Originally Posted by
MEMpilot
Political-free zone. The mention of Japan having free health-care was used to refute the prior charts that argued "more privatization = less government interference" as Japan maintains a heavily government sponsored program. I was not attempting to say I prefer one system over another by merely mentioning it...
I think I made it pretty clear I'm not liberal. But it seems if one is to criticize the liberatarian fundamentalists, then I'm suddenly a Keynesian socialist. I feel bad for those who adhere to a stringent set of principles and are unabashed to question the validity of any ideology. This has only led the world down tunnels of darkness.
MEMpilot,
I assume it was the chart that I posted to which you refer here. It did not attempt to illustrate a relationship between government interference and privatization; rather, it graphed a relationship between economic freedom and prosperity.
Prosperity is relatively easy to measure--they simply use
per capita GDP numbers for each country. Economic freedom is a bit tougher to define. The authors of the study that we are discussing used the following method to rate economic freedom:
We measure ten components of economic freedom, assigning a grade in each using a scale from 0 to 100, where 100 represents the maximum freedom. The ten component scores are then averaged to give an overall economic freedom score for each country. The ten components of economic freedom are: Business Freedom | Trade Freedom | Fiscal Freedom | Government Size | Monetary Freedom | Investment Freedom | Financial Freedom | Property rights | Freedom from Corruption | Labor Freedom
Japan scores pretty highly on economic freedom--it is categorized as "mostly free". And it has the high prosperity to show for it. In the category ratings for economic freedom Japan's average is brought down by, among other things, a large government size and high taxes--perhaps related to the health care system? If you are interested, this analysis of Japanese economic freedom is here:
Japan information on economic freedom | Facts, data, analysis, charts and more
As to my "libertarian fundamentalism", you are free to criticize as you see fit. I do not necessarily think that makes you a Keynesian (the modifier "socialist" is redundant). I like to think that I am open minded and am receptive to an argument if it is well made.
I think that it is good to adhere to principles. I believe in individual liberty, economic and otherwise, as encoded in the Constitution. If that makes me a "fundamentalist", then I celebrate fundamentalism.
Cheers
WW