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by mediascreen 1074 days ago
People often see the United States as the ultimate free market, but compared to other countries it can be seen as pretty heavily regulated.

According to the Heritage Foundation's Economic Freedom ranking, it ranks 25th, well below "socialist" states like Denmark (in 9th place) and Sweden (in 10th place).

https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
1 comments
lapcat 1074 days ago
That's a political propaganda piece by a notorious right-wing think tank.

"The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, whose policies were taken from Heritage's policy study Mandate for Leadership." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation

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mediascreen 1074 days ago
I know they are a right-wing think tank, that is why I referenced them when it comes to rank "market economy" factors that people who believe in and want to have "free markets" care about.

In what way is it a political propaganda piece? From what I can tell it's a pretty transparent ranking of countries by factors that the organisation cares about.

While the Scandinavian countries have high taxes and regulated labour markets, they have deregulated markets, strong property protections and are very simple to do business in.

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lapcat 1074 days ago
One of their policy goals is deregulation in the United States. Thus, they have a vested interest in showing that the United States has too many regulations.

And they don't even define what their categories mean. I'm willing to bet that "labor freedom" to them means "right-to-work" and no minimum wage, for example. In any case, without proper measurable definitions, they can easily manipulate their index to say whatever they want.

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mediascreen 1074 days ago
I think that pages 403-415 provides pretty good definitions[0]

But that's not my point. My point is only that there are aspects of a typical free market economy (by American right wing definitions) that are better represented in countries other than the US.

[0] https://www.heritage.org/index/pdf/2023/book/2023_IndexOfEco...

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