America's Competitiveness Slide, Ctd.

Last week, the World Economic Forum weighed in on the United States' continuing slide down their annual "global competitiveness" rankings.  Today, the Fraser Institute released its annual Economic Freedom of the World Report, and the results are even more troubling:

The United States experienced one of the largest drops in economic freedom, falling to 10th place overall from sixth in 2010. Much of this decline is a result of higher spending and borrowing on the part of the U.S. government, and lower scores for legal structure and property rights.

Hong Kong again topped the rankings of 141 countries, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Australia.

Research shows that people living in countries with high levels of economic freedom not only enjoy higher levels of prosperity and greater individual freedoms, but also longer life spans....

The annual peer-reviewed economic freedom report uses 42 different measures to create an index ranking of 141 countries around the world based on policies that encourage economic freedom. The cornerstones of economic freedom are personal choice, voluntary exchange, freedom to compete, and security of private property. Economic freedom is measured in five different areas: (1) size of government, (2) legal structure and security of property rights, (3) access to sound money, (4) freedom to trade internationally, and (5) regulation of credit, labor, and business....

Hong Kong offers the highest level of economic freedom worldwide, with a score of 9.01 out of 10. The other top scorers are Singapore (8.68), New Zealand (8.20), Switzerland (8.03), Australia (7.98), Canada (7.81), Chile (7.77), the United Kingdom (7.71), Mauritius (7.67), and the United States (7.60).

The rankings and scores of other large economies include: Germany, 21st (7.45); Japan, 22nd (7.44); France, 42nd (7.16); Italy, 70th (6.81); Mexico, 75th (6.74); Russia, 81st (6.55); China, 92nd (6.43); India, 94th (6.40); and Brazil, 102nd (6.19).

Zimbabwe maintains the lowest level of economic freedom among the 141 jurisdictions measured. Myanmar, Venezuela, Angola, and Democratic Republic of Congo round out the bottom five nations.

And that was in 2009. I just can't wait to see how far we fall for 2010 after the implementation of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and oodles of other statist adventures!

Sigh.