Any time I hear someone talking about liberty I presume they're a nut. It's unfortunate that word has been so wholly owned by crazy self centered people.
Small city-states can use strategies that don't scale. Being a tax haven essentially leeches businesses from neighboring countries, but if everyone was a tax haven, then no-one would be. Economies based on tourism or oil also are not duplicatable.
exactly. i started to type reasons why but then i considered they'd have to be data blind to not see a problem with it, and would argue over semantics and exceptions, etc etc.
> but if everyone was a tax haven, then no-one would be.
But there's a good chance that the world would be more productive as a whole. Governments typically trade economic productivity (by increasing friction) for ostensible social benefits (via tax-funded programs). Of course, it's not clear if this tradeoff always works out, because governments may spend sub-optimally or divert funds towards things like war.
Your hypothesis seems to be that companies in low-tax countries have a higher growth rate than higher-tax countries in the same industries. If that were true, then companies in those countries would eventually dominate the world's market share. Instead, it's companies in higher tax countries that are the largest.
Governments often increase productivity. Try investing in a country with no laws, education, or infrastructure. They can also help make an economy more efficient by maximizing positive externalities and minimizing negative ones. Social benefits can also be beneficial economically as an externality. Companies don't have the incentive to keep someone from starving or to educate them from kindergarten, but having a larger, more educated work force certainly benefits the economy as a whole.
>then companies in those countries would eventually dominate the world's market share.
Has "eventually" happened yet? US tax policy has gotten worse in recent years; give it some time.
>Instead, it's companies in higher tax countries that are the largest.
The biggest companies are in the US, which is a huge country with lots of historical capital. There are hundreds of reasons big companies tend to be here, and you haven't demonstrated that excessive taxes are one of them.
Interestingly, many young tech companies like Google have their EU HQs (and sometimes global HQs) in Ireland for tax reasons.
If those countries were so business friendly, why aren't companies started there? Where is the Silicon Valley of Ireland or Singapore? Those businesses were built and grew because of the quality of infrastructure and supports provided by taxes.
A better comparison to your computer analogy would be a company that sells knock-offs and counterfeit products. Trying to just reap the rewards without doing the hard work to get there.
One remarkable thing that most Americans don't seem to know; the US is one of two countries (the other being Eritrea) that takes income tax on income earned while living outside the US. While there are some tax credits that lessen this burden, the only way to free oneself of US income tax is to renounce citizenship. Renouncing citizenship requires a fee of over $2000 and several years of extensive tax records at the IRS's request.
More annoying than that is that it's extremely difficult to open a bank account overseas because of FATCA. It's less costly to deny Americans service than to comply with the US' reporting requirements.
And the irony is, while foreign banks will figure out how to deal with an American who wants millions handled, my middle-class retirement account is not worth the hassle. I'm just thankful to still have a current (checking) account so I can receive my pay.
Because I still have to file onerous US taxes, I can't open foreign bank accounts, and I personally would have to pay tens of thousands a year to the federal government even though they would do nothing for me while outside the US?
I suspect you're wrong that $100k covers the majority of expats, but even if you are, it's not like it's much better to fuck over a minority of expats.
And states like California will not give a foreign tax credit. For example, if you're Californian and work abroad for a couple years, unless you fit some pretty strict criteria, you'll be double-taxed.
In many ways I found Scandinavian countries more economically free than America when I lived there. A strong social safety net is not necessarily incompatible with an economically free country.
A strong social safety net is incompatible with “freedom” when the Koch brothers and their billionaire buddies are paying for the word’s definition. In particular, “freedom” here has been defined to mean low taxes, weak government, lack of regulatory oversight of industry, and lax controls over the movement of capital.
Consider this report an ideologically motivated propaganda piece rather than a serious analysis.
I'd argue the only way you get maximal economic liberty is with a strong safety net.
The most significant "lawful" forces that hurt economic liberty are regulations, price fixing, and certification. They vary in intensity from having to put ingredients on the bottle to outright banning incandescent lightbulbs, from corn subsidies to fixed rates in medicare, and from getting a drivers license to getting an MD.
But they are all barriers to economic participation and malleability. But they exist for reasons - to reduce exploitation in the system.
Those social safety nets, that in theory could be taking an economically uniform portion of productivity and thus have their minimal impact, also reduce the ability for people to be exploited. Loan sharks and get thin quick schemes are modern, legal forms of exploitation, but historically bad food products, dangerous housing and machinery, and outright extortion were all exploitation schemes the regulation machine reduces.
But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
It is very similar to how easy credit creates business opportunity. Without credit, you cannot have a foundation to start out on if you have nothing in the first place. In the same way, either Scandanavian style socialism or the UBI proposals floating around can provide the foundation to enable more general economic freedom above it.
It is impossible to feel free when you are restricted to the bottom of Maslow's heirarchy. Maximal freedom comes from the top, where you have access to the full breadth of your potential. But any time you slip down to the bottom rungs again you are forced to contend with those, because survival trumps self-actualization. If you want to maximize for personal liberty of all forms, including economic, you need to make sure nobody is getting trapped down there.
That's not a civil way to address another commenter, even if that commenter is completely wrong. If you see an error, it would be better to explain what it is, not call names. Interjections like "Sigh..." are an internet-forum form of rolling one's eyes, which isn't nice.
We all know from experience how much harder and more time-consuming it is to correct errors than make them in the first place—that's a big problem with internet discourse in general—but posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive replies isn't a solution.
>They vary in intensity from having to put ingredients on the bottle to outright banning incandescent lightbulbs, from corn subsidies to fixed rates in medicare, and from getting a drivers license to getting an MD.
>But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
I can't really reconcile these. Worst case scenario for not putting ingredients on a bottle? Death. Worst case scenario for being treated by an unlicensed MD? Death. Not requiring a drivers license? Death. Even the lightbulb one - death, in a few decades, from flooding.
Specifically what kinds of regulation can you get rid of?
I'm not saying the safety net is necessarily part of economic freedom (although, I'd argue it does give individuals freedom from oppression by employers, which is different but still valuable). But, my main point is that I think Scandinavians are actually generally more pro-capitalist, pro-entrepreneur than people think. I feel like Americans are more likely to pass anticompetitive laws or impose tariffs on others, for example.
As someone from Norway who have lived in the US and who is married to an American I understand what he is talking about. Lacking insurance limits your ability to actually go ahead and start companies. Also Scandinavia generally has stronger pro-competition laws which evens the playing field and makes it easier to enter a market. E.g. it is easier to become a cell phone or broadband provider in Scandinavia than in the US which often lets established business write all sorts of regulation for them which limits others from entering a market. Many in the US have no choice with respect to electric power. Usually the utilities owning the connecting lines has a local monopoly.
Businesses in the US are often free to impose all sorts of draconian contracts on you wish limits your freedom in many ways. E.g. anti-competitive clauses are common in the US. E.g. you can't work at at a competing company when you quite for quite some time.
The problem with American "freedom" is that it is often too much freedom to take away your freedoms. Scandinavia tends to give less freedom to private enterprise to take away freedom from you or others. Freedom is a complicated concept. It is much like tolerance. It is very hard to have a tolerant society which tolerates intolerance.
> The full data set, including all of the data published in this report as well as data omitted due to limited
space, can be downloaded for free at http://www.freetheworld.com. The data file available there contains the most up-to-date and accurate data for the Economic Freedom of the World index.
Actually that site sends me to another site [-] which asks for an email (over plain http). That's as far as I'm willing to take it, but I'm curious to know if anyone is able/willing to pull the dataset.
I happen to think that who funds an organization is often indicative of their agenda i.e.: follow the money. I also understand this belief is not universally shared.
What does this even mean? When I think of 'Liberty' I think of freedom of movement and action. But, over the last 16 years, I have not noticed any changes in how I can move or spend my money. And, I have a lot more than I used to have.
Or, is this only relevant to the very rich?
Or, is it similar to how Fox News characters talk about 'freedom'? (that is, much different than what I think of freedom).
size of government: expenditures, taxes, and enterprises
legal structure and security of property rights
access to sound money
freedom to trade internationally; and
regulation of credit, labor, and business
And, reading further, buying into this means you agree that a large "size of government" is inherently bad, that "inflation is a a monetary phenomenon," and that all regulations reduce freedom.
This is of course a libertarian point of view. Personally, I have found that Obamacare subsidies have given me the freedom to start a business without putting my family at risk, that inflation can be rooted in technological supply-side or demand-side shocks, and that regulations like nutritional information requirements make me more free by giving me more information.
With this understanding, the USA is more "economically free" than at any point in my lifetime.
The colloquial "freedom" you refer to is subjective and can be used to mean anything. Robbing a bank would give me the freedom to start a business without putting my family at risk. Going to jail would make me more free by not having to worry about food. Microsoft Windows gives me more freedom to get my work done because Linux has poor support for Word documents.
Freedom or liberty has to be defined negatively (e.g. absence of constraints) and precisely to have any objective meaning at all.
“Economic freedom” per the Kochs and their network of libertarian think tanks means your freedom as an industrialist to bring government soldiers in to help you forcibly suppress worker strikes. It means your freedom to dump whatever you want into the local river, without pesky interference from the EPA. It means your freedom to create propaganda venues masquerading as news with no accountability. It means the freedom to force all dispute resolution out of a publicly accountable court system into private arbitration. It means your freedom to funnel money secretly to university-affiliated “scientists” to publish bogus studies casting doubt on climate change or the harmful effects of particular products. It means the freedom to secretly donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns, and make sure the law supports your hiring politicians and government officials at high salaries after they leave public office. Etc.
The “robber barons” are their heroes and their dream is a return to the Gilded Age.
Labeling this “freedom” is a pretty cute bit of rhetorical gymnastics.
I've never heard of any libertarians that were against "worker strikes", that would be very much against the core tenets. I also don't see any evidence that libertarians are industrialists. The only statistics I found showed that libertarians were about as rich as democrats on average, or a bit less. Anyways, HN is not the place for political debates so I'm out!
We’re not talking about random people who consider themselves “libertarians”, who are mostly fine people albeit rather naïve in my opinion. We’re talking about “libertarian think tanks” and university-affiliated “libertarian institutes”, which are predominantly funded by billionaire industrialists.
You may want to study property rights (protection from pollution) and freedom of speech (publishing studies).
I don't know about the Koch bros, but libertarians are the most anti-corporate people you can find, precisely because government and corporations collude to destroy individual rights and freedom.
You may want to stop reading your lefty media if you are to retain any intellectual capacity.
The Koch brothers strategically encourage libertarianism to help them repeal only the regulations they want repealed.
They'll push for repealing environmental protection laws, but not for the tort laws that reduce their liability for polluting. They'll push for repealing regulations that are advantageous for unions, but not "Right to Work" laws that prevent unions and businesses from forming contracts requiring all laborers to be part of the union.
Calling names and personal attacks aren't allowed in HN comments and will get your account banned eventually. Please don't do those things. Instead, please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Freedom is a term inherently defined by a political philosophy. In fact it has been said that definition of freedom is the fundamental difference between different ideologies.
For example, you might define property rights as the negative freedom to do what you want with your property (property as defined by government, btw. e.g. humans are mostly not allowed to be property anymore. Or, the groundwater below your land might or might not be your property in your jurisdiction.). Alternatively, you could define property rights as the positive freedom of being able to peacefully enjoy your property, which could require the government to protect your property in various ways such as defending you against illegitimate claimants to the property.
Anarchy provides a form of theoretical freedom, but neglects practical freedom. If you remove the governments monopoly on force, you don't eliminate force.
I happen to think that, in aggregate, the current system of the government forcibly removing some property from everyone to provide a system in which the remainder of the property is protected under the rule of law preserves a larger fraction of property rights than a more theoretically pure system free from such coercion would be.
I may be wrong about this, or I may be right, but I think it is hard to prove either way, as we do not have a sufficient understanding of social dynamics to argue from simulation or first-principles, and empirical data have too many confounding variables.
Right. Here's the actual study, about 3 blogs down.[1] This has the breakdown by nation and the categories listed above. The study points out that the "economic liberty" numbers are converging for the successful countries.
So Hong Kong, Georgia, Mauritius, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Lithuania are all more free than the US? A strange conclusion.
>Individuals have economic freedom when property they acquire without the use of force...
So we'll be giving north American back to the Indians? Or do we consider any slow-down of that North Dakota pipeline a gross violation of freedom of the innocent oil industry?
In the UAE you're free to own and exploit slaves, a right which hasn't been present in these United States since the Tyrant L.nc.ln. spits on five fiat dollar federal reserve note
The UAE at #9? It's a modern-day slave state, that entices workers from the subcontinent, takes their passports, and then forces them to work without pay. Not sure how that is 'economic liberty'.
Yeah, I noticed how my home country Norway is way below such an authoritarian regime. Just shows how ridiculous the whole notion of economic freedom is. I guess if freedom is determined in terms of freedom to economically exploit, then the slave owning southern states of old would have been at the very top of this index.
After all putting in restrictions, like you can't own people, is restricting economic "freedom" in some way :-D
It is a they say, economists know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
The word "freedom" refers to freedom _from_ coercion. This is why a big government, that takes your income, inherently reduces economic freedom.
Consider the opposite.
"Now with free education and free golf lessons I have so much more freedom".
This is essentially nonsensical. This concept of "freedom" can be taken to mean anything you like, and deliberately hides the other side of the transaction. Namely, the tutors who are coerced to teach you math and golf. Or, if they are paid, the people who are taxed to pay for your "freedom" while receiving no benefit whatsoever.
The same goes for social safety nets and the rest. It is telling that these basic moral concepts are not spread in our society today. This year US may well get Trumped. Next time it will be Berned (literally).
Free education means free as in price, not as in freedom. It is also understood by almost anyone who suggest it to not be free to society at large, but free to the person receiving it and paid for by society at large, same for health. At the level of a society, it makes sense because you want to live in a more educated capable society, which increases your own opportunities and standard of living regardless of what you do, given that society is interconnected. At the most individualistic level, you can consider the benefits to yourself of receiving free education when you are young, then paying for it in the form of taxes over the future and realize that public institutions tend to work better for this case than for profit loans in most cases.
Regarding the whole freedom from coercion argument. My question would be: isn't private property itself essentially enforced by government coercion? How is the freedom to not pay taxes any more sacred than the freedom to not being stopped by police if I steal from someone else?
Taxation is constitutive of the concept of a modern state. Now, we can discuss the pro's and con's of specific programs, the amount of taxation needed to fund them, how progressive such taxation needs to be and whether the benefits are worth the costs. I can say that I think socialized education is definitely worth it, and you can tell me that you don't believe it is, and tax policy results from democratic compromise among many such points of view. But the whole "taxation is morally wrong because it implies state coercion" argument is absurd, private property implies state coercion too and I have seen few libertarians suggest it should go away (in that sense, I believe full-on Anarchists have a more self-consistent view, even if I still don't agree with it).
> isn't private property itself essentially enforced by government coercion?
Yes. Absolutely. This point (which was first made so clear to me by Matt Bruenig) needs to be repeated over and over, loudly, over the delusions of the libertarian crowd (whose ideology might more accurately be named "propertarian"...).
Do these kind of rankings even say anything meaningful relevant to this world. I notice my own country Norway being far down, below countries like Romania, Jordan Qatar etc. Countries I know have far less effective governments and private property rights. It is not unknown that people the swindled away from their property in Romania due to the rife government corruption. On paper economic freedom is rather pointless if you got a poorly managed government and buried in corruption and incompetence. All the money Norway has sent to Romania to deal with the roma people has disappeared in a big black hole. How long does it take to start a business in these countries? It takes twice as long to do it in Romania and United Arab Emirates than in Norway.
I suspect these sorts of rankings is just made to further a libertarian agenda.
I always like ratings like this that put Singapore near the top of the list. It feels like the raters have never been there. It's a very controlling society (not authoritarian at all, but very controlling).
Personally I wouldn't want to live there any more but I think the government generally has the support of a large majority of the population and it's definitely raised the standard of living dramatically and sustainably.
It's easy to look at its free port tax regime and say "liberal!" But it's economically very illiberal.
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[ 7.4 ms ] story [ 716 ms ] threadBut there's a good chance that the world would be more productive as a whole. Governments typically trade economic productivity (by increasing friction) for ostensible social benefits (via tax-funded programs). Of course, it's not clear if this tradeoff always works out, because governments may spend sub-optimally or divert funds towards things like war.
Governments often increase productivity. Try investing in a country with no laws, education, or infrastructure. They can also help make an economy more efficient by maximizing positive externalities and minimizing negative ones. Social benefits can also be beneficial economically as an externality. Companies don't have the incentive to keep someone from starving or to educate them from kindergarten, but having a larger, more educated work force certainly benefits the economy as a whole.
Has "eventually" happened yet? US tax policy has gotten worse in recent years; give it some time.
>Instead, it's companies in higher tax countries that are the largest.
The biggest companies are in the US, which is a huge country with lots of historical capital. There are hundreds of reasons big companies tend to be here, and you haven't demonstrated that excessive taxes are one of them.
Interestingly, many young tech companies like Google have their EU HQs (and sometimes global HQs) in Ireland for tax reasons.
So if I open a store and sell you a computer for less than the next store over, am I leeching from my neighbors?
A better comparison to your computer analogy would be a company that sells knock-offs and counterfeit products. Trying to just reap the rewards without doing the hard work to get there.
More annoying than that is that it's extremely difficult to open a bank account overseas because of FATCA. It's less costly to deny Americans service than to comply with the US' reporting requirements.
> While there are some tax credits that lessen this burden
Not like it makes it much better. "We're going to completely fuck you over, but here's a small concession."
I suspect you're wrong that $100k covers the majority of expats, but even if you are, it's not like it's much better to fuck over a minority of expats.
Consider this report an ideologically motivated propaganda piece rather than a serious analysis.
The most significant "lawful" forces that hurt economic liberty are regulations, price fixing, and certification. They vary in intensity from having to put ingredients on the bottle to outright banning incandescent lightbulbs, from corn subsidies to fixed rates in medicare, and from getting a drivers license to getting an MD.
But they are all barriers to economic participation and malleability. But they exist for reasons - to reduce exploitation in the system.
Those social safety nets, that in theory could be taking an economically uniform portion of productivity and thus have their minimal impact, also reduce the ability for people to be exploited. Loan sharks and get thin quick schemes are modern, legal forms of exploitation, but historically bad food products, dangerous housing and machinery, and outright extortion were all exploitation schemes the regulation machine reduces.
But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
It is very similar to how easy credit creates business opportunity. Without credit, you cannot have a foundation to start out on if you have nothing in the first place. In the same way, either Scandanavian style socialism or the UBI proposals floating around can provide the foundation to enable more general economic freedom above it.
It is impossible to feel free when you are restricted to the bottom of Maslow's heirarchy. Maximal freedom comes from the top, where you have access to the full breadth of your potential. But any time you slip down to the bottom rungs again you are forced to contend with those, because survival trumps self-actualization. If you want to maximize for personal liberty of all forms, including economic, you need to make sure nobody is getting trapped down there.
This is what happens when you start with faulty definitions.
Orwellian at best.
We all know from experience how much harder and more time-consuming it is to correct errors than make them in the first place—that's a big problem with internet discourse in general—but posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive replies isn't a solution.
Edit: unfortunately looks like you've been doing this repeatedly. This one is worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12519373. Please stop posting like that.
>But if you have a strong enough safety net to keep people out of the desperation trap of needing money or resources to sustain their livelihood you can also eliminate swathes of the regulation that restricts markets without negatively harming those at most risk for being taken advantage of, because the state institution provides a floor on what the worst possible outcomes can be.
I can't really reconcile these. Worst case scenario for not putting ingredients on a bottle? Death. Worst case scenario for being treated by an unlicensed MD? Death. Not requiring a drivers license? Death. Even the lightbulb one - death, in a few decades, from flooding.
Specifically what kinds of regulation can you get rid of?
What you are talking about is not "freedom". It is collective insurance.
That may be efficient and convenient if done properly. But it has nothing to do with freedom. Read other posts...
US combines the worst of two worlds in so many ways.
Sweden at least does "socialism" correct in some areas.
Businesses in the US are often free to impose all sorts of draconian contracts on you wish limits your freedom in many ways. E.g. anti-competitive clauses are common in the US. E.g. you can't work at at a competing company when you quite for quite some time.
The problem with American "freedom" is that it is often too much freedom to take away your freedoms. Scandinavia tends to give less freedom to private enterprise to take away freedom from you or others. Freedom is a complicated concept. It is much like tolerance. It is very hard to have a tolerant society which tolerates intolerance.
Actually that site sends me to another site [-] which asks for an email (over plain http). That's as far as I'm willing to take it, but I'm curious to know if anyone is able/willing to pull the dataset.
- http://efwdata.com/
If it's something you agree with, then no need to check and see who did the work. It stands on its own.
Also the link you just posted is bordering on garbage. Why wouldn't you just link the wiki?
Or, is this only relevant to the very rich?
Or, is it similar to how Fox News characters talk about 'freedom'? (that is, much different than what I think of freedom).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_freedom
This is of course a libertarian point of view. Personally, I have found that Obamacare subsidies have given me the freedom to start a business without putting my family at risk, that inflation can be rooted in technological supply-side or demand-side shocks, and that regulations like nutritional information requirements make me more free by giving me more information.
With this understanding, the USA is more "economically free" than at any point in my lifetime.
Freedom or liberty has to be defined negatively (e.g. absence of constraints) and precisely to have any objective meaning at all.
The “robber barons” are their heroes and their dream is a return to the Gilded Age.
Labeling this “freedom” is a pretty cute bit of rhetorical gymnastics.
Jane Mayer’s recent work is recommended reading on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385535597
Or if you want something shorter, from a few years ago, http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/covert-operatio...
You may want to study property rights (protection from pollution) and freedom of speech (publishing studies).
I don't know about the Koch bros, but libertarians are the most anti-corporate people you can find, precisely because government and corporations collude to destroy individual rights and freedom.
You may want to stop reading your lefty media if you are to retain any intellectual capacity.
They'll push for repealing environmental protection laws, but not for the tort laws that reduce their liability for polluting. They'll push for repealing regulations that are advantageous for unions, but not "Right to Work" laws that prevent unions and businesses from forming contracts requiring all laborers to be part of the union.
For example, you might define property rights as the negative freedom to do what you want with your property (property as defined by government, btw. e.g. humans are mostly not allowed to be property anymore. Or, the groundwater below your land might or might not be your property in your jurisdiction.). Alternatively, you could define property rights as the positive freedom of being able to peacefully enjoy your property, which could require the government to protect your property in various ways such as defending you against illegitimate claimants to the property.
I happen to think that, in aggregate, the current system of the government forcibly removing some property from everyone to provide a system in which the remainder of the property is protected under the rule of law preserves a larger fraction of property rights than a more theoretically pure system free from such coercion would be.
I may be wrong about this, or I may be right, but I think it is hard to prove either way, as we do not have a sufficient understanding of social dynamics to argue from simulation or first-principles, and empirical data have too many confounding variables.
[1] http://www.freetheworld.com/2016/economic-freedom-of-the-wor...
>Individuals have economic freedom when property they acquire without the use of force...
So we'll be giving north American back to the Indians? Or do we consider any slow-down of that North Dakota pipeline a gross violation of freedom of the innocent oil industry?
After all putting in restrictions, like you can't own people, is restricting economic "freedom" in some way :-D
It is a they say, economists know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
Consider the opposite.
"Now with free education and free golf lessons I have so much more freedom".
This is essentially nonsensical. This concept of "freedom" can be taken to mean anything you like, and deliberately hides the other side of the transaction. Namely, the tutors who are coerced to teach you math and golf. Or, if they are paid, the people who are taxed to pay for your "freedom" while receiving no benefit whatsoever.
The same goes for social safety nets and the rest. It is telling that these basic moral concepts are not spread in our society today. This year US may well get Trumped. Next time it will be Berned (literally).
Regarding the whole freedom from coercion argument. My question would be: isn't private property itself essentially enforced by government coercion? How is the freedom to not pay taxes any more sacred than the freedom to not being stopped by police if I steal from someone else?
Taxation is constitutive of the concept of a modern state. Now, we can discuss the pro's and con's of specific programs, the amount of taxation needed to fund them, how progressive such taxation needs to be and whether the benefits are worth the costs. I can say that I think socialized education is definitely worth it, and you can tell me that you don't believe it is, and tax policy results from democratic compromise among many such points of view. But the whole "taxation is morally wrong because it implies state coercion" argument is absurd, private property implies state coercion too and I have seen few libertarians suggest it should go away (in that sense, I believe full-on Anarchists have a more self-consistent view, even if I still don't agree with it).
Yes. Absolutely. This point (which was first made so clear to me by Matt Bruenig) needs to be repeated over and over, loudly, over the delusions of the libertarian crowd (whose ideology might more accurately be named "propertarian"...).
I suspect these sorts of rankings is just made to further a libertarian agenda.
Personally I wouldn't want to live there any more but I think the government generally has the support of a large majority of the population and it's definitely raised the standard of living dramatically and sustainably.
It's easy to look at its free port tax regime and say "liberal!" But it's economically very illiberal.