Craigp learns not to mess with Space Bunny, the hard way:
Craigp, as I believe I stated earlier, I’ve not done a country by country study of who does or does not have more personal freedoms and I already established what that meant in the context of your assertation that the US is supposed to be “a shining example of freedom”
It’s easy enough to prove that Craig is utterly, totally and hopelessly wrong. First, Space Bunny is correct in saying that her choice of where to live says nothing about where freedom is greatest. And while she has not done a country-by-country study, the Heritage Foundation has. Following are the Index of Economic Freedom’s top ten list of most free countries, from most free to least free.
Hong Kong
Singapore
New Zealand
Luxembourg
Ireland
Estonia
United Kingdom
Denmark
Switzerland
United States
Ironic, is it not, that the USA is considered less free now than the country from which it declared independence. The differences can be glaring, for example, the maximum Swiss federal income tax is only 9 percent, compared to 38 percent in the USA, while Ireland’s tax on corporate net income, at 16 percent, is less than half the USA’s 35 percent.
Petty personal freedoms are also greater, as anyone who has seen Italians smoking anywhere and everywhere can testify. The USA does have the advantage of less imperial bureaucracies than the countries of Western Europe, but to blithely assert that the USA is still a shining example of human freedom to the world requires an almost total avoidance of the relevant facts.