No Free Market Then No Democracy

Most people including Americans are unfamiliar and not knowledgeable about different economic and political systems.

We throw around terms such as socialism, capitalism, democracy, or communism with only the faintest idea of what they mean. We often confuse a democracy that has a strong social safety net, such as Denmark, as being socialist. It is lumped together as having the same economic and political system as Cuba.

Cuba is ranked 143rd out of 167 countries by the Economist for its democratic leanings. Demark is ranked 7th and is considered a full democracy. The Heritage Institute ranks Denmark’s economy as the 8th in economic freedom and Cuba 178th. In both its democratic and economic indices, Denmark ranks higher than the U.S.

Putin’s Russia has elections, but the results are foregone conclusions. Would we consider that a democratic state? The economy is not truly capitalistic even though most of its industry is in the hands of a private sector. Those “capitalists” owe their billions in wealth not to their own ingenuity but rather to their loyalty to Putin. Today, Russia is a dictatorship both economically and politically. Russia is 94th in economic freedom and 134th in being a democracy according to the same indices.

The United States has been falling further and further behind as a capitalistic democracy. The current administration does not believe in free markets but rather mercantilism and market statism. Their policies on trade favor tariffs and irrational fiat over…