresh advantage in one of the world’s biggest markets. The China Free Trade Agreement Bill, which will phase out tariffs on a broad range of goods and services …
