INDEX OF ECONOMIC FREEDOM

According to The Heritage Foundation / Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, Hong Kong is still the world's freest economy. Maybe it is the case that Hong Kong is the freest economy, but how do you take into account that the country is now "belonging" to a communist dictatorship? Arthur Chrenkoff is commenting on the index in his post, How free are we?

How ironic, I replied to my friend, that the top four of the world's freest economies consists of an enclave within the last communist empire, a semi-authoritarian Asian city-state, a bank masquerading as a state one third the size of my home city, and a former Soviet republic. There are other ironies on that list: New Zealand, even after a few years of "Red" Helen Clark's rule is still doing slightly better than Australia, a legacy of the far-reaching reforms in the 1980s; and Chile is ahead of the United States, another achievement that no one will thank General Pinochet for. (chrenkoff.blogspot.com, 01/06/05.)

Personally, I think that Estonia is really on the road to freedom. I had plans to start a company in Estonia with a childhood friend (who has relatives in Estonia). We were thinking of importing instant noodles from Asia (South Korea and Taiwan), but we quickly saw that Estonia has surpassed the stage of simple fast food to a wide range of different foods to choose from. If you are interested to learn more about Estonia, I recommend you to read about Andres Küng.

I wonder how it could come that the United States of America is only one place higher than Sweden. It must be something wrong with the "list of 50 independent variables divided into 10 broad factors of economic freedom"...