Economic freedom is the key to our prosperity as a nation. Thomas Jefferson observed that “a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement.” Economic freedom, or the ability to profit from our own ideas and labor, to work, produce, consume, own, trade, and invest according to our own choices, has been a debate for many years. There are many statistics on both sides of the argument. I would argue that history has proven, time and time again, that a country with more economic freedom and less government intervention is more prosperous than one that is highly regulated by the government.
Advocates of an expanded government argue that free markets cause income inequality, crises, and monopolies. They believe that more government control of the economy avoids these problems. Since President Obama has been at the helm of the United States, our economic freedom has declined. Eight of the past nine years the U.S has lost economic freedoms and went from being the 6th freest economy in the world to 11th. In 2013, Obama said, “We need to set aside the belief that government cannot do anything about reducing inequality." Technically, he might be right but the way for the government to help reduce income equality is to get out of the way of the American citizens.
A 2014 study in an issue of Contemporary Economic Policy done by economist Oguzhan Dincer, found that reducing economic freedom tends to increase income inequality, which then leads to more economic intervention. It’s a dangerous circle. Dincer goes on to compare the top 8 states with the highest economic freedom to the 8 states that have the lowest economic freedom. The results were that the states with less freedom had more income inequality. This is only one of thousands of studies and comparisons that show people in a freer economy have better lives, in every way, than citizens of less-free economies.
Big governments are inefficient and harmful. Citizens who rely too heavily on government to do everything become dependent, while eating away at individual responsibility and initiative. Franklin Roosevelt said “Continued dependence on government support induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” Big governments also encourage businesses to become dependents as well. If a business gets government help to bail them out of financial trouble, then chances are that business is now under the thumb of the government. The advocates of a central government argue that more regulations would eliminate the income disparity. What they seem to forget is that less-free economies also have income inequality. The question then would be who has a better overall quality of life. The income in the poorest of the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest. I think that answers that question.
The fact that our country’s economy has been performing far below its potential and our economic freedom has been on a steady decline is not something we should take lightly. The increased debt, government spending, higher corporate taxes, and slow job growth should be extremely disheartening to the citizens of our country. The founding fathers new that economic freedom was the key to prosperity. That is how the United States got where we are today. A place everyone wanted to live, home of the free and land of the brave. Restoring our economic freedom is the road we need to travel to get our country back to great.