Over the past 20 years, scholars have increasingly directed attention to the problem of measuring different levels of prosperity around the world and correlating those observations with the differing levels of freedom.2 Since 1995, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal have produced the annual Index of Economic Freedom, which scores the nations of the world on a multi-factor formula that determines their level of economic freedom. It is not just migrants and imitators, however, who have noticed the superior material results that accrue to Americans as a result of their high levels of freedom. They work less and earn more, they can spend less on necessities and more on conveniences, and they live longer more pleasurable and more productive lives.1 In sum, by all economic measures, each successive generation of Americans enjoys indisputably better lives than previous ones. That same 19th-century elite would be flabbergasted and stupefied by the fact that obesity-essentially, the consumption of too many calories and expenditure of too little physical labor-is a leading problem among the poor. Our ancestors would scarcely recognize a world where jet airliners can whisk people from hemisphere to hemisphere in less than a day, where information about world events is available instantaneously, where corporations coordinate the economic activity of tens of thousands of employees around the globe (working in modern, climate-controlled high-rise offices, no less) while producing products to be sold to tens of millions, where diseases, plagues, and famines are a rare and tragic exception and not an accepted part of life.Įven the richest American in the early 19th century would likely marvel at what is available to the average worker in 2008-the dizzying variety of food (from year-round fresh fruits and vegetables to exotic meats to instantly prepared meals-on-the-go), the comforts of life (from cheap clothing and transportation to modern housing and appliances), and the provision for optimal health (from MRIs and laser surgeries to organ transplants and universal vaccination), and beyond. Who among the most visionary forecasters of the mid-19th century could have imagined both the nearly unlimited economic opportunities available to Americans in the 21st century and the fact that these opportunities would be available to everyone who strived to achieve them without regard to race, creed, noble birth, or the accidents of fortune? In the space of just one-and-a-half centuries, American standards of living not only rose above those of most of the rest of the world, but they also rose beyond all expectation. Surveying the record of American productivity and prosperity is an inspiring task.
One of the most persuasive features of our freedom, of course, is America’s high degree of economic freedom and the wealth and widespread abundance that has resulted from it.
Economic freedome free#
Lovers of freedom have admired all its aspects, from our protection of religious conscience to our free elections, from our freedom of speech to our impartial judicial system to our ability to choose our own private associations and more. Nowhere else has the liberty of average citizens been greater, more secure, and more protected. The example of American freedom is a powerful one. Since Jefferson wrote, people around the globe have sought either to imitate the example of American freedom by replicating its institutions or to enjoy that freedom directly by migrating to the United States. Nearly two centuries after Jefferson wrote, it is clear that America has indeed been the shining example of freedom for the rest of the world. Writing in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, Jefferson optimistically believed that the example of American freedom and individual rights had opened the eyes of the world to the value of liberty. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of god. Writing in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence, Jefferson optimistically believed that the example of American freedom and individual rights had opened the eyes of the world to the value of liberty.Īll eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.
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