Russia – Freedom Score 20, p/c GDP $27,392
Compare two nations with the same people, language, and culture—two nations so much the same that one of those nations claims that both of those nations are the same nation:
Taiwan – Freedom Score 93, p/c GDP $54,620 China – Freedom Score 10, p/c GDP $17,206
Or even more like/like:
South Korea – Freedom Score 83, p/c GDP $44,292 North Korea – Freedom Score 3, p/c GDP $1,700 (And the IMF didn’t even try to pry that info out of Pyongyang; this is a 2017 CIA estimate) Compare Israel and Egypt:
Israel – Freedom Score 76, p/c GDP $39,126 Egypt – Freedom Score 21, p/c GDP $12,719 (Moses probably parted the Red Sea with the income gap.)
Venezuela has some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Uruguay has . . . According to Wikipedia, Uruguay is among the world’s largest producers of “greasy wool, horse meat, beeswax, and quinces.” Uruguay – Freedom Score 98, p/c GDP $21,338 Venezuela – Freedom Score 16, p/c GDP $7,344 Saudi Arabia does a better job of putting its oil wealth to work. But compare Saudi Arabia to equally oil-wealthy Norway:
Saudi Arabia – Freedom Score 7, p/c GDP $46,273 Norway – Freedom Score 100, p/c GDP $64,856
Freedom makes us rich. Or, if we happen to be rich already, it makes us much richer. There are statistical outliers, of course, some tiny island nations with excellent Freedom Scores and “life’s a beach” economies: Samoa – Freedom Score 81, p/c GDP $5,547 Federated States of Micronesia – Freedom Score 92, p/c GDP $3,447 Tuvalu – Freedom Score 93, p/c GDP $4,480 There are some little petro-chemical despotisms that are rolling in it:
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