Oh, what a little freedom can do. Government figures released over the weekend confirm that China now has the second-largest economy in the world...[G]iven the direction the U.S. is heading, there’s a more immediate, more important issue: what China learned — and the U.S. apparently forgot — about the power of freedom.
While China has been economic freedom’s new, albeit imperfect laboratory, personal economic freedom in the United States is being slowly strangled by the state. More spending, more regulations, more rules, and, soon, the Obama tax hikes all contribute to a loss of individual freedoms and, collectively, to an economy bearing a much closer resemblance to floundering Japan than rising China.
Where economic freedom expands, growth follows. Where economic freedom is stifled, economies stagnate. Sadly, China’s former leaders understood this better than do its current leaders, or America’s.
It is remarkable that in our increasingly illiberal and freedom-less society, a brave dissident like J.D. Foster was nevertheless able to post such wisdom for the suffering masses.