The latest demonstration of the wrong direction of this country comes from the Fraser Institute via the Daily Caller:

The United States has dropped 15 slots since 2000 in an annual ranking of economic freedom, from second place to 17th place. …

The report gauges how supportive countries’ policies and institutions are of economic freedom using 42 variables in five general areas: government size, property rights and legal system, sound money, international trade freedoms and regulation.

This year’s report ranks 152 countries and territories on that basis, with Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand in the one, two and three slots. The Republic of the Congo, Myanmar and Venezuela occupy the very bottom slots.

The United States, at 17, ranks behind Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

One of the report authors, Joshua Hall, associate professor of economics at West Virginia University, explained to The Daily Caller that the annual report was inspired by an observation from economist Milton Friedman.

“Friedman knew of no country that was economically free that was not also politically free, and he realized we really don’t have good measures of economic freedom and maybe we should develop those,” Hall said.

According to the report, the freest countries experienced the most economic growth, with those living in the freest countries experiencing higher incomes and longer life expectancy.

Hall explained there are “lots of reasons” the United States has declined in the economic freedom ranking since 2000. Three areas he noted are an increase in government spending, expanding regulation and declining security of property rights and rule of law. …

“In the long run there is a very strong relationship between high levels of economic freedom and growth,” Hall said. “And so a few years of lower economic freedom, we’re not going to see immediate declines in our standard of living; but if we continue on the slide, we are essentially kind of eating the seed corn and destroying all that we have built up over the past couple hundred years.”

“I think I would view the report as kind of a canary in the coal mine. These are warning signs that we’re becoming over-regulated, we’re spending too much, we’re racking up too much debt. We need to understand that our current economic prosperity was dependent in large part on the government sticking to its core functions.”

Back in 2000, we had a Democratic president and Republican Congress. (Well, Bill Clinton was really of the Clinton Party.) Obviously the Republican Congress that George W. Bush had didn’t improve things, but Barack Obama and Congress have both curtailed our freedoms and made the economy far worse than it was in 2000. And once ObamaCare buries the economy deeper, 17th will seem like the good old days in comparison. Requiring businesses to provide an employee benefit they can’t afford to provide will crash the economy. (As if we have a growing economy now.)