My favorite Heritage Foundation publication (other than…ahem…my studies on government spending and the flat tax) is the annual Index of Economic Freedom. Like the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, the Index is a broad measure of liberty to engage in voluntary exchange in a system of secure property rights and honest government. […]

If you ask an economist about the difference between capitalism and socialism, you’ll probably get a boring answer about the size of government, the impact on incentives, and the power of the state. Or maybe you’ll get a nit-picking answer, sort of like when I explained that Obama technically isn’t a socialist. That’s why it’s sometimes […]

Back in February, I said Australia probably was the country most likely to survive and prosper as much of the world suffered fiscal collapse and social chaos. In hindsight, I probably should have mentioned Canada as an option, in part because of pro-growth reforms in the past two decades that have significantly reduced the burden […]

Forget the debate over whether Obama is a socialist. Now we’re discussing whether Jesus is for big government. Or, to be more accurate, the Pope has started a debate about whether free markets are bad, particularly for the poor. Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute wrote about the underlying theological issues in an article for […]

The genius of capitalism is that there is a link between effort and reward. In a genuine market economy (as opposed to cronyism), people can only make themselves rich by working harder and smarter to satisfy the needs and wants of others. The blunder of statism is that the link between effort and reward is […]

Switzerland’s left-wing party has instigated a referendum for November 24 that asks voters to limit pay ranges so that a company wouldn’t be able to pay top employees more than 12 times what they’re paying their lowest-level employees. I talked with Neil Cavuto about this proposal and made several (hopefully) cogent points. Since Swiss voters […]

Sometimes you find support for capitalism and small government in some rather unexpected places. I was surprised, for instance, when I found out that Gene Simmons, the lead singer for Kiss, stated that, “Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to human beings. The welfare state sounds wonderful but it doesn’t work.” That’s pretty […]

In prior posts, I’ve shared some remarkable numbers on the cost of regulation. Americans spend 8.8 billion hours every year filling out government forms. The economy-wide cost of regulation is now $1.75 trillion. For every bureaucrat at a regulatory agency, 100 jobs are destroyed in the economy’s productive sector. But the long-run damage may be even worse than […]

I’ve narrated a video that cites Economic Freedom of the World data to explain the five major factors that determine economic performance. But that video is only six minutes long, so I only skim the surface. For those of you who feel that you’re missing out, you can listen to me pontificate on public policy […]

I’ve written before about the remarkable vitality of Hong Kong and Singapore, two jurisdictions that deserve praise for small government and free markets. I have also praised Switzerland because of policies such as genuine federalism and financial privacy, and it goes without saying that I admire tax havens such as Bermuda, Monaco, and the Cayman […]