1 - Your post is about the Heritage index. I believe the Fraser index is much more robust.
2 - Your post does not undermine the point *I'm* trying to make - namely that parliamentarism doesn't hurt your overall level of economic freedom. Your post recognizes that, all things considered, whatever it is that the index measures, it is better to have it than not to have it. My post was about how parliamentary countries have more of that than presidential ones.
3 - I also happen not to be a fan of the "size of government" measures. I firmly believe it is not the size of government that matters, but the welfare it provides. But this does not undermine my point in any way either, indeed it strengthens it, because the one thing parliamentary countries fare worse than presidential ones in those indices is size of government. Parliamentary countries typically have larger governments. This is a point I was already going to raise in the next post.
Having said that, I do think that even in the area of size of government the Fraser index captures important freedoms, notably these: "[countries with] less government investment, and less state ownership of assets earn the highest ratings in this area."
And no, this is definitely not the kind of thing everyone is in favor of.
But even the things where you argue that "everyone is in favor of" there is a significant difference in prioritization.
Economic freedom indexes are rubbish though: https://open.substack.com/pub/philosophybear/p/from-the-archives-the-heritage-foundation?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=5cvsu
Thanks. A few comments:
1 - Your post is about the Heritage index. I believe the Fraser index is much more robust.
2 - Your post does not undermine the point *I'm* trying to make - namely that parliamentarism doesn't hurt your overall level of economic freedom. Your post recognizes that, all things considered, whatever it is that the index measures, it is better to have it than not to have it. My post was about how parliamentary countries have more of that than presidential ones.
3 - I also happen not to be a fan of the "size of government" measures. I firmly believe it is not the size of government that matters, but the welfare it provides. But this does not undermine my point in any way either, indeed it strengthens it, because the one thing parliamentary countries fare worse than presidential ones in those indices is size of government. Parliamentary countries typically have larger governments. This is a point I was already going to raise in the next post.
Having said that, I do think that even in the area of size of government the Fraser index captures important freedoms, notably these: "[countries with] less government investment, and less state ownership of assets earn the highest ratings in this area."
And no, this is definitely not the kind of thing everyone is in favor of.
But even the things where you argue that "everyone is in favor of" there is a significant difference in prioritization.