Thursday, March 08, 2007
They'll never take our freedom!
Well now, this is just fascinating! According to The Heritage Foundation, the UK is the 5th or 6th (it draws with NZ) most economically free country in the world:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm
We are, officially, free. And this despite all those regulations/rules/red tape that various blogs and commentators continue to tell us is gagging business and dragging us down down down. It's amazing what some facts (rather than rhetoric) can show you, huh?
You live and learn.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm
We are, officially, free. And this despite all those regulations/rules/red tape that various blogs and commentators continue to tell us is gagging business and dragging us down down down. It's amazing what some facts (rather than rhetoric) can show you, huh?
You live and learn.
Comments:
Actually, not. I have jsut downloaded and read the pdf of their methodology, and I can't see that they actually take into account the burden of the day-to-day red tape (such as, to take a random example, PAT testing) at all.
The factor "business freedom" ONLY measures the ease of opening a new business, closing an old one, and "getting a licence", all of which are indeed very easy in the UK, except the last in certain industries such as financial services.
This is a slightly surprising outcome, but I guess the day-to-day stuff would be very difficult to measure consistently across countries. Or perhapd I am missing something? Read it yourself and see. I don't think so, because Oz comes out as even freer than than the UK, and I can tell you from personal experience that it has a lot of red tape.
I think the index is measuring more "free to do what you want to" than "free from ahaving to do things the government wants you to".
The factor "business freedom" ONLY measures the ease of opening a new business, closing an old one, and "getting a licence", all of which are indeed very easy in the UK, except the last in certain industries such as financial services.
This is a slightly surprising outcome, but I guess the day-to-day stuff would be very difficult to measure consistently across countries. Or perhapd I am missing something? Read it yourself and see. I don't think so, because Oz comes out as even freer than than the UK, and I can tell you from personal experience that it has a lot of red tape.
I think the index is measuring more "free to do what you want to" than "free from ahaving to do things the government wants you to".
Oh, I'm sure it's not the end of the story, but it does seem to be a fairly well respected survey of these things. Wall Street Journal approved and all that.
Re the UK figure, I noticed with interest that the Freedom From Government figure was only around 54%.
Nevertheless, doesn't hurt to put things in perspective.
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Re the UK figure, I noticed with interest that the Freedom From Government figure was only around 54%.
Nevertheless, doesn't hurt to put things in perspective.
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