(Replying to PARENT post)
For the rest of rest of us, real freedom also means not being imprisoned for interacting with other consenting adults in ways that are illegal...
You mean interactions like paying a consenting adult $7.24/hour to clean your bedroom? Selling a consenting knowledgeable adult a substance which has not passed FDA review? Paying a person without a medallion to drive you to a different location?
As far as I know, you don't escape from patent/copyright or work visa issues by travelling to other nations. Incidentally, those things are included in the Heritage rankings, and collectively get more weight than tax/govt spend.
👤yummyfajitas🕑11y🔼0🗨️0
(Replying to PARENT post)
The index is by a conservative think tank but its certainly not just about taxes. I understand its been impacted in the past by things like the Kelo decision. Anyway it says its these four things equally weighted:
Rule of Law (property rights, freedom from corruption); Limited Government (fiscal freedom, government spending); Regulatory Efficiency (business freedom, labor freedom, monetary freedom); and Open Markets (trade freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom).
👤DGrutt🕑11y🔼0🗨️0
(Replying to PARENT post)
TFA complains about "marginal income rates of %43" as though this were the general case. For what it's worth, %43 is the highest capital gains rate, the highest income rate is %39, which is for incomes of over 1.8MM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States
With that out of the way, the highest marginal tax rate was around %90 during the boom of the 50's and 60's, and is lower now than during Regan administration for example: http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-...
If one is a member of the very highest tax bracket, then one might be tempted to measure freedom by the myopic comparison of income tax rates. It would be unsurprising if the Heritage Foundation were concerned about the very highest tax rate in great disproportion to it's nominal consequence.
There are other economic freedoms: freedom from excessive gov't granted monopolies (patent/copyright), freedom from protectionism, tariffs, limited work visas, etc. Even rich guys driven to distraction by high tax rates ought to be able to find something say about these sorts of things in an article about economic freedom, but no specific structural reforms are proposed. News flash: partisan think tank doesn't like taxes, president.
For the rest of rest of us, real freedom also means not being imprisoned for interacting with other consenting adults in ways that are illegal, and not being denied due process in various ways such as: torte reform, civil asset forfeiture, being spied on by agencies who are immune from judicial review, etc. Could we take a break from wringing our hands about the welfare of the ultra-rich, and work some of that stuff too?