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Always to be taken with a skeptical eye, of course. But I found this interesting. The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation released their ranking for 2003 of the level of "economic freedom" present in 156 countries. This is predominantly a measure of how free the markets are in each country's economy. If factors in things like monetary and fiscal policy, likelihood of government intervention, regulation, and property rights. Being "freer" is not necessarily going to correlate with everyone's idea of perfection.
To give you a rough idea: Hong Kong topped the list. The USA is tied for sixth, Canada is tied for eighteenth, and Cuba and North Korea are at the bottom of the list.
These rankings were broadly divided into four categories: "free," "mostly free", "mostly unfree" and "repressed."
Now, these are the tidbits I found interesting:
"'Free' countries in 2000 had an average per capita income of $26,855, while 'mostly free' countries had slightly less than half that."
"'Mostly unfree' economies averaged only $3,229 in per capita income".
Wish I could find the median incomes, and not just the mean.
To give you a rough idea: Hong Kong topped the list. The USA is tied for sixth, Canada is tied for eighteenth, and Cuba and North Korea are at the bottom of the list.
These rankings were broadly divided into four categories: "free," "mostly free", "mostly unfree" and "repressed."
Now, these are the tidbits I found interesting:
"'Free' countries in 2000 had an average per capita income of $26,855, while 'mostly free' countries had slightly less than half that."
"'Mostly unfree' economies averaged only $3,229 in per capita income".
Wish I could find the median incomes, and not just the mean.
