By Randall Hoven
Health care is not the only thing. When all government spending is tallied up, government in the U.S. spent 38.6% of GDP in 2008. That was before Obama was sworn in. Australia spent less (33.7%). South Korea spent less (30.9%). Slovakia spent less (33.9%). Switzerland spent less (32.6%). Canada, that liberal country to our north with single-payer health care, spent only a little more (39.6%). At the moment, in 2010, government in the U.S. is spending about 45% of GDP, or just about the European average.
Spending doesn’t capture everything, you say? OK. The Heritage Foundation tallied up ten broad measures of economic freedom across 183 countries. The result? The U.S. is no longer a “free country.” It is now “mostly free,” along with Macau, Cyprus, Georgia, Botswana, and eighteen other countries. We are behind the “free” countries of Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, and even Canada (as well as the perennial Hong Kong and Singapore in the top two spots). We are one notch above Denmark (78.0 to 77.9). And those rankings were tallied before ObamaCare was law.
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