According to this document from the American Action Forum, the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” has cost New Mexico taxpayers $168 million in additional regulatory costs. New Mexico is on the low end of the cost spectrum. Texas has already suffered a regulatory of $1.8 billion while it has cost Arizona taxpayers $567 million.
Reports and rankings are useful things, especially when they measure relevant data and show clear paths to improvement or continued success. Two 50-state rankings came out this week. Here is some information and analysis:
Tax Foundation’s 2013 Business Tax Index: The question asked is how business friendly are the various states in terms of the taxes levied on businesses? The answer, according to the Tax Foundation, is that New Mexico is 38th in the nation. Our property tax burden is the best in the country, but our sales/gross receipts tax burden is 45th, our corporate income tax rate is 39th, and our personal income tax is 34th. There are two takeaways: 1) New Mexico has relatively heavy overall tax burdens on business 2) Without cutting or increasing the overall tax burden, New Mexico’s policymakers might consider ways to reduce growth-killing taxes (like that on corporate income) with small property tax hikes. You can see the mapped rankings below. Note that New Mexico underperforms all of its neighbors.
The second relevant study is the Cato Institute’s 2012 Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors: According to the report, Gov. Martinez is graded “C” (although she is the top-graded “C” in the report).
According to the report:
Her spending score in this report is a little below average, and was likely dragged down by New Mexico’s liberal legislature. For example, her proposed spending increases have been lower than the final enacted increases. However, Martinez scores well on tax policy. She promised to oppose tax increases, and she has stuck to that pledge. In 2011, for example, she vetoed a tax increase to fund unemployment compensation saying, “I support reducing unemployment benefits to protect the solvency of the fund, but I do not support increasing job-killing taxes on small businesses while we are struggling to recover from a recession.”She also vetoed a bill to expand the corporate tax base. She has pursued business tax cuts to make New Mexico more competitive. She signed a bill to reduce the “pyramiding” or layering of gross receipts taxes on inputs to construction. And she has called for exempting about 40,000 small businesses from the state’s gross receipts tax. Another good move by the governor was approving a reduction in film tax credits, which are wasteful corporate welfare.
Americans for Prosperity in conjunction with the Rio Grande Foundation & the New Mexico Business Coalition Invites you to meet Tucker Carlson of FoxNews and the Daily Caller October 13, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. at the Hotel Albuquerque 800 Rio Grande Blvd, NW Refreshments Served
Gov. Gary Johnson is going to be in town today for a rally at UNM (I’ll be speaking). It got me to thinking about one of the core tenets of his campaign, that is his proposal to cut the federal budget by 43% in his first year. Completely-unrealistic, right? Not really.
If you take a look at the Historical Tables of the federal budget you will note that federal tax revenues in 2012 are expected to be about $2.5 trillion. If the government spent “only” what it did way back in the dark ages of 2005, we’d have a balanced federal budget. I could be wrong, but I don’t remember anyone starving in the streets in 2005. In fact, the national unemployment rate was 5.2 percent at the start of 2005 and dropped to 4.9 percent by the end of the year. That sounds a lot better than Obama’s recent 7.8 percent rate improvement and shows that as government has grown more rapidly in recent years, the economy has suffered. It’s time to unleash the private sector by returning resources to the free market, not the government.
Tom Woods, author of dozens of books, and senior fellow with the Ludwig Von Mises Institute will be speaking at a Rio Grande Foundation luncheon event in Albuquerque (details here) this Friday, October 12. I interviewed Mr. Woods for this week’s edition of the Rio Grande Foundation hour on KIVA 1600 AM, the Rock of Talk. You can download the show here or go to the online listing of RGF radio shows and listen to the 10/7/12 show.
Woods and I discuss the economic crisis and what got us into it, the Federal Reserve, the history of nullification and how it could restore liberty to America.
So, according to his article in the Albuquerque Journal, Santa Fe’s Mayor, David Coss doesn’t think an increased minimum wage hurts his City. The cynic might believe that Coss is just trying to lure Albuquerque to enact bad economic policies similar to those of his home town in order to reduce, but I think Coss is a true-believer.
What I don’t understand is what advocates of the higher minimum wage have against the disabled. What, you say? Wonderful organizations like Voices for Children and “Ole” would NEVER discriminate against the disabled. Oh yeah, well why does New Mexico’s minimum wage law state the following: Section 50-4-23 allows the Director of Workforce Solutions to issue special certificates for those “whose earning or productive capacity is impaired by physical or mental disability or injury or any other disability…”
So, New Mexico’s minimum wage law discriminates against the disabled and the ballot measure on November’s ballot here in Albuquerque doesn’t do anything to remedy the situation. That means that the disabled may continue to be employed at wages below the minimum. But, you say, raising the wage paid to the disabled might make it impossible to find jobs!
And that conundrum is in a nutshell the problem with minimum wages and raising them. For many disabled, the value of their labor is lower than the minimum wage. Of course, the problem is not limited to the disabled and I’ve also known disabled who were among the hardest-working people in a given workplace and were far superior to many so-called “able” employees. If you are “able,” but have few skills and little or no experience, then “Voices” and “Ole” and other advocates of mandated wages are perfectly-comfortable with making a productive an economically-untenable proposition. Leeway is only given if the Director of Workforce Solutions deems you “disabled.”
Santa Fe is considering yet another economically and environmentally-dubious policy idea. In this case, the policy under consideration is a ban on plastic shopping bags. Thankfully, even in the “People’s Republic,” this policy is generating opposition. You can add your voice to the opposition by clicking here and sending a message to your City Councilor.
The devil, as they say, is always in the details. Todd Myers of the Washington Policy Center who actually visited “The City Different” earlier this year, speaks out regularly about “Eco-Fads” and has even written a book on the topic. As he writes in this article, bans on plastic bags actually have a net-negative impact on the environment due to increased energy use.
So, rather than jumping on the bandwagon and doing something that feels good, but ultimately harms the environment, Santa Feans should take a close look at the proposal to ban the bags and say “no.”
(Albuquerque) Wind energy, because of its variable nature, is not suited to be the lone or primary source of a grid’s total electricity, according to a new Rio Grande Foundation–Reason Foundation study. If it is used to produce more than 10-to-20 percent of a system’s electricity, wind power increases operating costs due to the need for expensive storage facilities or continuously available CO2-emitting backup power generation facilities.
The new Rio Grande Foundation–Reason Foundation report uses a full year’s worth of hour-by-hour power grid data from PJM Interconnection, which manages the electrical grid in part of the Eastern United States, to simulate how wind would’ve supplied the necessary power to customers in 2009. Reason’s models show wind power would’ve failed to supply all of the electricity PJM customers needed over 50 percent of the time.
Thus, if wind is going to produce a large percentage of a grid’s electricity it will be necessary to build expensive energy storage facilities or reserve power generation facilities to supply power when there is not enough wind to meet energy demands at any given time and to prevent brownouts and blackouts.
The study shows that as more reserve power is needed, the environmental benefits of wind power decrease due to the C02 emissions from those facilities, which rely upon fossil fuels and must operate even when not being used, in order to ensure reliability of the electrical grid.
The study concludes that, given the costs involved, the practical upper limit for wind power’s contribution to the electricity grid is 10% of the total energy mix. This would result in a 9% reduction in CO2 emissions.
Very high wind penetrations are not achievable,” said William Korchinski, author of the study. “As wind’s share increases, system reliability will be adversely affected disproportionately—unless adequate reserve power is available. That power reserve is expensive and lowers any possible environmental benefits.”
Full Study Online
Tom Woods, like all of our luncheon speakers this year (John Stossel, Jonah Goldberg, and Mark Mix) is a strong advocate for liberty. Tom is a scholar at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. Mises was a so-called “Austrian” economist and, according to this article from Forbes, “The Greatest Thinker You’ve Never Read.”
So, what does Tom Woods have to say? You can read his articles here:
Woods explains why the free market did not cause the economic crisis of 2008;
Why the Great Depression was so “great”;
and why Paul Krugman of the New York Times is wrong about the housing crisis (and so much more).
In other words, Tom Woods is an incredible speaker and freedom-fighter. You should hear what he has to say at an RGF luncheon in Albuquerque on October 12.
We have complained in this space in the past that Albuquerque’s City Council has too much control over too many small decisions. Take the approval of vendors at the Sunport. Someone who is more responsive and market-driven should be in charge of this. We don’t need elected officials holding committee hearings on the relative merits of Los Cuates or El Pinto (or any other vendor for that matter).
Now, we have the Council embroiled in controversy over whether or not to raise the price of admission at the Albuquerque Zoo/BioPark. Obviously, it is tough to raise prices on a popular family attraction in a down economy, but if it is necessary to maintain the place, it may be necessary. Something Councilors should at least know about and consider is the fact that government-owned-and-operated zoos are no longer the standard. According to Reason Foundation, “The vast majority of accredited zoos and aquariums across the United States now rely on private operators—this includes major cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Fresno, Houston and Seattle. Eight publicly owned zoos and aquariums have been transferred to private operators in the last ten years alone.”
Perhaps Albuquerque can maintain the zoo and keep costs low by using modern management techniques. We hope they at least consider the option. The zoo is truly an asset to the community. Getting the most bang for those scarce “bucks” must be a top priority. De-politicizing the whole issue should be another.
Albuquerque Mayor RJ Berry has some sound ideas when it comes to boosting economic development in NM’s largest city and the state as a whole. According to Winthrop Quigley over at the Albuquerque Journal, the Mayor recently spoke about changing New Mexico’s corporate income tax to include a “single-factor” and, our own favorite option “Right to Work.”
I don’t think Quigley gives Mayor Berry credit for his ideas which, if adopted, would certainly improve New Mexico’s business climate. Rather, Quigley prefers to focus on the political opposition and New Mexico’s often-backwards political culture that hinders such reform efforts. Interestingly, Quigley does point out that Gov. Martinez has not latched on in support of the Mayor’s “big ideas.” While I think she is waiting to see how the Legislature shapes up after the 2012 elections, it would be great to see her take the lead on some more big-picture, free market economic reforms that will actually turn New Mexico around and reduce our over-reliance on Washington. To that end, I had the following letter published in the Albuquerque Business Journal:
It is obviously concerning that, in the midst of a weak economic recovery nationwide, that the weakness of Albuquerque’s recovery is notably week. As the article notes, the single-largest factor is the reduction in federal largesse. Regardless of what happens in November, simple math dictates that the money flowing into our economy from the outside will continue to decline.
This sounds depressing from an economic development perspective, but it actually represents a great opportunity for the state to develop its own economy independent of Washington.
We can start by reforming regulations on labor and adopting a statewide “Right to Work” law, abandoning our “prevailing wage” law, and avoiding passage of a higher minimum wage locally. There are also 52 low and moderate-income occupations that require licensing in New Mexico, including everything from funeral attendants to animal trainers that make doing business more challenging than necessary.
Industries are also regulated in ways that hurt competition and hold back our economy. For example, in order for new companies to enter the New Mexico market as a “common carrier” to provide limousine or taxi service, they must file a “certificate of public convenience and necessity,” thus giving the incumbent a say in whether competitors can even set up shop.
New Mexico is consistently ranked nationally as being “economically-uncompetitive” for these and other reasons. Since won’t have our generous federal security blanket for much longer, it is time to change.
San Juan County has, until now, maintained a policy of unlimited payouts for unused vacation days of its employees. Needless to say, this could get expensive for the taxpayers. Thankfully, some in the County are looking to change the policy. We decided to lend our support with the following letter to the Farmington Daily-Times.
The proposal by San Juan County to abandon unlimited payouts for
unused vacation time is a “no-brainer.” Obviously, the budgetary
impact of such policies is the most significant issue, with employees
having accrued $1.2 million in unused vacation time. Payouts could
have significant, negative impacts on taxpayers.Such payouts of unpaid vacation time are nearly unheard of in the
private sector, making them unfair to the workers who actually pay the
bills for government. Since the intent of employers providing
vacations for their employees was to help recharge and energize
workers, such unlimited payout policies defeat the purpose of vacation
leave in the first place. This makes unused vacation time yet another
generous benefit to government workers who already receive retirement
and health care benefits far superior to those in the private sector.San Juan County’s leaders should be applauded for considering this
issue and should be encouraged to take action by ending this unwise
policy.
According to this story from KOB Channel 4, New Mexico’s lottery scholarship program is not generating enough revenues to continue into the future.
You can’t make people play the lottery and thus goose revenues, so what can be done? The simple solution is to increase academic standards for students receiving the scholarship. Currently, recipients can skate by with a mere 2.5 GPA. That is not exactly a high hurdle.
It would be interesting to see how many of those kids earning scholarships with GPA’s 3.0 and below are able to graduate in four years. Interestingly, the national average GPA for high schoolers is near 3.0, so raising the bar a bit should not be too high a standard considering what the lottery scholarship offers. Will raising the standards solve the problems, we’ll see if we can find the details on this, but it could certainly lead towards higher standards in higher ed.
Since publication of our paper, “Lack of Transparency for New Mexico’s
Not-For-Profit Hospitals Cost Taxpayers Dearly,” we have engaged in an extensive dialogue with various representatives of UNM Hospital. They have brought to our attention some concerns relating to the paper. This document is intended to offer a critique/correction of errors within the paper and clarify the issues presented within. It is also designed to offer an update on public meetings that have been planned to discuss the proposed expansion.
1) UNMH is not a not-for-profit hospital; rather UNMH is a government-owned and-operated facility. This is true and, although UNMH does have a not-for-profit fundraising arm, it is technically a government-owned entity. This actually worsens some of the issues with UNMH potentially moving into new areas of care (taxpayer-funded institution competing with a for-profit, tax-paying institution) outlined in our paper.
UNMH is funded in part through a Mil Levy that is voted upon by the citizens of Bernalillo County every 8 years, with the last vote being in 2008
2) In the RGF paper on UNMH, concerns were raised over the types of treatments to be offered at the new facility and why taxpayers should be asked to fund care targeted at non-indigent and non-native populations.
UNMH responded that it “distinguishes between emergent and elective care. Emergent is defined as immediate threat to life or limb if care is not provided quickly. Elective care, which might be better defined as scheduled, is defined as all other care. Cancer patients are treated as elective care patients because their care needs are urgent, but not emergent.”
While the distinction is welcome, RGF remains concerned that UNMH will be using taxpayer dollars to compete with existing, tax-paying, for-profit hospitals. More information on the specifics of this new project and how it will serve the Hospital’s existing mission (as opposed to expanding it) is needed. Some third-party analysis may be needed in this area.
3) RGF expressed a great deal of concern about transparency and the new UNMH wing.
UNMH responds that UNM Hospital is a part of the University of New Mexico and is a governmental organization. It is subject to the New Mexico Opens Meeting Act and the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. It posts its financial information and its Board agendas and minutes on its Hospital web site. Combined with voter approval of bond measures and regular updates to Bernalillo County Commission, UNMH states that transparency has been adequate
RGF responds that while meetings have indeed been public and in keeping with New Mexico law, there is a need for additional public input from various stakeholders throughout the Albuquerque area and the state as a whole prior to making such a large investment.
This project may ultimately be deemed necessary or it may be modified somewhat in order to address the concerns of RGF and others in the community. Before we invest $146 million taxpayer dollars in the construction of a new hospital wing (not to mention annual operating expenses), we need to have a more thorough discussion.
According to this document from UNMH, the Hospital has agreed to hold a series of meetings at which the public will be provided additional information and given the opportunity to offer input. The schedule and locations of those meetings are as follows:
Oct. 2, 6–7:30 p.m. Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
2401 12th Street NW, Chaco I and II
Oct. 3, 6–7:30 p.m. Jewish Community Center
5520 Wyoming Blvd. NE, Auditorium A
Oct. 4, 6–7:30 p.m. – Alamosa Community Center
6900 Gonzales Rd SW, Room A
We are encouraged by UNMH’s willingness to hold these hearings. It is our hope that the community will turn out both to receive information on this project and to be allowed to ask questions and express their own concerns.
At the Rio Grande Foundation, we’ve focused on economic and education policies that we believe hold New Mexico back from prosperity. There is another issue out there that, unfortunately, holds New Mexico back. It is our legal system.
We’ve seen cases over the years that New Mexico’s Courts have handed down with negative impacts on individual freedom and property rights. George Will explained one such decision recently in his nationally-syndicated column. There was, of course, the Supreme Court’s decision to ignore glaring mistakes in putting a minimum wage ballot measure on the ballots in Albuquerque. And, there is the infamous baseball decision which could lead to a dramatically-curtailed experience at Isotopes Park.
What does this all mean? According to the Institute for Legal Reform, New Mexico has the 44th-best legal climate in the nation. Interestingly-enough, our ranking for “judicial competence” is an astonishing 47th.
New Mexico has a bunch of judges on the ballot in November. It is important that voters educate themselves on these candidates and elect judges that adhere to the rule of law, not emotions and a general urge to generate their preferred outcomes in their judicial decisions.
HT: Rep. Dennis Kintigh
Last week, I alerted you to a student-led protest against an over-weening federal government restriction on school lunches. The protest movement appears to be gaining strength and has even generated its own protest song and video that is sweeping cyberspace. Check it out below:
This is a great article about New Mexico’s taxpayer-financed Spaceport. It touches on several issues that we have brought up in the past that seem to have been completely ignored by Gov. Richardson and those who foisted the project on us, the taxpayer.
1) The liability issue as it currently stands, puts New Mexico’s Spaceport at a severe disadvantage. If the Legislature fails to act in this session, the unwillingness to protect businesses using the Spaceport could kill the project;
2) We are not alone or even the most advanced when it comes to the development of these projects around the country (and world).
3) Even if the Spaceport suddenly does a 180 and becomes a big success, how many rich people like Richard Branson and Ashton Kutcher are going to want to stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Truth or Consequences or will stay in New Mexico long enough to drive the kind of economic developed that Richardson and others promised?
Only time will tell, but there is no doubt that the Spaceport is very much at risk more than 7 years after the Legislature went along with Big Bill’s big idea.
If you don’t read the great reporting over at New Mexico Watchdog, you should. Recently, our watchdog, Scarantino, reported that a local member of the New Mexico House of Representatives, Miguel Garcia, has been reimbursed for some unusual “campaign expenditures” and dubious travel expenses to and from Santa Fe. KRQE Channel 13 picked up the story and did a great in-depth interview with Jim on last night’s 10pm broadcast.
The Rio Grande Foundation primarily focuses on economic and education issues, but government transparency and accountability are integral to our efforts as well. Yesterday, I was interviewed by Channel 4, KOB TV regarding efforts to preserve the integrity of elections and a study that claims mass-disenfranchisement will result from well-intended efforts to ensure the accuracy of voter rolls.
Check out the report below:
There has been a spate of “legislator gone bad” behavior among New Mexico’s political class. Sure, there were Pat Rogers’ ill-advised remarks about Gen. Custer in a private email and Gov. Martinez’s Chief of Staff Keith Gardner explained how he doesn’t use his government email address to avoid (ironically since the phone conversation was, unknown to Gardner, being taped) having to submit such email correspondence to public records’ requests. The statements by Rogers and Gardner were questionable to say the least and generated a firestorm in the media, but they are not illegal and no taxpayers were harmed.
That’s not the case with three other cases which involved at least serious ethical breaches and potentially-illegal activity.
1) Sen. Lisa Curtis’ campaign gave the La Cueva soccer team $500 to hand out campaign literature.
2) Rep. Ray Begaye was (at least seemingly) fraudulently reimbursed by taxpayers for a conference that he was already paid to attend.
3) Rep. Miguel Garcia seems to have had many problems similar to those of Rep. Begaye in keeping track of his mileage and expenses.
So, it seems that New Mexico’s legislators have either some serious ethical and legal problems or some big problems with preparing simple expense reports and keeping track of financial documents. In their own way, these issues highlight why New Mexico’s Legislature is the ultimate stumbling block to improving our state. Will anyone — Attorney General King or the voters — hold them accountable?
Election Day 2012 is just around the corner. While the current zeitgeist in American politics is that we vote for “the person we’d rather have a beer with” (if so, Romney is in trouble), we at the Rio Grande Foundation prefer that voters choose their preferred candidate based on who they actually agree with on various important policy issues.
To that end, I recommend this website. Whether you vote for the candidate you actually agree with is another story, but it is worth cutting through the media’s filters and actually figuring out with whom you agree. For example, my mother who typically votes Democrat was quite surprised to find that she agrees with Gary Johnson and, to a lesser extent, Mitt Romney far more than the other candidates in the race.
The map below presents an interesting analysis from an organization called BillTrack50 (more on BillTrack50 closer to the 2013 legislative session) of the bills passed during the most recent legislative session. The map illustrates which states have the most and least partisan in terms of legislation that passes. New Mexico’s Legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, is not surprisingly a highly-partisan body. According to the report, the only more partisan Democrat legislatures in the nation were California and West Virginia. Several states had more partisan Republican legislatures.
We don’t have historical analysis in terms of this trend, but it would be interesting to see and compare/contrast with economic growth data.
The show “Seinfeld” was said to be “the show about nothing.” In terms of the federal election, this election cycle might be called the campaign about nothing. The issue being avoided on a bi-partisan basis by most of the candidates of both major parties is our nation’s precarious fiscal condition driven by out-of-control spending.
Look through the websites and public pronouncements of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates (Gary Johnson being the exception), New Mexico’s senate candidates, and even those running for the House of Representatives. You will find plenty of platitudes and talk of “cutting waste.” You will, among Democrats, at least, find plenty of willingness to raise taxes on “the wealthy.” Republicans, on the other hand, will talk about overturning “ObamaCare,” but you find few specific ideas for dramatically-reducing the $1.3 trillion annual federal deficit.
It is hard to argue that any issue can compare in importance to the deficit and the $16 trillion federal debt. Unfortunately, even Paul Ryan’s plan, which is better than Obama’s non-plan, hardly qualifies as “conservative.”
Obama’s budget would mean a 2021 budget that spends $2 trillion more than we do today, increase debt held by the public from 62 percent to 77 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and maintain massive annual deficits. This is a patently irresponsible proposal which is perhaps why few of either party in Congress have signed on to it.
Ryan’s plan comes in at more than a trillion dollars less, around $4.7 trillion. That sounds great, but aside from his much-criticized plan to reduce Medicare spending through the use of vouchers (probably the most specific and well-though-out-proposal in the document) his plan offers few details in terms of what to cut and what to keep in the federal budget.
Even that modest plan has not been embraced by the GOP’s candidate Romney.
Politicians have a problem with offering specific cuts because every program in the budget was put there to placate a powerful special interest. If you as a politician target specific programs for elimination, you likely alienate an entire special interest group that votes based on that single issue without necessarily picking up support from the average voter.
There are some tough discussions to be had about entitlement reform, but there are also some “easy” cuts that could save billions of dollars annually. All prospective members of Congress should support the end of the ethanol mandate that forces Americans to pay $40 billion a year in higher food prices and costs taxpayers $1.78 in subsidies for each gallon of gasoline that corn-based ethanol replaces.
Another boondoggle from the energy sector is the $24 billion that the Congressional Budget Office says is spent annually energy subsidies and special tax breaks. Liberals decry subsidies for “dirty fossil fuels” and conservatives oppose subsidies for so-called “renewables.” Why don’t we put them on a level playing field by cutting all energy subsidies and industry-specific tax breaks? If states want to subsidize or mandate “green” energy, they can do so, but get the federal government out of it.
Lastly, there is the issue of “corporate welfare.” This involves forcing average taxpayers to pay freight for big business. According to the Cato Institute, the cost of nine programs and with the sole purpose of distributing tax dollars to corporations include the recently renewed Export-Import Bank, International Trade Commission, the Small Business Administration, and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Annual subsidies come to $20.4 billion.
Cutting $50 billion or so in obvious waste won’t solve our $1.3 trillion annual budget deficit. In fact, the relatively small number of obviously-wasteful programs illustrates the reality that most of the programs driving our budget problems – like entitlements and an overweening national security state – are perceived as “sacred cows” by wide swaths of the American populace.
The left’s talk about balancing the budget by taxing the wealthy is just silly and will drive businesses and the wealthy overseas or out of business. Tax reform that lowers rates and eliminates deductions and loopholes like those for home ownership and employer-purchased health insurance would raise some revenues and eliminate distortions in our economy, but, like so many spending programs, these ideas are politically-challenging to enact.
Our candidates and elected officials won’t campaign on cuts to even the most wasteful federal programs until they benefit politically from the decision to do so. It is up to us, the American people, to demand specific cuts and a return to balanced budgets. Anything else takes America takes another step down the road to ruin.
Paul Gessing is the President of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation. The Rio Grande Foundation is an independent, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.
We’re number 18! We’re number 18! Doesn’t exactly have a great ring to it, does it? Check out the newly-released report (full ranking is on page 10 of the downloaded document) from our friends at the Fraser Institute. Not surprisingly, while the Obama Administration’s policies has hastened our fall from number 3 back in 2000, President George W. Bush played a big role in the downfall of the US on this all-encompassing report on economic freedom.
A few countries that have surpassed us in terms of economic freedom followed by their ranking:
Hong Kong 1
Canada 5
Mauritius 8
Chile 10
Estonia 14
Qatar 17
If you are interested in finding out more about this index and the decline of the US economy, check out this podcast interview with one of the authors from Cato Institute.
