bookofjoe - 'Hail Estonia!'[per thou] Rated #4 in the world in the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom.

Truly amazing, what can happen when government backs off.

Buried in the Soviet system after World War II, Estonia essentially ceased to exist until the Communist world collapsed.

Now, in little more than a decade, Estonia is behind only Hong Kong, Singapore, and Luxembourg in the degree of freedom, transparency, and fairness in its business sector.

Surprising, at least to me, is that the U.S. only comes in tied for twelfth, falling from fifth in 1998, just six years ago.

Also amazing to me is that Venezuela, once one of the richest countries in the world, is today in the bottom group of "repressed" countries, along with Haiti, Cuba, and Zimbabwe.

The list has been created for the past eleven years by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal.

[ PubSub: Venezuela ]

To be fair, Venezuela was never a Free country from an economic point of view (or most others for that matter), but it is amazing that a country with so little freedom looks for solutions in even less freedom... You'd thing it will learn from its mistakes and demand more freedom instead. But here we are in the same old, sameold. Different Mister, but the same stick.

1:31:21 PM  What do you think? ( Thoughts) Who linked? []