NOW HE'S JUST TRIGGERING THE lEFT/rIGHT:

Now in its 25th edition, "Economic Freedom of the World" is jointly published by two North American think tanks, the Washington-based Cato Institute and the Fraser Institute in Vancouver. The yearly publication measures the extent to which each country's policies and legal system support the basic pillars of economic freedom. Using dozens of data points to score each country, the authors compile an index that quantifies economic liberty in five broad areas: size of government, the rule of law and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade across borders, and the fairness of regulation. They also measure the extent to which women in each society have the same economic rights as men.

When all the numbers are crunched and all the data distilled, the authors sort the nations of the world from freest to least free. According to the most recent report, the greatest economic freedom was found in Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Georgia, the United States, Ireland, Lithuania, Australia, and Denmark. At the bottom of the list were Congo, Iran, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, and Venezuela. (The report was based on data from 2019 and thus did not reflect the sweeping Chinese crackdown in Hong Kong.)

You don't have to be a social scientist to notice the rough correlation: By and large, societies where economic freedom is strong are nicer places to live. Those with little or no economic freedom tend to lack civil liberties as well. When citizens' economic rights aren't protected, neither, as a rule, are their rights to freedom of speech, conscience, and democracy. More often than not, the poorest, saddest, dirtiest, and most dangerous places on the planet are also places with little or no economic freedom.

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