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 …
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 …
The President asserted during a major speech in January: “One of the greatest contributions the United States can make to the world is to promote freedom,” he said. “A creative, competitive America is the answer to a changing world, not trade wars that would close doors, create greater barriers and destroy millions of jobs. We should always remember: Protectionism is destructionism.” But the President who spoke those words was Ronald Reagan, in his very last State of the Union Address about 20 years ago. How would President Reagan respond to …
Several leading European and Canadian health economists, physicians and scholars — in Washington recently for the Galen Institute’s conference, “Lessons from Abroad for Health Reform in the US” — met with analysts from the Heritage Foundation and other conservative think-tank leaders. They wanted to explain why Americans should be concerned when officials push for government-controlled, universal health care coverage that includes innocuous-sounding but largely intrusive and prohibitive health measures. “We were told single-payer health care would be a true liberation for Canada when they enacted it 40 years ago, and …
