When it comes to economic freedom, yes.

The Wall Street Journal has just released its annual Index of Economic Freedom. Here’s how it goes:
1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. Luxembourg
4. Estonia
5. Ireland and New Zealand (tie)
7. United Kingdom
8. Denmark and Iceland (tie)
10. Australia
11. Chile
12. Switzerland and United States

In 1998, the US ranked #5 and in 2001 #6. Now a tie for 12th.

What’s going on here is that some countries (most notably Estonia) have been liberalizing their economies while the US has been moving in the opposite direction, primarily because of the growing fiscal burden of big government. Yeah, I know that Bill Clinton, inveterate teller of the truth, informed us that the era of big government was over, but numbers behind this study say otherwise.