France, Taxes, and Math

I normally write a column every year (2021, 2020, 2019, etc) when the Tax Foundation releases its International Tax Competitiveness Index, in part because I’m curious to see how the United States compares to other developed nations.

I somehow overlooked the 2022 version, but there’s a very good reason to cite the Index today. In the latest version, Estonia retains its #1 ranking, which is no surprise.

And, as you can see from the map, France is #38, giving it the worst tax system among industrialized nations.

I want to focus on France because the nation is in the midst of a massive political controversy over President Macron’s plan to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64.

That’s too little and too late from my perspective, given the country’s terrible fiscal outlook.

Some people, however, don’t understand this reality. In a column for the New York Review, Madeleine Schwartz writes that Macron’s plan “has few supporters among French economists.” Here are some excerpts.

Macron and his defenders have called the reform a necessity. …But one group of voices has been missing among the commentators advocating for the change. “You won’t find many economists defending this reform,” says the economist Mathieu Plane, who works at the French Observatory of Economic Indicators… Patrick Artus, a well-known economist who currently works as an advisor to the French bank Natixis, told me that the government has several tools at its disposal… They might increase taxes. “The government has a complete block on raising taxes,” he says. “And yet there are some tax increases that would be legitimate.” …Instead the government has forced forward a law that many economists consider both inequitable and ineffective. …“It’s a pretty brutal measure,” says Camille Landais, chairman of the French Council of Economic Advisers.

Wow, what an indictment of French economists. Are they really that clueless? Are they the ones who are bad at math?

It’s hard to answer those question.

But I can say with certainty that big tax increases are not the solution when France already has the developed world’s worst tax system, with terrible grades in all but one category.

What’s especially amazing is that some of the French economists inadvertently confirm my argument that Macron did not go far enough.

A number of economists have questioned whether the reform would do much to solve the larger issue, which is that the population is aging and productivity levels do not balance the cost of demographic change. By making older workers work longer, the reform will only raise the employment rate by about one point, says Artus, even though France’s employment rate is about nine points less than, for example, Germany’s.

Yet, amazingly, their view is to do nothing other than double down on the policies that have produced low levels of employment.

I’ve joked in the past that economists are untrustworthy, and perhaps even despicable and loathsome. In France, it appears that my satire is reality.

P.S. Today’s column focused on France. For those interested in other nations, here’s the full Index.

The United States ranked #22, which is bad but not as bad as it used to be. Kudos to the Baltic nations, as well as New Zealand and Switzerland. Sympathy for the mistreated taxpayers of Italy and Portugal (as well as Ireland, where the benefits of a low corporate rate are offset by very bad scores in other areas).

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More Evidence Showing the US Should Not Become a European-Style Welfare State

The United States has a medium-sized welfare state and nations in Western Europe have large-sized welfare states.

Which approach is better (or, to be more accurate, less worse)?

To answer that question, you want to compare living standards. And that means looking at how much people earn, adjusted for factors such as how much they get to keep after taxes.

The United States wins that contest. Americans earn more and they get to keep more.

That’s apparent when you look at average levels of consumption on both sides of the Atlantic. And it’s even true when you compare living standards of low-income and poor Americans to living standards for average Europeans.

But what if Americans only earn more because they work longer hours? When my left-of-center friends make this argument, my usual response has been that Americans choose to work longer hours because they have better incentives (i.e., lower tax rates).

That’s true, but it’s only part of the story. Here’s some data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that was shared by Robert Orr of the Niskanen Center. It turns out that Americans also have the higher living standards on a per-hours-worked basis.

I’ll close with a big caveat about the quality of these OECD numbers. While I feel comfortable with the notion that the US ranks above Europe, some of the other countries seem too high or too low. For instance, France ranks well above Switzerland, yet other OECD data shows that per-capita GDP is more than $82,000 in Switzerland and less than $56,000 in France.

To be sure, there can be non-trivial gaps between GDP and living standards (think Ireland). And let’s not forget that the whole purpose of the above chart is to adjust for hours worked, and the French are famous for long vacations and short workweeks.

So hopefully these numbers are not dodgy. But since the OECD peddles dishonest numbers on poverty, some suspicion is warranted.

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The Global Decline of Economic Liberty

The world’s freest economy is Singapore, followed closely by Switzerland.

That’s according to the 2023 edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.

The bad news is that there are only four nation that enjoy “free” economies.

The worse news is that the global average for economic freedom has declined.

Here are some highlights (or lowlights) from the Index‘s executive summary.

The 2023 Index…reveals a world economy that, taken as a whole, is “mostly unfree.” Regrettably, the global average economic freedom score has fallen from the previous year’s 60.0 to 59.3—the lowest it has been over the past two decades. …fiscal soundness has deteriorated significantly. …only four countries (down from seven in the previous year) recorded economic freedom scores of 80 or more, putting them in the ranks of the economically “free;” 23 countries earned a designation of “mostly free” by recording scores of 70.0 to 79.9… On the opposite side of the spectrum, more than 50 percent of the countries…have registered economic freedom scores below 60. …and 28 countries, including China and Iran, are in the economically “repressed” category.

American readers may be wondering about the United States.

Sadly, the US only ranks #25, which is lower than many European welfare states (which generally have higher fiscal burdens, but are more market-oriented in areas like trade and regulation).

What’s especially depressing is that the United States was economically “free” less than 20 years ago.

It’s also depressing that the United Kingdom has suffered a big fall as well.

In a column for RealClearMarkets, Rainer Zitelmann comments on declining economic liberty in the US and UK.

The United States is in imminent danger of dropping out of the Index of Economic Freedom’s “mostly free.” …In the latest ranking, the U.S. only just scrapes into the second-best of the five categories (“mostly free”). If the United States were to lose just one more point in next year’s ranking, it would find itself in the “moderately free” category… The U.S. has progressively dropped down the rankings in recent years. There are now a total of 16 European countries that are economically freer, i.e. more capitalist, than the United States, such as Switzerland, Ireland, Estonia, Luxembourg, Denmark and Sweden. Even Germany and Austria are considered economically freer than the U.S. …Great Britain has already slipped out of the “mostly free” category and into the “moderately free” group of countries. With its score of 69.9 points, Great Britain has the worst rating since the Index was first calculated way back in 1995. In 2006, Great Britain was still on a respectable 80.4 points!

I’m very disappointed that Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have all contributed to America’s deteriorating score. A bipartisan mess.

Just like the bipartisan mess in the United Kingdom – thanks to Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, and Sunak.

Reagan and Thatcher must be rolling over in their graves.

P.S. I’m not surprised that North Korea is the most economically “repressed” nation, followed by Cuba and Venezuela.

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The Most Economically Free State Is…?

According to the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World, New Hampshire was the most economically free state in America in 2017, 2018, and 2019.

But the state famous for “Live Free or Die” has now been replaced by the Sunshine State.

The most-recent edition, which is based on 2020 data, informs us that Florida now enjoys more economic liberty than any other state.

New Hampshire still is ranked very high, coming in at #2, followed by South Dakota at #3. Texas and Tennessee are tied for #4.

What’s the one thing they all have in common? No state income tax.

Meanwhile, the report also highlights the states that (predictably) dominate the bottom of the rankings.

For the purpose of comparing jurisdictions within the same country, the subnational indices are the appropriate choice. …In the United States, the most economically free state was Florida at 7.94, followed by New Hampshire at 7.84, South Dakota at 7.75, and Texas and Tennessee at 7.66. (Note that since the indexes were calculated separately for each country, the numeric scores on the subnational indices are not directly comparable across countries.) The least-free state was again New York at 4.25, following California at 4.59, Hawaii at 4.65, Vermont at 4.70, and Oregon at 4.92. For the first time, we have made a preliminary attempt to include the US territory of Puerto Rico in the US subnational index. It came in with a score of 2.04. The next lowest score was more than twice as high.

Here are the full rankings at the subnational level (i.e., measuring the policies that are under the control of state lawmakers).

For the first time, the report assesses Puerto Rico. Hardly a surprise to see where it ranks.

The report also has an “all-government” ranking, which includes the effect of both national and subnational governments.

On that basis, New Hampshire is in first place.

The all-government index includes…comparisons among Canadian, Mexican, and US subnational jurisdictions that take into account national policies affecting all jurisdictions within each country. …The top jurisdiction is New Hampshire at 8.10, followed by Florida (8.05), Utah (8.03), and then Idaho and South Carolina, tied for fourth (8.02).

The all-government scores allow comparison of all the state and provinces in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

The one clear takeaway is that Mexico desperately needs pro-market reforms.

I’ll close by observing that almost every US state ranks above every Canadian province.

But that wasn’t always the case. Which shows that Justin Trudeau is pushing Canada in the wrong direction even faster than American politicians are pushing the US in the wrong direction.

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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, What State Has the Best Tax Policy of All?

Because I dedicated last week to European fiscal policy, I didn’t get a chance to write about the Tax Foundation’s latest version of the State Business Tax Climate Index, which was released October 25.

Last year, the top-4 states were Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska, and Florida. This year’s report, authored by Janelle Fritts and Jared Walczak, says the top-4 states are… (drum roll, please) …exactly the same.

Here’s the map showing how states rank. The best states are blue and the worst states are dark grey.

Coincidentally, the bottom-4 states also stayed constant. New Jersey is in last place, followed by New York, California, and Connecticut.

But there were some very interesting changes if you look at the other 42 states.

Thanks to pro-growth tax reforms, Arizona and Oklahoma both jumped 5 spots in the past year.

The state of Washington suffered a huge fall, dropping 13 spots thanks to the imposition of a capital gains tax (the state constitution supposedly bars any taxes on income – and voters last fall overwhelmingly voted against the capital gains tax – but it appears the state’s politicians and a negligent judiciary may combine to put the state on a very bad path).

It’s also interesting to look at long-run trends. If you compare this year’s Index with the original 2014 Index, you’ll find that three states have jumped by at least 10 spots and three states have dropped by at least 10 spots.

Since I’m a Virginia resident, this is not encouraging news.

P.S. As I’ve noted before, the rankings for Alaska and Wyoming are somewhat misleading. Both states have lots of energy production and their state governments collect enormous amounts of taxes from that sector. This allows them to keep other taxes low while still financing bloated state budgets.

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Pessimistic Trends in Global Economic Liberty

When I wrote about the 2021 edition of Economic Freedom of the World, I noted that both Chile and Canada were drifting in the wrong direction.

In the just-released 2022 version, there’s not any good news about those two countries, but I was more struck by the very bad news about the United Kingdom, which fell out of the top 20 thanks to a big drop in its score.- from 8.16 to 7.71 (more evidence that Boris Johnson was bad news).

Here are the jurisdictions with the most economic liberty.

The bad news is that every nation in the top 20 had less economic liberty in 2020 than in 2019.

American readers will be interested to see that the United States dropped from #6 to #7.

And Switzerland leapfrogged New Zealand to claim the #3 slot.

Denmark, Japan, and Estonia jumped several spots in the rankings. Not because their scores increased, but rather because other nations moved in the wrong direction at an even-faster pace (note that Denmark now ranks above the USA).

By the way, few people will be surprised to see that Venezuela remains in last place, though fairness requires that I acknowledge that it was one of the few countries to get a better score.

Here are some of the other key findings.

The index published in Economic Freedom of the World measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. …The EFW index rates 165 jurisdictions. The data are available annually from 2000 to 2020… The most recent comprehensive data available are from 2020. Hong Kong remains in the top position, though its rating fell an additional 0.28 points. Singapore, once again, comes in second. The next highest-scoring nations are Switzerland, New Zealand, Denmark, Australia, United States, Estonia, Mauritius, and Ireland. …lowest-rated countries are…Iran, Libya, Argentina, Syria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and lastly, Venezuela. …Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $48,251 in 2020, compared to $6,542 for nations in the bottom quartile.

The final sentence in the above excerpt is key. More economic liberty is strongly associated with more national prosperity.

I was curious about whether Hong Kong would retain the #1 slot. And it did, even though its score dropped to 8.59. For what it’s worth, the authors are not optimistic about the future.

Hong Kong has been…at the top of the EFW index for all years for which we have data, and this remains the case in 2020. In previous annual reports, we sounded the alarm bell about signs of declining economic—and other—freedoms in Hong Kong. In particular, we highlighted the new security law imposed in 2020 by the Chinese government with potential sentences of life imprisonment and the accompanying arrests in its aftermath. In this year’s report, Hong Kong’s overall EFW rating fell by a stunning 0.28 points to 8.59 for 2020 from 8.87 in 2019. …Hong Kong’s decline was much larger than the world’s average decline.

Speaking of declines, here’s a very sad chart. It shows that global economic liberty suffered a big drop from 2019 to 2020.

The pandemic is the main reason for the decline.

The policy responses to the coronavirus pandemic, including massive increases in government spending, monetary expansion, travel restrictions, regulatory mandates on businesses related to masks, hours, and capacity, and outright lockdowns undoubtedly contributed to an erosion of economic freedom for most people. Not surprisingly, virtually all jurisdictions, 146 out of the 165 to be exact, recorded lower scores in 2020 than in 2019, and the global average of the summary EFW index fell by 0.18 points. … these various policies…very well may have saved millions of lives, or they may have been completely ineffectual. That is a question for epidemiologists and health economists to work out. Our concern is economic freedom, and, on that margin, there is no question that government policies responding to the coronavirus pandemic have reduced economic freedom.

We’ll probably have to wait two years to see whether governments undo pandemic-related policy mistakes.

Next year’s version will reflect 2021 data, and many nations such as the United States were still imposing bad fiscal and monetary policy at that time.

It’s possible that we will see some improvement next year, but I’ll be even more curious to see EFW‘s 2024 edition, which will be based on 2022 data.

My fear is that politicians and bureaucrats will have self-interested reasons to retain the additional power they grabbed during the pandemic. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Let’s close with a depressing look at the nations that lost the most economic freedom in the current edition.

For personal reasons, I’m sad to see the big declines in Taiwan, Georgia, Singapore, and Panama.

And it’s amazing (in a bad way) that Argentina and Greece managed to fall so much, given that they started with bad scores.

Sadly, every developed nation moved in the wrong direction. The industrialized countries that moved in the wrong direction by the smallest amounts are Switzerland (-.12), Australia (-.13), Sweden (-.14), and Denmark (-.14).

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In the United States, Where are Middle Class Taxpayers Treated the Best…and the Worst?

I regularly share reports that measure how states rank for economic policy.

• Economic Freedom of North America
• Freedom in the 50 States
• State Business Tax Climate Index
• State income taxes
• State sales taxes
• State budgetary burdens

Now we can augment this collection.

A website called Money Geek has issued a report, authored by Jeff Ostrowski, which ranks states that are most friendly and least friendly to a hypothetical middle-class family.

This map has the details. The best states (led by Wyoming, Nevada, and Alaska) are dark blue, while the worst states (led by Illinois, Connecticut, and New Jersey) are dark grey.

Here are some of the main findings, including the fact that people “vote with their feet” by moving to low-tax states.

Illinois has the highest tax burden in the U.S., with an estimated tax amount of $13,894 for the hypothetical family. Wyoming only imposes approximately $3,279 for the same family, making it the top state in terms of tax-friendliness. 4 out of 5 of the most tax-friendly states saw population growth at or above the national average (Wyoming, Nevada, Florida and Tennessee). Illinois and Connecticut received a grade of E for being the least tax-friendly states in the nation. Illinois experienced a population decline, while Connecticut’s population grew by just 0.1% — lower than the national average of 0.2%.

Interesting results. First and foremost, we have more evidence that Illinois is a basket case.

And it has a governor who wants to make a bad situation even worse.

I also think it’s worth noting that all the best states have no income tax.

The reports has lots of interesting data, but it doesn’t tell us everything we should know.

Before I explain why the numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, read the report’s methodology.

To calculate the least and most tax-friendly states, we researched income, sales and property tax rates by state. Using expenditure and income data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, we constructed a hypothetical family with one dependent, gross income of $82,852, and a home worth $349,400 (the median new home price at the time we conducted our research). We then estimated the state taxes this hypothetical family would pay in each state. We ranked the states based on…the size of the tax payment.

There’s nothing wrong with this methodology, assuming the goal is simply to measure the tax burden on a particular type of household.

But if the goal is to rank tax systems, there are three reasons why the report is incomplete or misleading.

First, it is not a measure of how tax systems affect economic performance. The most bizarre results in the report is that California, with a very punitive, class-warfare tax system, ranks above Texas, which has no income tax.

Why is this misleading? Because it’s important not only to measure how much of a family’s income is grabbed by government, but also whether a government has policies that make it more difficult to earn money in the first place.

In other words, there’s a reason that taxpayers and businesses are moving from California to Texas, notwithstanding the results from Money Geek.

Second, it doesn’t tell us anything about whether states are providing good services in exchange for the taxes that are being collected.

In an ideal world, states would use tax revenues to finance genuine “public goods.” In reality, taxes often are used to funnel undeserved money to powerful constituencies such as state and local bureaucrats.

And it’s worth noting that there are big differences in how states perform on basic functions such as education, infrastructure, and crime control (and the same is true for cities).

Third, it is not adjusted for the cost of living in different states. A family in Nebraska with a $350,000 house and about $83,000 of income obviously lives much better than a similar family in New Jersey. Why? Because money goes much farther in states with a lower cost of living.

This map from the Tax Foundation shows that red and orange states can be much more expensive than green and blue states.

P.S. If you want a ranking of economic liberty for metropolitan areas, click here.

P.P.S. Click here if you want a ranking of states based on occupational licensing (a form of employment protectionism).

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Which Nations Do Best at Providing Rule of Law…and Why It Matters

Back in 2014, I shared a video explaining why the “rule of law” is important for a just and free society.

Here’s another video on the same point.

When I discuss rule of law (generally when explaining the various components that are used to calculate rankings of economic freedom), I often use a shortcut definition – namely that rule of law exists when government officials don’t have arbitrary power.

In other words, rule of law is present when even politicians and bureaucrats have to adhere to laws and rules.

Where is the rule of law strongest?

According to the World Justice Project, Scandinavian nations are at the top, led by Denmark.

Other European nations – and European offshoot nations – dominate the rankings (there is a benefit to Western Civilization).

A handful of East Asian jurisdictions also get good scores.

And you’ll notice I had to include 27 nations in order to see where the United States ranks.

That’s depressing, especially considering that the U.S. ranked #19 when I first wrote about this report back in 2014.

But at least we’re not Venezuela (gee, what a surprise), which is in last place of the 139 nations included in the rankings.

Readers also should note that the dismal rankings of some other major nations, most notably China (#98) and Russia (#101).

Now let’s consider the economic implications.

In a new working paper from the University of Rome, Esther Acquah, Lorenzo Carbonari, Alessio Farcomeni, and Giovanni Trovato estimate the impact of rule of law on economic outcomes.

We estimate the impact that our measures of institutional quality have on the level and the growth rate of per capita GDP, using a large sample of countries over the period 1980-2015. …Institutions matter especially in low and middle-income countries, and not all institutions are alike for economic development. For this group of countries, we find: i) a positive correlation between our main institutional index and the GDP growth and ii) that improvement in the reliability and fairness of the legal system leads to a higher long-run per capita GDP level. We also document non-linearities in the causal effects that different institutions have on growth, and the presence of threshold effects.

For what it’s worth, I sometimes state in my speeches that rule of law is akin to the foundation of a building.

It needs to be solid in order for the rest of the building (fiscal policy, trade policy, regulatory policy, and monetary policy) to be livable.

One final point is that you don’t necessarily get more rule of law by enacting additional laws. Indeed, that may actually reduce the rule of law because politicians and bureaucrats then can engage in capricious enforcement.

As pointed out back in the 1800s by the great Frederic Bastiat.

Simply stated, over-criminalization is not a good thing.

P.S. In the are of economic development, there’s a big discussion over whether there needs to be more “state capacity” if we want more growth.

I’ve criticized some advocates because they use “state capacity” as an excuse to push for bigger government.

But it is true that very weak and incompetent governments do a poor job of providing rule of law, so it’s also true that there are instances where it would be good to boost state capacity. Assuming the term is properly defined.

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According to the Human Freedom Index, Switzerland Is the Most Libertarian-Oriented Nation

A new edition of the Human Freedom Index has been released. When you combine measures of personal freedom and economic freedom, the “sensible nation” of Switzerland is at the top of the rankings.

I don’t know if this means we should view Switzerland as the world’s most libertarian nation (or perhaps the world’s least statist nation), but it’s obviously good to lead this list.

And it’s not surprising that New Zealand is next, though many people are probably shocked to see Denmark in third place (it has very bad fiscal policy, but otherwise is a very laissez-faire nation).

The United States is #15, which is good but not great.

Here are a few passages from the report’s executive summary.

The Human Freedom Index (HFI) presents a broad measure of human freedom, understood as the absence of coercive constraint. This seventh annual index uses 82 distinct indicators of personal and economic freedom… The HFI covers 165 jurisdictions for 2019, the most recent year for which sufficient data are available. …fully 83 percent of the global population lives in jurisdictions that have seen a fall in human freedom since 2008. That includes decreases in overall freedom in the 10 most populous countries in the world. Only 17 percent of the global population lives in countries that have seen increases in freedom over the same time period. …Jurisdictions in the top quartile of freedom enjoy a significantly higher average per capita income ($48,748) than those in other quartiles; the average per capita income in the least free quartile is $11,259. The HFI also finds a strong relationship between human freedom and democracy

If you want to know the world’s worst nations, here are the bottom 10.

Venezuela is normally the worst of the worst, but in this case Syria wins the Booby Prize.

Let’s now give some extra attention to Hong Kong.

The report notes that there’s been a very unfortunate decline in human freedom in Hong Kong, mostly because of an erosion of personal freedom.

And Hong Kong’s score is expected to drop even further in future editions.

Freedom has suffered a precipitous decline in Hong Kong. The territory was once one of the freest places in the world, but the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) escalating violations of Hong Kong’s traditional liberties has caused its ranking in our index to fall from 4th place in 2008—when the first globally comprehensive data appeared—to 30th place in 2019, the most recent year in our report… Our survey does not yet capture the suppression of 2020 and 2021, including the CCP’s imposition of a draconian security law that enabled its aggressive takeover of Hong Kong.

Thanks to the recent election, I expect we will see a similar discussion of Chile’s decline in future editions.

Here’s a final observation that should be highlighted.

Because the report relies on hard data (which often takes a year or two to be finalized and reported), this year’s HFI is based on 2019 data.

And that means we won’t see the effect of pandemic-related restrictions, which generally were adopted in early 2020, until next year’s version.

…this year’s report does not capture the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on freedom.

P.S. Here’s what I wrote about the previous edition of the Human Freedom Index. And if you want to dig into the archives, I also wrote about the publication in 2016 and 2018.

P.P.S. For what it’s worth, I still think Australia might have the best long-run outlook for human freedom.

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The Best and Worst States for Tax Policy

Yesterday’s column included a map showing which states gained and lost the most population over the past year.

I speculated that some of America’s internal migration was driven by differences in tax policy.

So it’s appropriate today that I share this map from the Tax Foundation’s annual State Business Tax Climate Index, showing Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska, and Florida with the best scores and Connecticut, California, New York, and New Jersey with the worst scores.

Comparing today’s map with yesterday’s map, I immediately noticed that two states losing a lot of people – New York and California – also are states that have very bad tax systems.

And if you examine other states, you’ll confirm that there’s a relationship between tax policy and people “voting with their feet.”

Does that mean taxes are the only thing that matters? Of course not.

But as Janelle Cammenga and Jared Walczak explain in their report, they definitely have an effect on where money gets invested and where jobs get created.

Taxation is inevitable, but the specifics of a state’s tax structure matter greatly. The measure of total taxes paid is relevant, but other elements of a state tax system can also enhance or harm the competitiveness of a state’s business environment. …all types of businesses, small and large, tending to locate where they have the greatest competitive advantage. The evidence shows that states with the best tax systems will be the most competitive at attracting new businesses and most effective at generating economic and employment growth. …State lawmakers are right to be concerned about how their states rank in the global competition for jobs and capital, but they need to be more concerned with companies moving from Detroit, Michigan, to Dayton, Ohio, than from Detroit to New Delhi, India. …Tax competition is an unpleasant reality for state revenue and budget officials, but it is an effective restraint on state and local taxes.

One of the more interesting parts of the report is that you get to see where states rank when considering different types of taxes.

Here’s Table 1, which has the overall ranking in the first column, followed by the rankings for the main revenue sources for states.

If you read the report’s methodology, you’ll notice that there are different weights.

The worst tax (assuming a state wants a competitive system) is the personal income tax, followed by the sales tax and corporate income tax.

No state ranks in the top 10 for all five categories, though Florida, North Carolina, and Utah have relatively good scores across the board.

P.S. One important caveat is that the report does not list energy severance taxes, which are major sources of revenue for states such as Alaska and Wyoming. To be sure, those taxes that largely are borne by out-of-state consumers, so there’s a reason for the omission. Nonetheless, those taxes enable excessive government spending, which is why I think South Dakota and Florida actually have the nation’s best fiscal systems.

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From New Hampshire to Mexico City, Ranking Economic Freedom in North America

If you want to understand why some nations enjoy much stronger economic growth than other nations, the best place to start is the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World.

And if you want to understand why some states have more vibrant economies than other states, you should check out the latest edition of the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America.

Since most readers are from the United States, I’ll start with a look at the publication’s sub-national index, which shows how American states rank in terms of economic liberty. Unsurprisingly, a bunch of jurisdictions with no income tax are at the top of the list and California and New York are at the bottom.

By the way, the authors (Dean Stansel, José Torra, and Fred McMahon) specifically note that the rankings are based on 2019 data (the latest-available data) and thus “do not capture the effect on economic freedom of COVID-19 and government responses to it.“

With that caveat out of the way, here are some of the findings for the sub-national index (which is where Figure 1.2b from above can be found).

Since the Fraser Institute is based in Canada, they understandably start by looking at Canadian provinces, but you can then read about results for the rest of North America.

For the purpose of comparing jurisdictions within the same country, the subnational indices are the appropriate choice. There is a separate subnational index for each country. In Canada, the most economically free province in 2019 was again Alberta with 6.17, followed by British Columbia with 5.44, and Ontario at 5.31. However, the gap between Alberta and second-place British Columbia continues to shrink, down from 2.30 points in 2014 to 0.73 in 2019. The least free by far was Quebec at 2.83, following New Brunswick at 4.09, and Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia at 4.20. In the United States, the most economically free state was New Hampshire at 7.83, followed closely by Tennessee at 7.82, Florida at 7.78, Texas at 7.75, and Virginia at 7.59. …In Mexico, the most economically free state was Baja California at 6.01.

Here are the provincial rankings from Canada.

Alberta is the best place for economic growth and Quebec is the worst (by a significant margin).

Here are the some of the findings for the all-government index (which uses a different methodology than the sub-national index mentioned above).

The good news, from the perspective of folks in the U.S., is that most states rank above every other jurisdiction in North America (and the Mexican state all rank at the bottom).

The top jurisdiction is New Hampshire at 8.23, followed by Florida (8.17), Idaho (8.16), and then South Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming tied for fourth (8.15). Alberta is the highest ranking Canadian province, tied for 33rd place with a score of 8.00. The next highest Canadian province is British Columbia in 47th at 7.91. Alberta had spent seven years at the top of the index but fell out of the top spot in the 2018 report (reflecting 2016 data). The highest-ranked Mexican state is Baja California with 6.65, followed by Nayarit (6.62)… Seven of the Canadian provinces are ranked behind all 50 US states.

By the way, here’s some historical context showing that all three nations had their best scores back in the early 2000s (when the “Washington Consensus” for pro-market policy still had some impact.

Historically, average economic freedom in all three countries peaked in 2004 at 7.74 then fell steadily to 7.24 in 2011. Canadian provinces saw the smallest decline, only 0.19, whereas the decline in the United States was 0.51 and, in Mexico, 0.58. Since then average economic freedom in North America has risen slowly to 7.43 but still remains below that peak in 2004. However, economic freedom has increased in the United States and Mexico since 2013. In contrast, in Canada, after an increase in 2014, it has fallen back below its 2013 level.

P.S. If you want some additional historical context, Alberta’s fall from the top (mentioned in the first excerpt) can be partly blamed on the provincial government’s fiscal profligacy when it was collecting a lot of energy-related tax revenue.

P.P.S. I first wrote about Economic Freedom of North America in 2013 and more recently shared commentary about the 2019 and 2020 versions.

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New Economic Freedom Rankings: Treading Water in the U.S., Falling in Canada, and Worrisome News for Chile

The Fraser Institute in Canada has released its latest edition of Economic Freedom of the World, an index that measure and ranks nations based on whether they follow pro-growth policy.

Based on the latest available data on key indicators such as taxes, spending, regulation, trade policy, rule of law, and monetary policy, here are the top-20 nations.

You may be wondering how Hong Kong is still ranked #1.

In this summary of the findings, the authors explain that EFW is based on 2019 data. In other words, before Beijing cracked down. This means Hong Kong will probably not be the most-free jurisdiction when future editions are released.

The most recent comprehensive data available are from 2019. Hong Kong remains in the top position. The apparent increased insecurity of property rights and the weakening of the rule of law caused by the interventions of the Chinese government during 2020 and 2021 will likely have a negative impact on Hong Kong’s score, especially in Area 2, Legal System and Property Rights, going forward. Singapore, once again, comes in second. The next highest scoring nations are New Zealand, Switzerland, Georgia, United States, Ireland, Lithuania, Australia, and Denmark.

The United States was #6 in last year’s edition and it remains at #6 this year.

There are some other notable changes. The country of Georgia jumped to #5 while Australia dropped to #9.

Perhaps the most discouraging development is that Chile dropped to #29, a very disappointing result (and perhaps a harbinger of further decline in the nation that used to be known as the Latin Tiger).

And it’s also bad news that Canada has deteriorated over the past five years, dropping from #6 to #14.

The good news is that the world, on average, is slowly but surely moving in the right direction. Not as rapidly as it did during the era of the “Washington Consensus,” but progress nonetheless.

By the way, the progress is almost entirely a consequence of better policy in developing nations, especially the countries that escaped the tyranny of Soviet communism.

Policy has drifted in the wrong direction, by contrast, in the United States and Western Europe.

Indeed, the United States currently would be ranked #3 if it still enjoyed the level of economic liberty that existed in 2000.

In other words, the Bush–Obama–Trump years have been somewhat disappointing.

Let’s look at another chart from the report. I’ve previously pointed out that there’s a strong relationship between economic freedom and national prosperity.

Well, here’s some additional evidence.

Let’s close by considering some of the nations represented by the red bar in the above chart.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Venezuela is once again ranked last. Though it is noteworthy that its score dropped from 3.31 to 2.83. I guess Maduro and the other socialists in Venezuela have a motto, “when you’re in a hole, keep digging.”

Argentina isn’t quite as bad as Venezuela, but I also think it’s remarkable that its score dropped from 5.88 to 5.50. That’s a big drop from a nation that already has a bad score.

Given these developments (as well as what’s happening in Chile), it’s not easy to be optimistic about Latin America.

P.S. There isn’t enough reliable data to rank Cuba and North Korea, so it’s quite likely that Venezuela doesn’t actually have the world’s most-oppressive economic policies.

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America’s Labor Laws Are (Relatively Speaking) Great for Workers

In my fantasy country of Libertaria, there is no Department of Labor, no regulation of employment contracts between consenting adults, and no favoritism for either labor or management.

In the real world, the relevant question is the degree of regulation and intervention. Especially compared to other nations, which is why the the Employment Flexibility Index is a useful measuring stick.

The Employment Flexibility Index is a quantitative comparison of regulatory policies on employment regulation in EU and OECD countries. …Higher values of the Employment Flexibility Index reflect more flexible labor regulations.

The good news, for American workers and American companies, is that the United States has the second-best system among developed nations, trailing only Denmark (another reason why pro-market people should appreciate that Scandinavian nation).

It’s hardly a surprise that France is in last place, notwithstanding President Macron’s attempt to push policy in the right direction.

It’s worth noting that the United States has much less regulation of labor markets than the average European nation. Which may help to explain why American living standards are so much higher.

Let’s review some academic research on the issue of employment regulation.

In an article for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Professor Gail Heriot of the University of San Diego Law School explains how regulations discourage job creation and also may encourage discrimination.

… there’s a demographic out there that we ought to be worrying about, it is young people, the perennial newcomers to the economy. Well-meaning employment laws primarily benefit those who already have jobs, often at the expense of those who do not. …For low-skilled young people trying to get their first jobs, the most immediate threat may be the steep minimum wage hikes adopted recently in various cities.…young people even with great educational credentials are unknown quantities to employers and, hence, risky to hire, especially in a legal environment in which employee terminations can lead to costly legal disputes. …he best way for employers to avoid being wrongly accused of a Title VII violation is to avoid hiring someone who could turn out to be litigious if things do not work out. That creates a perverse incentive to avoid hiring the first African American or the first woman in a particular business or department. …A law that was intended to end discrimination in hiring, thus, ends up encouraging it instead.

In a Cambridge University working paper, Maarten de Ridder and Damjan Pfajfar found that wage rigidities, which are driven in part by red tape, are correlated with greater levels of economic damage when there is an adverse policy shock.

We find considerable variation in downward nominal wage rigidities across states and over time. Our estimates of nominal rigidities are positively related to state minimum wages, unionization,union bargaining power, and the size of services and government in employment and negatively to labor mobility. …We therefore focus on nominal wage rigidities when assessing the transmission of policy shocks. We find that states with greater downward nominal wage rigidities experience larger and more persistent increases in unemployment and declines in output after monetary policy shocks. …Similar results also hold for exogenous changes in taxes… States with higher nominal rigidities experience larger increases in unemployment and declines in output after a tax increase compared to states that are more flexible. We further show that institutional factors that could drive wage rigidities—like minimum wages and right-to-work-legislation—have a similar effect. States with a higher minimum to median wage ratio and those without right-to-work legislation experience larger and more persistent effects of monetary and tax policy shocks. Combined, these results firmly corroborate the hypothesis that resistance to wage cuts deepens policy shocks.

And in an article for Regulation, Warren Meyer explains that red tape and intervention is particularly bad news for unskilled workers.

The government makes it too difficult, in far too many ways, to try to make a living employing unskilled workers. …In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, there was a wave of successful large businesses built on unskilled labor (e.g., ServiceMaster, Walmart, McDonalds). Today, investment capital and innovation attention is all going to companies that create large revenues per employee with workers who have college educations and advanced skills. …the mass of government labor regulation is making it harder and harder to create profitable business models that employ unskilled labor. For those without the interest or ability to get a college degree, the avoidance of the unskilled by employers is undermining those workers’ bridge to future success

Let’s close by looking at a chart from a 2018 presentation by Martin Agerup.

He shows that red tape doesn’t even provide meaningful job security for those who are already employed.

The bottom line is that so-called employment protection legislation is very bad news for those who are looking for jobs while offering no measurable benefit for those who have jobs (especially if we compare living standards across nations).

If we want more jobs, the best prescription is less government.

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Should Advocates of Economic Liberty Prefer Hungary or Denmark?

I’m a big believer in focusing on results rather than reputation or rhetoric. For instance, many Republican politicians talk a good game about spending restraint. But when you crunch the numbers, it turns out that they often increase spending even faster than Democrats.

What’s true about politicians (the gap between reputation and reality) can also be true about countries.

Folks on the left seem to think Denmark is a big-government paradise, while many people on the right now think Hungary is a beacon of freedom.

But if you look at the data from the latest edition of Economic Freedom of the World, it turns out the Denmark (#11) ranks much higher for economic liberty than Hungary (#53).

Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center wrote an interesting article for Reason about the strange way that some Americans have decided to embrace the two nations.

Yet she explains Denmark is hardly a socialist role model.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) on the left and Fox News host Tucker Carlson on the right…have recently pointed to pet foreign countries as exemplars of what America should strive to be. Yet Sanders and Carlson are each misled by a superficial understanding of what these countries are really about. …Let’s look more closely at Denmark: Yes, the country has some big government policies… That said, not only is Denmark more economically free than it is socialist, but the country has also spent the last 30 years running away from the socialism that Sanders wants the United States to run toward.

And she notes that Hungary is hardly a hotbed of laissez-faire policy.

Orban…has created a patronage economy where licenses and aid are handed to businesses that are friendly to his administration. He even passed a law that gives the state considerable control over churches and other religious institutions. …these policies…could backfire spectacularly on these conservatives. Once the limits on state power are gone, if the progressive left truly gets into power, it will have a much easier time implementing the very agenda that these conservatives fear the most. …I wonder what we are to make of these conservatives who have become the biggest cheerleaders for many progressive spending programs.

Since Veronique mentioned government spending, I decided to peruse the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Database to see whether Hungary’s right-leaning government has adopted right-leaning spending policies during Viktor Orban’s time in power.

Compared to Denmark, the answer is no. As you can see from the chart, nominal spending has increased four times faster in Hungary.

By the way, inflation was higher in Hungary during the period, but a comparison based on inflation-adjusted numbers would make Denmark’s performance look even better since there was almost no “real” growth in the burden of spending last decade (yes, Denmark has followed my Golden Rule).

For what it’s worth, the goal of today’s column is not to denigrate Hungary, which has some very attractive policies (such as a 9 percent corporate tax rate).

And I also like that Hungary resists the pro-centralization, pro-harmonization ideology of the European Union (I especially hope that Hungary will block the EU from embracing Biden’s awful proposal for a global corporate minimum tax).

That being said, I’m not going to laud Hungary as a role model when it should be (and could be) doing a much better job of limiting the size and scope of government.

Let’s close by also seeing how Denmark compares to Hungary in the latest edition of the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. As you can see, Denmark (#10) does much better than Hungary (#55).

P.S. Supporters can argue, with some merit, that it’s not completely fair to compare Denmark and Hungary because the latter is still hamstrung by having to overcome decades of communist tyranny. But it’s worth noting that other nations that emerged from Soviet enslavement, such as Georgia and the Baltic countries, have managed to achieve much higher levels of economic freedom.

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International Comparisons of Tax Burdens on Labor

About one week ago, I shared some fascinating data from the Tax Foundation about how different nations penalize saving and investment, with Canada being the worst and Lithuania being the best.

I started that column by noting that there are three important principles for sensible tax policy.

1. Low marginal tax rates on productive behavior
2. No tax bias against capital (i.e., saving and investment)
3. No tax preferences that distort the economy

Today, we’re going to focus on #1, specifically the tax burden on the average worker.

And, once again, we’ll be citing some of the Tax Foundation’s solid research. Here are their numbers showing the tax burden on the average worker in OECD nations. As you can see, Belgium is the worst place to be, followed by Germany, Austria, and France.

Colombia has the lowest tax burden on average workers, though that’s mostly a reflection of low earnings in that relatively poor nation.

Among advanced nations, Switzerland has the lowest tax burden when value-added taxes are part of the equation, while New Zealand is the best when looking just at income taxes and payroll taxes.

Here’s some of what the Tax Foundation wrote in its report, which was authored by Cristina Enache.

Average wage earners in the OECD have their take-home pay lowered by two major taxes: individual income and payroll (both employee and employer side). …The average tax burden among OECD countries varies substantially. In 2020, a worker in Belgium faced a tax burden seven times higher than that of a Chilean worker. …Accounting for VAT and sales tax, the average tax burden on labor in 2020 was 40.1 percent, 5.5 percentage points higher than when only income and payroll taxes are considered. …The tax burden on labor is referred to as a “tax wedge,” which simply refers to the difference between an employer’s cost of an employee and the employee’s net disposable income. …Tax wedges are particularly high in European countries—the 23 countries with the highest tax burden in the OECD are all European. …Chile and Mexico are the only countries that do not provide any tax relief for families with children but they keep the average tax wedge low.

Here’s a look at which countries in the past two decades that have made the biggest moves in the right direction and wrong direction. Kudos to Hungary and Lithuania.

And you can also see why I’m not overly optimistic about the long-run outlook for Mexico and South Korea.

The report also has a map focusing on tax burdens in Europe. The darker the nation, the more onerous the tax (notice how Switzerland is a light-colored oasis surrounded by dark-colored tax hells).

The report also notes that average tax wedges only tell part of the story. If you want to understand a tax system’s impact on incentives for productive behavior, it’s important to look at marginal tax rates.

The average tax wedge is…the combined share of labor and payroll taxes relative to gross labor income, or the tax burden. The marginal tax wedge, on the other hand, is the share of labor and payroll taxes applicable to the next dollar earned and can impact individuals’ decisions to work more hours or take a second job. The marginal tax wedge is generally higher than the average tax wedge due to the progressivity of taxes on labor across countries—as workers earn more, they face a higher tax wedge on their marginal dollar of earnings. …a drastic increase in the marginal tax wedge…might deter workers from pursuing additional income and working extra hours.

And here’s Table 1 from the report, which shows that marginal tax rates can be very high, even at relatively modest levels of income.

In what could be a world record for understatement, this data led Ms. Enache to conclude that Italy’s tax system “might” deter workers.

In 2020 an Italian worker making €38,396 (US $56,839) faced a marginal tax wedge as high as 117 percent on a 1 percent increase in earnings. Such marginal tax wedges might deter workers from pursuing additional income and working extra hours.

Though that’s not the most absurd example of over-taxation. Let’s not forget that thousands of French taxpayers have had tax bills that were greater than their entire income.

Sort of like an Obama-style flat tax, but in real life rather than a joke.

P.S. As I’ve previously noted, Belgium is an example of why a country can’t simultaneously have a big government and a good tax system.

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International Comparisons of Capital Tax Burdens

There are three important principles for sensible tax policy.

1. Low marginal tax rates on productive behavior
2. No tax bias against capital (i.e., saving and investment)
3. No tax preferences that distort the economy

Today, let’s focus on #2.

I’ve written many times about why double taxation is a bad idea. This occurs when governments – thanks to capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, death taxes, etc – impose harsher tax burdens on income that is saved and invested compared to income that is immediately consumed.

Which is a bad idea since wages for workers are linked to productivity, which is linked to the amount of capital.

Which countries imposes the heaviest tax burdens on capital? According to a new report from the Tax Foundation, Canada is the worst of the worst (somewhat surprising), followed by Denmark (no surprise) and France (also no surprise).

The nations of Eastern Europe, along with Ireland, win the prize for the lowest tax burdens on capital.

The authors of the report, Jacob Lundberg and Johannes Nathell, make a much-needed point about why governments should not penalize saving and investment.

…capital should not be taxed at all. Taxing capital distorts individuals’ savings decisions. By reducing the return on savings, capital taxes penalize those who postpone their consumption rather than consuming their income as it is earned. Due to compounding interest, capital taxation penalizes saving more the longer the saving horizon is. For long saving horizons, the distortion is very large. This leads to lower saving, a lower capital stock, and lower GDP. Therefore, not taxing capital is in the interest of everyone, even those who spend everything they earn.

The report also contains this fascinating map comparing capital taxation in European nations.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s better to be a lighter-colored nation.

This is fascinating data for tax wonks, but it might not perfectly capture the relative attractiveness (or unattractiveness) of various countries. I think two caveats are warranted.

First, it’s quite likely that some Western European nations accumulated lots of capital and generated lots of wealth back in the 1800s and early 1900s when the burden of government was very small and taxes were very low. If some of the capital from that period is still generating returns (and thus tax revenue), it may overstate the tax burden on current saving and investment.

Second, the methodology looks at capital revenues as a percentage of capital income. This perfectly reasonable approach overlooks the fact that tax rates have an effect on the amount of income that is both earned and reported. This is the core insight of the Laffer Curve and it could mean that some countries show high levels of revenue in part because tax burdens are modest (and vice-versa).

That being said, I wouldn’t expect major changes in the rankings, even if there was a way to address these concerns.

The bottom line is that we know how to define good tax policy, but very few governments have an interest in maximizing liberty and prosperity. The challenge is that politicians 1) usually want more money so they can buy more votes, but 2) sometimes let envy trump their desire for more revenue.

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Five Notable Takeaways from the 2021 Index of Economic Freedom

The 2021 edition of the Index of Economic Freedom was released today (as I’ve repeatedly stated, it’s my favorite annual publication from the Heritage Foundation).

There are five things that merit attention

1. Hong Kong is no longer in first place. Indeed, it’s no longer even part of the rankings because the authors have determined that Hong Kong no longer has real sovereignty.

So that means Singapore is now the world’s most laissez-faire jurisdiction, followed by New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland.

Here are the top 30 nations.

I assume nobody will be surprised to learn that Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea are the three most economically repressive regimes.

2. Most Nordic nations rank above the United States. I highlighted Denmark’s better economic policy when writing about last year’s Index, but Iceland and Finland also rank ahead of America. And Sweden is just one spot behind the USA. Only Norway, cushioned by oil wealth, trails by a meaningful margin.

The United States has better fiscal policy than these countries, but that variable gets too much attention. In areas such as trade and red tape, the Nordic nations are generally more market oriented.

3. More economic freedom means more national prosperity. I’ve repeatedly made this point, but some people never seem to learn. Nonetheless, I’ll share this graph in hopes that data eventually triumphs over ideology.

4. I’m impressed by Taiwan and surprised by Spain. It’s obviously easy for a nation to improve when it starts with a low score. But it’s not easy to make a big jump if a country starts with a high score. So Taiwan’s appearance on the below list is an additional reason to be impressed by that nation’s pro-market orientation.

And, given my recent criticism of Spain, I’m surprised to see that nation made a big jump. I dug into the details and the improvements are in areas other than fiscal policy.

It’s good news, but not overly impressive, to see improvements by nations that start with very low scores.

5. Donald Trump did not deliver more economic liberty. When I point out Trump’s mixed performance, some people accuse me of being a curmudgeonly libertarian who unrealistically demands perfection.

Well, I am curmudgeonly and I am a libertarian, but I’m not alone in noticing Trump’s shortcomings. As you can see from the Heritage Foundation’s data for the United States, we have less economic liberty now than when Trump took office.

The bottom line is that Trump was no Ronald Reagan. On economic issues, he wasn’t even a Bill Clinton.

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The Link Between GDP, Living Standards, and Economic Liberty

I repeatedly write about the importance of economic growth, usually citing data about gross domestic product (GDP), which is defined as “a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period.”

And I frequently use that GDP data when comparing long-run performance for various nations in order to demonstrates that you get more economic output with free markets and limited government.

Critics sometimes respond by arguing that GDP is an abstract measure that doesn’t necessarily capture the actual well-being of people.

I’ve addressed this concern in the past by pointing out that you find the same relationship between prosperity and economic liberty when looking at the OECD’s data on “actual individual consumption.”

But Max Roser of Oxford University recently shared some data (from Our World in Data) that may be even more useful because it shows that GDP is strongly correlated with median daily expenditure.

There are a couple of obvious takeaways from this data, most notably that nations in the top-right portion of the chart have much higher levels of economic liberty that countries in the bottom-left portion.

We also see that the United States does very well compared to most other developed nations, though we shouldn’t be surprised to see that Switzerland does even better.

And I assume the dot in the top-right corner is hyper-free market Singapore.

The moral of the story is that there’s a tried-and-true recipe for growth and prosperity based on free markets and limited government.

For those who doubt that assertion, please identify a country – from anywhere in the world and from any period of history – that became rich with statist policies?

I won’t be holding my breath waiting for an answer.

P.S. One important thing to understand is that the vertical axis in the above chart is based on “median” daily expenditure, which means the spending of the hypothetical person in each nation who is better off than 50 percent of the population and worse off than 50 percent of the population.

The “mean” average, by contrast, is calculated by dividing total expenditure by population.

Both median and mean are legitimate ways of figuring out an average, but median is often viewed as a better way of showing the person in the middle while mean is viewed as a better way of capturing aggregate conditions.

For what it’s worth, the U.S. bubble in the above chart presumably would be even higher if the vertical axis was based on mean rather than median daily expenditure. That’s because of a large number of very successful people with very high expenditure levels in America.

P.P.S. By the way, I should point out that Our World in Data is not a libertarian site or conservative site. Indeed, I suspect the academics who run it lean to the left.

Just consider this bit of editorializing in the site’s discussion about economic growth: “While in the US, for example, most of the income gains went to the richest members of society this is not true of other countries where economic growth was widely shared among all.”

It’s certainly true the rich have enjoyed large income gains in the United States, so there’s nothing technically inaccurate about that gratuitous bit of class warfare.

But people who work closely with economic data surely understand that you don’t just want to focus on how the pie is sliced. You also want to know the size of the pie.

When you look at both types of data, you learn that ordinary Americans are much better off than ordinary people in other nations – which is the opposite of what is implied by the quote.

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The Most Economically Free State Is…

According to the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America, the most economically free jurisdiction in North America used to be the Canadian province of Alberta.

But Alberta then slipped and New Hampshire claimed the top position. And, according to the the 2020 edition of Economic Freedom of North America, the Granite State is still the best place to live.

But since most of my readers are from the United States, let’s focus just on American states, and specifically look at how they rank based on the policies they control.

On this basis, you can see that New Hampshire is in first place, followed by Florida, Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee (if you’re looking for a common thread, four of the five have no state income tax).

Here are some highlights from the Fraser Institute’s summary.

Economic Freedom of North America 2020…measures the extent to which…individual provinces and states were supportive of economic freedom… There are two indices: one that examines provincial/state and municipal/local governments only and another that includes federal governments as well. …The all-government index includes data from Economic Freedom of the World… The top jurisdiction is New Hampshire at 8.16, followed by Florida and Idaho at 8.10 , then Wyoming (8.09) and Utah (8.08). Alberta is the highest ranking Canadian province, tied for 9th place with a score of 8.06. The next highest Canadian province is British Columbia in 27th at 7.98. …The highest-ranked Mexican state is Jalisco with 6.70… The lowest-ranked states in the United States are Delaware at 7.72 in 56th place, following Rhode Island (7.76 in 54th) and New York (7.77 in 53rd).

As I noted above, I think it’s especially instructive to see how jurisdictions compare when looking at the policies they control.

Here’s what the study says about the subnational index.

For the subnational index, Economic Freedom of North America employs 10 variables for the 92 provincial/state governments in Canada, the United States, and Mexico in three areas: 1. Government Spending; 2. Taxes; and 3. Labor Market Freedom. …There is a separate subnational index for each country. In Canada, the most economically free province in 2018 was again Alberta with 6.61, followed by British Columbia with 5.98… The least free by far was Quebec at 2.84… In the United States, the most economically free state was New Hampshire at 7.84, followed by Florida at 7.73. …(Note that since the indexes were calculated separately for each country, the numeric scores on the subnational indices are not directly comparable across countries.) The least-free state was New York at 4.25… In Mexico, the most economically free state was Jalisco at 6.57.

One obvious takeaway is to avoid Quebec and New York.

And almost all of Mexico as well.

One of the many great things about the Fraser Institute is that they are very good at sharing their data.

And, because I was curious to know what states are moving in the right direction and wrong direction, I downloaded the excel file so I could make the relevant calculations.

Here are the numbers, showing the both the overall shift since 1981 as well as the data for 1981-2000 and 2000-2018.

The good news is that every single state has more economic freedom today that it had in 1981. Michigan and Massachusetts enjoyed the biggest increases over the past four decades, though both of them still plenty of room for upward improvement.

Looking at the 1981-2000 and 2000-2018 periods, there was much more reform at the end of last century than there has been at the beginning of this century. So maybe the “Washington Consensus” influenced American states as well as foreign nations.

I realize I’m a dork about such things, but I was especially interested to see that some states (Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Colorado) were very good performers in 1981-2000, but fell to the bottom group in 2000-2018.

By contrast, other states (Montana, North Dakota, Washington, and New Mexico) jumped from the bottom 10 to the top 10.

P.S. Texas ranked #1 in 1981, and by a comfortable margin, so even though it was among the bottom-10 performers for 1981-2018, it still ranks #4 overall for good economic policy.

P.P.S. Colorado dropped from #8 in 1981 to #23 in 2018, which may be a sign that the pro-growth impact of TABOR is more than offset the anti-growth impact of all the Californians that have moved to the state.

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The Best and Worst States for Economic Policy?

Back in July, I wrote a three-part series designed to identify the states with the greediest politicians.

• Part I was based on the top income tax rate in each state.
• Part II was based on the sales tax rate in each state.
• Part III was based on the burden of government spending in each state.

The results sometimes matched expectations. Florida generally looked very responsible, for instance, while New York looked rather profligate.

But other results were mixed. In particular, Alaska and Wyoming have very good tax systems, but they use energy taxes to finance bloated public sectors.

Today, let’s build on that research by reviewing two new reports than rank state economic policy.

First, we have the American Legislative Exchange Council’s 2020 Report on Economic Freedom. It’s based on several factors, but I can’t help but notice that the 10-best-ranked states include five with no income tax and three with flat taxes.

If you look at the 10 states at the bottom of the rankings, by contrast, they almost all have so-called progressive taxes. The only exceptions are Alaska, which (as noted above) finances a big government with energy taxes, and Illinois, which has a flat tax that currently is under assault by the state’s big spenders.

Now let’s look at the Tax Foundation’s newly released State Business Tax Climate Index.

As you can see, the top 10 is dominated by states that either don’t tax income, or have flat taxes, and the one state (Montana) with a so-called progressive tax compensates by having no sales tax.

Every state in the bottom 10, meanwhile, has a discriminatory income tax.

The two reports cited above measure different things. But both use good data and rely on sound methodology, so it’s very interesting to see which states score well (and score poorly) in both.

The states that crack the top 10 in both reports are South Dakota, Florida, New Hampshire, Utah, and Indiana.

And the states that languish in the bottom 10 in both reports are Louisiana (they should have adopted Bobby Jindal’s plan when they had a chance) and New Jersey (not exactly a surprise).

P.S. I recently wrote about Chris Edwards’ Report Card on America’s Governors. So if we mesh those results (New Hampshire was in the top category while New Jersey was in the bottom category) with today’s results, the folks in the Granite State get the triple crown while the folks in the Garden State get a booby prize.

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New EFW Rankings: How Much Economic Freedom Does the U.S. Enjoy Today Compared to Obama’s Last Year in Office?

The latest edition of Economic Freedom of the World has been released by the Fraser Institute. The good news is that the United States is in the top 10 (we dropped as low as #18 during Obama’s first term).

The bad news is that Australia jumped in front of the United States, so America is now #6 instead of #5 like last year.

Here are the 20 jurisdictions in the world with the highest levels of economic liberty.

Here are some of the highlights from the report.

Hong Kong and Singapore, as usual, occupy the top two positions. The next highest scoring nations are New Zealand, Switzerland, United States, Australia, Mauritius, Georgia, Canada, and Ireland. The rankings of some other major countries are Japan (20th), Germany (21st), Italy (51st), France (58th), Mexico (68th), Russia (89th), India (105th), Brazil (105th), and China (124th). The 10 lowest-rated countries are: Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, Algeria, Iran, Angola, Libya, Sudan, and, lastly, Venezuela.

It’s not exactly a surprise that Venezuela is in last place, though keep in mind that a few basket-case nations aren’t included in the rankings because of inadequate data (most notably, North Korea and Cuba).

Some people may be surprised that Hong Kong is still #1, but there’s a good (albeit temporary) reason.

Between 1997 and 2018, there was no evidence of significant policy changes in Hong Kong as the result of the 1997 establishment of Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region within China. Our data indicate that there have not been any major changes in tax and spending policy, monetary stability, or regulatory policy. In fact, Hong Kong’s 2018 rating of 8.94 is its highest since the financial crisis in 2008. However, it will be surprising if the apparent increase in the insecurity of property rights and the weakening of the rule of law caused by the interventions of the Chinese government in 2019 and 2020 do not result in lower scores

For those interested in the United States, here are the scores for the five major components.

For what it’s worth, I think American monetary policy should be ranked lower, but I admit that’s a subjective opinion that can’t be quantified (at least not yet).

Our worst score is for trade. Though that’s not just the fault of Trump. Yes, he’s caused a decline, but the U.S. score has been on a downward trajectory for almost 20 years.

Speaking of Trump, readers who get upset by my periodic criticisms of the President (such as what I wrote yesterday) may be interested in knowing that the U.S. now has a lower score (8.22 out of 10) than it did in Obama’s last year (8.32 out of 10).

P.S. Last but not least, here’s a map showing which nations are in various categories. All you really need to know is that it’s good to be blue and bad to be red.

P.P.S. China’s low score explains why I don’t think there’s any danger of that nation becoming an economic powerhouse (a point I first made back in 2010). At least not until and unless President Xi has the wisdom to allow a second wave of pro-growth reform.

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Comparing Living Standards: The United States vs European Countries and other Developed Nations

My view of the U.S. economic policy often depends on whether I’m writing about absolute levels of laissez-faire or relative levels of laissez-faire.

If my column is about the former, I generally complain about excessive spending, punitive taxation, senseless red tape, easy-money monetary policy, and trade protectionism.

But if I’m writing about relative levels of economic liberty, I often turn into a jingoistic, pro-American flag-waver.

That because – with a few exceptions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Switzerland – the United States enjoys more economic freedom than other nations.

And because of the relationship between policy and prosperity, this means that Americans tend to have much higher living standards than their counterparts in other nations. Even when compared to people in other developed countries.

(Which is why it’s so disappointing that many American politicians want to make the U.S. more like Europe.)

Let’s examine some data. In a column for National Review, Joseph Sullivan compares recent increases in living standards for major nations.

If you want to answer questions about how economic wellbeing for individuals in a country has evolved, the actual change in the value of real GDP per capita may tell you more than the rate of its change. Why? Individuals buy goods and services with dollars and cents — not the rates of change that economists, politicians, and pundits tend to focus on when it comes to growth. …By this metric, between 2016 and 2019, economic growth in the U.S. was the best in its class. …The U.S. surpasses…its peers…by no small margin. It bests the silver medalist in this category, Finland, by $1,100. That is almost as big as the $1,160 that separates the runner-up from the peer country that comes in dead last, Sweden.

Here’s the chat from his article.

The key takeaway is that Americans started the period with more per-capita GDP and the U.S. lead expanded.

That’s one way of looking at the data.

A 2017 report from the Pew Research Center also has some fascinating numbers about the relative well-being of the middle class in different nations.

…the middle class in a country consists of adults living in households with disposable incomes ranging from two-thirds to double the country’s own median disposable household income (adjusted for household size). This definition allows middle-class incomes to vary across countries, because national incomes vary across countries. …That raises a question: What shares of adults in Western European countries have the same standard of living as the American middle class? …When the Western European countries the Center analyzed are viewed through the lens of middle-class incomes in the U.S., the share of adults who are middle class decreases in most of them. …In most Western European countries studied, applying the U.S. standard shrinks the middle-class share by about 10 percentage points… Applying U.S. incomes as the middle-class standard also boosts the estimated shares of adults who are in the lower-income tier in most Western European countries… Overall, regardless of how middle class fortunes are analyzed, the material standard of living in the U.S. is estimated to be better than in most Western European countries examined.

The main thing to understand is that there’s a big difference between being middle class in a rich country and being middle class in a not-so-rich country.

And if you peruse the chart from the Pew Report, you’ll notice that a lot of middle-class Europeans would be lower-income if they lived in the United States.

And if you looked at the issue from the other perspective, as I did last year, many poor Americans would be middle class if they lived in Europe.

Let’s augment that analysis by looking at a graphic the Economist put together several years ago. It’s based on the OECD’s Better-Life Index, which is a bit dodgy since it includes measures such as the Paris-based bureaucracy’s utterly dishonest definition of poverty.

That being said, notice that the bottom 10 percent of Americans would be middle class (or above!) if they lived in other nations.

I’ll close with the data on Actual Individual Consumption from the OECD, which are the numbers that (I believe) most accurately measure relative living standards between nations (indeed, I shared data from this source in 2010, 2014, and 2017).

As you can see, the United States easily surpasses other industrialized nations, with a score of 145.9 in 2017 (compared to the average of 100).

My final observation is that all this data is contrary to traditional convergence theory, which assumes that poor nations should grow faster than rich nations.

In other words, Europe should be catching up to the United States.

Indeed, that actually happened for a couple of decades after World War II, but then many European nations expanded welfare states in the 1960s and 1970s, while the U.S. for more economic freedom under both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in the 1980s and 1990s.

And since policies diverged, convergence stalled.

The bottom line is that rich nations can consistently out-perform poor nations if they have allow more economic freedom.

P.S. Not only do ordinary Americans have a big edge over their European counterparts, they also enjoy much lower taxes.

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Which Country Enjoys More Economic Liberty, the United States or Denmark?

When writing yesterday’s column about new competitiveness rankings from the IMD business school in Switzerland, I noticed that I have not yet written about this year’s edition of the Index of Economic Freedom.

Time to rectify that oversight.

We’ll start with a look at the nations with the most economic freedom. Interestingly, Singapore has now displaced Hong Kong as the world’s most market-friendly jurisdiction (because Hong Kong’s score declined, not because Singapore’s score increased), with New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland rounding out the top 5.

The United States, meanwhile, isn’t even in the top 10. Instead, America dropped from #12 last year to #17 this year.

The decline is partly due to a lower score (with Trump’s protectionist policies deserving the biggest share of the blame), but mostly caused by better scores from nations such as Chile, Georgia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

What may shock people, though, is that even supposedly socialist Denmark (score of 78.3) ranks above the United States (score of 76.6). Here’s a look at U.S. and Danish scores from 1995-present.

Regular readers already know that Denmark is not a socialist nation. Indeed, it’s never been socialist. By world standards, there’s basically no history of government ownership, central planning, or price controls.

The most accurate way of describing Denmark is that it combines laissez-faire economics with tax-and-spend redistributionism.

Since this is a common approach among nations in that part of the world, some people even refer to this set of economic policies as the Nordic model.

So how does this approach compare to policy in the United States? The short answer, as illustrated by this table, is that America generally does better on fiscal policy, but gets lower scores when looking at almost every other type of policy.

The great irony of all this is that Bernie Sanders wants the U.S. to be more like Denmark, but he only says that because he doesn’t realize it would mean reducing the negative impact of government.

P.S. While Denmark has some awful fiscal policies (the tax burden is terrible), there are some bright spots. It has done a good job in recent years of restraining the growth of government, and it also has a partially private retirement system.

P.P.S. Not that any of these will be a surprise, but the three lowest-ranked nations in the Index of Economic Freedom are Cuba (26.9), Venezuela (25.2), and North Korea (4.2).

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The United States Plummets in Ranking of World Competitiveness

When looking at which nations have the best economic policy, the best options are the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.

But I also look forward to other measures, including the annual competitiveness ranking from the Swiss-based IMD business school, which was just released this month.

We’ll start with a look at the top nations. Singapore remains the most competitive nation, while Denmark made a big jump to #2, and Switzerland climbed a notch to #3.

The United States, which was 3rd last year, dropped to #10.

Only 63 nations are part of the survey, and no sentient being should be surprised about Venezuela being in that final spot. Nor should there be much surprise that Argentina is next-to-last.

Here are some highlights from the accompanying article.

The annual rankings, now in their 32^nd year, have been released unlocking a wealth of data on the performance of 63 economies across the globe. Singapore was number one for the second year in a row. In second to fifth place, in order, came: Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Hong Kong SAR. A marked pattern in this year’s results, which are an amalgam of hard data taken from 2019 and survey responses from early 2020, is the strength of smaller economies. …The number of small economies – broadly defined as such by their GDP –  in the top ten is striking. However, this is not to say that we are seeing a triumph of democracies. Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE remain in the top ten, whilst some democracies (such as Argentina) sit at the bottom of the scale.

Here are some of the more interesting observations about specific nations.

China this year dropped to 20^th position from 14^th last year.

My two cents is that China is still overrated.

But I sadly concur that the trendline for Hong Kong is not overly encouraging.

While Hong Kong SAR came in at 5^th, this is a far cry from 2^nd which it enjoyed last year. The decline can be attributed to a decline in its economic performance, social turmoil in Hong Kong as well as the rub-on effect of the Chinese economy.

It’s worth noting that Brexit is helping the United Kingdom, which is exactly what I predicted.

The UK climbed from 23^rd to 19^th… One interpretation is that Brexit may have created the sentiment of a business-friendly environment in the making. The UK ranked 20^th on the business efficiency measure, compared to 31^st least year.

But I take no satisfaction in my predictions that Trump’s protectionism would backfire on the United States.

…For the second year in a row, the USA failed to fight back having been toppled from its number one spot last year by Singapore, and coming in at 10^th …Trade wars have damaged…the USA.

In a column for Forbes, Stuart Anderson elaborates on America’s decline.

America used to be number one but not anymore, according to the 2020 rankings of the world’s most competitive economies from the Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Switzerland. The Trump administration’s trade policies are the primary reason given for why America fell from 2018, when it was ranked number one, and from 2019, when it was ranked number three. …Christos Cabolis, IMD’s chief economist and an author of the report, told Fortune that Trump’s trade policies are the main reason for the significant drop in American competitiveness. “One of the pillars of competitiveness is how open an economy is, and we measure that in different ways, from the perceptions of executives, to trade [statistics],” said Cabolis. The trade war Donald Trump initiated with China “brings some of the results we see in how the numbers of the U.S. went down,” he said.

Let’s close with a closer look at IMD’s estimates of what’s good and bad about the United States.

We get very good (though declining in this year’s ranking) scores for economic performance and infrastructure (suggesting, by the way, that we don’t need a new boondoggle package from Washington).

But we’re not quite as impressive when looking at business efficiency and we’re mediocre when measuring government efficiency.

For what it’s worth, I’m not optimistic about America’s trajectory. If Trump gets reelected, I don’t expect big developments in the policy areas where he’s good (taxes and red tape), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see new initiatives in the areas where he is bad (trade and spending).

Biden, meanwhile, has a very statist policy agenda. So if he gets elected, we have to cross our fingers that he doesn’t really believe in his Bernie-lite agenda.

P.S. It is possible, of course, for a nation to adopt additional bad policy and still climb in the rankings. All that’s required is for other nations to adopt an even-greater amount of bad policy. Needless to say, that’s not the ideal way to climb a few spots. Which is why we should consider absolute and relative measures of economic liberty.

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Absolute Economic Liberty, Relative Economic Liberty, and the Never-Answered Question

As part of my recent presentation to IES Europe, here’s what I said (and what I’ve said many times before) about the relationship between economic policy and national prosperity.

My remarks focused in part on the difference between absolute economic liberty and relative economic liberty.

• The absolute level of economic liberty is the degree to which a nation relies on markets or statism (see, for instance, the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World).
• The relative level of economic liberty is a measure of whether one country is more market-oriented than another country (basically a measure of national competitiveness).

Understanding these two concepts explains why it is possible to criticize nations in North America and Western Europe for having too much government while also recognizing that those same nations tend to have better policies than most countries in other parts of the world.

An obvious example is Denmark. It certainly has some foolish and misguided government policies, but it is very pro-market when compared to the 90 percent of nations that have even lower levels of economic liberty (a distinction that Bernie Sanders has never grasped).

The obvious takeaway is that economic liberty matters, regardless of whether we’re looking at absolute levels or relative levels.

During my remarks, the audience got to see a two-question challenge, which asks our friends on the left to give an example of their dirigiste policies generating good economic outcomes.

But I’ve never been happy with the clunky wording of that challenge (just as I wasn’t happy with the original wording of fiscal policy’s Golden Rule).

So here’s a new version, which I’m now calling “The Never-Answered Question.”

I frequently unveil this question during debates.

And it’s quite common that my opponent will claim Sweden.

But as I noted in the above video clip, Sweden became a rich nation when government was very small. It didn’t have an income tax until 1902, and the welfare state was tiny until the 1960s. And I then explain that Sweden’s economic performance has been inversely correlated with the size and scope of government.

Unsurprisingly, the same is true for every other prosperous country in Europe and North America.

The bottom line is that my leftist friends will never successfully answer this question.

P.S. When considering the second part of The Never Answered Question, I don’t want a cherry-picked one- or two-year period. I want several decades of data, so we can be sure of a real trend. Much as I’ve done when making comparisons.

• West Germany vs. East Germany
• Czechoslovakia after World War II
• Poland after the collapse of communism
• Chile vs. Argentina vs. Venezuela
• Hong Kong vs. Cuba
• North Korea vs. South Korea
• Cuba vs. Chile
• Hong Kong vs. Argentina
• Singapore vs. Jamaica
• United States vs. Hong Kong and Singapore
• Botswana vs. other African nations

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Ranking Economic Liberty in America States, Canadian Provinces, and Mexican States

My favorite publication from the Canada-based Fraser Institute is Economic Freedom of the World, which ranks nations based on economic liberty.

I religiously write about each year’s report (starting back in 2011), and I also cite the data dozens of time each year when analyzing policy in various nations.

The second-best report from the Fraser Institute is Economic Freedom of North America, which ranks economic liberty in all American states, Canadian provinces, and Mexican states. Here’s the headline data from the most-recent edition, with Canadian provinces highlighted in brown and Mexican states highlighted in green.

I’m not surprised to see New Hampshire in first place, and I’m not surprised to see Florida in second place.

Both states rank near the top in various measures of economic liberty in the United States.

I’m also not surprised to see Mexican states clustered at the bottom.

What’s particularly interesting is to see how rankings have changed for the United States and Canada.

…economic freedom had been declining in all three countries until recently. From 2004 to 2013, the average score for all 92 jurisdictions fell from 7.64 to 7.09. Canadian provinces saw the smallest decline, only 0.08, whereas the decline in the United States was 0.59 and in Mexico, 0.63. However, economic freedom has increased in the United States and Mexico since 2013. In contrast, in Canada, after an increase in 2014, it has fallen back below its 2013 level. …on the all-government index the highest ranked jurisdiction is New Hampshire with a score of 8.13. After six straight years in first, Alberta fell to a tie for 6th last year, and fell further to a tie for 24th place at 7.94 in this year’s report. Florida is in 2nd with 8.07… The highest-rated Mexican state is Guanajuato at 61st with 6.49, behind all 50 US states and 10 Canadian provinces, and below 60th place by more than one full point.

Here’s a look at the biennial numbers for the three nations.

I’ve highlighted in green the two recent times Canada ranked about the United States (gee, thanks Obama) and highlighted in red the two recent times Canada ranked below the United States (gee, thanks Trudeau).

In my humble opinion, a key takeaway in the report is what happened to Alberta.

Here are some relevant excerpts.

Alberta, for seven years in a row up to 2015, was the top jurisdiction among the 92 jurisdictions in the index in the all-government index, as it was among Canadian prov-inces in the subnational index. However, in 2015, Alberta elected new political leaders who made changes in taxation, spending, and regulation that have had a significant negative effect on economic freedom. …Since 2015, Alberta has fallen from 1st to a tie for 24th place in the 2017 all-government index. It scored 8.31 in 2014 in this index, falling by 0.37 points in the 2017 index, the largest fall over that period of the 92 jurisdictions in the all-government index. Alberta’s decline in the subnational index, where of course provincial leader-ship has its greatest impact, was much larger, 1.42 points, between 2014 and 2017.

And here’s a table that shows what has happened over the past few years.

I actually warned about Alberta’s fiscal deterioration back in 2015, so I’ll be interested to see if the province can restore some budgetary sanity.

To be sure, Alberta is still the top-ranked province, but that’s more a reflection of bad policy elsewhere in Canada.

P.S. In general, Canada is a sensible, market-oriented nation. Indeed, the United States should copy its northern neighbor on issues such as spending restraint, welfare reform, corporate tax reform, bank bailouts, regulatory budgeting, the tax treatment of saving, school choice, and privatization of air traffic control.

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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which Nations Have the Least Red Tape of All?

The World Bank has released its annual report on the Ease of Doing Business.

Unsurprisingly, the top spots are dominated by market-oriented jurisdictions, with New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong (at least for now!) winning the gold, silver, and bronze. The United States does reasonably well, finishing in sixth place.

It’s also worth noting that Nordic nations do quite well. Denmark even beats the United States, and Norway and Sweden are both in the top 10.

Georgia gets a very good score, as does Taiwan. And I’m sure Pope Francis will be irked to see that Mauritius ranks highly.

I’m surprised, though, to see Russia at #28 and China at #31. That’s better than France!

And I’m even more surprised that normally laissez-faire Switzerland is down at #36.

What economic lessons can we learn from the report? First, the authors remind us that less red tape means more prosperity.

Research demonstrates a causal relationship between economic freedom and gross domestic product (GDP) growth, where freedom regarding wages and prices, property rights, and licensing requirements leads to economic development. … The ease of doing business score serves as the basis for ranking economies on their business environment: the ranking is obtained by sorting the economies by their scores. The ease of doing business score shows an economy’s absolute position relative to the best regulatory performance, whereas the ease of doing business ranking is an indication of an economy’s position relative to that of other economies.

By the way, here’s a simple depiction of the World Bank’s methodology.

It’s also worth noting that less intervention means less corruption.

There are ample opportunities for corruption in economies where excessive red tape and extensive interactions between private sector actors and regulatory agencies are necessary to get things done. The 20 worst-scoring economies on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index average 8 procedures to start a business and 15 to obtain a building permit. Conversely, the 20 best-performing economies complete the same formalities with 4 and 11 steps, respectively. Moreover, economies that have adopted electronic means of compliance with regulatory requirements—such as obtaining licenses and paying taxes—experience a lower incidence of bribery.

Poor countries, not surprisingly, have more red tape.

An entrepreneur in a low-income economy typically spends around 50 percent of the country’s per-capita income to launch a company, compared with just 4.2 percent for an entrepreneur in a high-income economy. It takes nearly six times as long on average to start a business in the economies ranked in the bottom 50 as in the top 20. There’s ample room for developing economies to catch up with developed countries on most of the Doing Business indicators. Performance in the area of legal rights, for example, remains weakest among low- and middle-income economies.

Africa and Latin America are especially bad.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the weak-performing regions on the ease of doing business with an average score of 51.8, well below the OECD high-income economy average of 78.4 and the global average of 63.0. …Latin America and the Caribbean also lags in terms of reform implementation and impact. …not a single economy in Latin America and the Caribbean ranks among the top 50 on the ease of doing business.

I’m disappointed, by the way, that Chile is only ranked #59.

Now let’s shift to some very important graphs about the relationship between economic freedom and national prosperity.

We’ll start with a look at the relationship between employment regulation and per-capita income. Not surprisingly, countries that make it hard to hire workers and fire workers have lower levels of prosperity.

Here’s a chart showing the relationship between employment regulation and the underground economy.

The moral of the story is that lots of red tape drives employers and employees to the black market.

Perhaps most important, there’s a very clear link between good regulatory policy and overall entrepreneurship.

Here’s a bit of good news.

Developing nations have reduced the burden of red tape in some areas, in part because Ease of Doing Business puts pressure on governments.

We can see the results in this chart.

I’ll close with a look at the regulatory burden in the United States, which also can be considered good news.

Here’s the annual score for the past five years (a higher number is better).

I’m frequently critical of this White House, but I also believe in giving credit when it’s deserved. The bottom line is that Trump’s policies have been a net plus for businesses.

In other words, lower tax rates and less red tape have more than offset the pain of protectionism.

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New Tax Rankings: Estonia on Top, France at the Bottom, and Progress for the USA

The Tax Foundation churns out lots of good information, but I especially look forward to their International Tax Competitiveness Index.

It shows how nations rank based on key tax variables such as corporate taxation, personal income tax, and international tax rules.

The latest edition shows good news and bad news for the United States. The good news, as you see in this chart, is that the 2017 tax reform improved America’s ranking from 28 to 21.

The bad news is that the United States is still in the bottom half of industrialized nations.

We should copy Estonia, which has been in first place for six consecutive years.

For the sixth year in a row, Estonia has the best tax code in the OECD. Its top score is driven by four positive features of its tax code. First, it has a 20 percent tax rate on corporate income that is only applied to distributed profits. Second, it has a flat 20 percent tax on individual income that does not apply to personal dividend income. Third, its property tax applies only to the value of land, rather than to the value of real property or capital. Finally, it has a territorial tax system that exempts 100 percent of foreign profits earned by domestic corporations from domestic taxation, with few restrictions. …For the sixth year in a row, France has the least competitive tax system in the OECD. It has one of the highest corporate income tax rates in the OECD (34.4 percent), high property taxes, a net tax on real estate wealth, a financial transaction tax, and an estate tax. France also has high, progressive, individual income taxes that apply to both dividend and capital gains income.

Here are some other important observations from the report, including mostly positive news on wealth taxation as well as more information on France’s fiscal decay.

…some countries like the United States and Belgium have reduced their corporate income tax rates by several percentage points, others, like Korea and Portugal, have increased them. Corporate tax base improvements have been put in place in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, while tax bases were made less competitive in Chile and Korea. Several EU countries have recently adopted international tax regulations like Controlled Foreign Corporation rules that can have negative economic impacts. Additionally, while many countries have removed their net wealth taxes in recent decades, Belgium recently adopted a new tax on net wealth. …Over the last few decades, France has introduced several reforms that have significantly increased marginal tax rates on work, saving, and investment.

For those who like data, here are the complete rankings, which also show how countries score in the various component variables.

Notice that the United States (highlighted in red) gets very bad scores for property taxation and international tax rules. But that bad news is somewhat offset by getting a very good score on consumption taxation (let’s hope politicians never achieve their dream of imposing a value-added tax!).

And it’s no big surprise to see countries like New Zealand and Switzerland get high scores.

P.S. My only complaint about the International Tax Competitiveness Index is that I would like it to include even more information. There presumably would be challenges in finding apples-to-apples comparative data, but I’d be curious to find out whether Hong Kong and Singapore would beat out Estonia. And would zero-tax jurisdictions such as Monaco and the Cayman Islands get the highest scores of all? Also, what would happen if a variable on the aggregate tax burden was added to the equation? I’m guessing some nations such as Sweden and the Netherlands might fall, while other countries such as Chile and Poland (and probably the U.S.) would climb.

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New Rankings for Economic Liberty: Good News and Bad News for the United States

The folks at the Fraser Institute in Canada have just released a new version of Economic Freedom of the World.

As has been the case for many years, Hong Kong is #1 and Singapore is #2, followed by New Zealand (#3) and Switzerland (#4).

Interestingly, the United States improved one spot, climbing to #5.

Here’s the data for the top two quartiles.

The new version includes 2017, so fans of Trump will be able to claim vindication.

But not much.

As you can see, the EFW data shows that America’s score rose only slightly, from 8.17 to 8.19.

My view, for what it’s worth, is that Trump’s economic policy is somewhat incoherent.

He’s been good on taxes and red tape, but bad on spending and trade. So I’m not surprised we’re mostly treading water.

Now let’s look at the bottom half of the ranking.

In last place, unsurprisingly, we find Venezuela.

Let’s close with two final visuals.

Here’s a chart showing that poor people in the nations with the most economic liberty have much higher incomes that poor people in countries with less economic liberty.

The moral of the story, needless to say, is that people who genuinely want to help the poor should support free markets and limited government.

Last but not least, here are two tables I prepared.

The one on the left shows the nations with the biggest positive and negative changes since 2010, while the one on the right shows the biggest changes since 2000.

In some cases, such as Zimbabwe, a nation improved because it was in such terrible shape that it would have been difficult to do worse.

Though Venezuela seems determined to show that a terrible score can drop even farther.

For what it’s worth, Egypt’s slide toward statism is being subsidized by massive amounts of aid from American taxpayers.

And speaking of America, I’m embarrassed to acknowledge that the United States has suffered the 10-largest drop when looking at changes since 2000. That’s a legacy of the bad policies we got from George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Thanks for nothing, guys!

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Economic Illiteracy from the New York Times

I periodically mock the New York Times when editors, reporters, and columnists engage in sloppy and biased analysis.

• Claiming Medicaid cuts in a piece that shows rising outlays for the program.
• Asserting that government schools are “starved of funding” when taxpayer subsidies actually have skyrocketed.
• Claiming that budget-cutting austerity nations are doing worse than “stimulus” nations, but getting the numbers backwards.
• Writing that the sequester will mean “deep automatic spending cuts” when the budget actually would climb by $2.4 trillion.
• Claiming that Italy is more prosperous than the United States and that there is less poverty.
• Asserting that U.S. multinationals pay little tax on foreign-source income, but forgetting to include the taxes paid to foreign governments.
• Cherry-picking income data to hide the fact that pro-market policies produce broadly shared prosperity.
• Attacking the fairness of America’s economy by using poverty data that doesn’t actually measure poverty.
• A column that blames capitalism for the shortcomings of China’s government-run health system.

Now we have another example.

Check out these excerpts from a New York Times column by Steven Greenhouse.

The United States is the only advanced industrial nation that doesn’t have national laws guaranteeing paid maternity leave. It is also the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee workers any vacation, paid or unpaid, and the only highly developed country (other than South Korea) that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days. …Among the three dozen industrial countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has the lowest minimum wage as a percentage of the median wage — just 34 percent of the typical wage, compared with 62 percent in France and 54 percent in Britain. It also has the second-highest percentage of low-wage workers among that group… All this means the United States suffers from what I call “anti-worker exceptionalism.” …America’s workers have for decades been losing out: year after year of wage stagnation.

Sounds like the United States is some sort of Dystopian nightmare for workers, right?

Well, if there’s oppression of labor in America, workers in other nations should hope and pray for something similar.

Here’s a chart showing per-capita “actual individual consumption” for various nations that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. As you can see, people in the United States have much higher living standards.

By the way, I can’t resist pointing out another big flow in Greenhouse’s NYT column.

He wrote that the U.S. has “the second-highest percentage of low-wage workers.” That sounds like there’s lots of poverty in America. Especially since the U.S. is being compared to a group of nations that includes decrepit economies such as Mexico, Turkey, Italy, and Greece.

But this statement is nonsense because it is based on OECD numbers that merely measure the percent of workers in each nation that earn less than two-thirds of the national median level. Yet since median income generally is much higher in the United States, it’s absurd to use this data for international comparisons.

In other words, Greenhouse is relying on data that deliberately confuse absolute living standards and relative living standards. Why? Presumably to try to make the United States look bad and/or to advance a pro-redistribution agenda.

P.S. You can find similarly dishonest ways of measuring poverty from the United Nations, the Equal Welfare Association, Germany’s Institute of Labor Economics, the Obama Administration, and the European Commission.

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