It would take less than 5 minutes of research to learn that it was not just about low taxes. Also cherry picking one country on there does nothing to disprove the notion that in general countries with higher economic freedom have higher economic growth. I don't think they are trying to say it is the one and only factor as that would be ridiculous. If it were purely ideological the list would look nothing like that anyway so I don't see why people are getting bent out of shape.
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).
I see. I may have failed to really understand the index; In my defence the article seemed to dwell unduly a small part of it's composition.
At the least, these guys need better PR. That article seemed pretty out of touch with those of us in the rest of the tax brackets. Instead of complaining about top tax rates they should be convincing me that net prosperity will increase, even for middle class chumps like me, if we deregulate, lower _everyone's_ taxes, abolish the minimum wage, get rid of medicare/medicaid, get rid of public health insurance and unemployment insurance and welfare and food programs and social security, and &c.
That sounds like a hard sell, and I think these guys are afraid to address those issues head on in a public forum like WSJ, so they complain about other stuff that's less relevant.
It's probably more the slant that the WSJ put on the ranking and what makes up the ranking.
I think making a link between economic freedom and economic growth is a tough enough sell without giving individual policy prescriptions. Ideally people should be informed enough to know what tradeoffs they are making when they vote for policy choices. It's OK to vote yourself a bit less economic growth for other things you want, but for many they aren't aware of those tradeoffs.
You can see a big difference when you look at Africa. Countries like Botswana and Mauritius really have seen great gains in economic growth through economic freedom, yet we think the whole continent is struggling. Compare that with Cuba, North Korea, and Zimbambwe at the bottom. For a while Botswana was outpacing Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea in economic growth rate.
If Satoshi sent coins to the Silk Road as the authors suggest maybe that was to take advantage of the mixing service. It seems like he or they would want to cash at least some of these out.
"Meanwhile, Intel's push towards ubiquitous computing--gesture controls, speech recognition, and so on--not only advances traditional interface models, but the technologies involved also require strong computing heft. Sneaky, sneaky."
Lol ya this must be the reason. I bet that they have a hand in the self-driving cars too. Its all an excuse to require more computing power.
Lets get one thing straight: you don't play poker against the house but against other players... Maybe this is a game can be beat... but you have to play sitting down.
Actually when you put players of similar levels together and make them plays tens of thousands of hands together, all these players are going to be break-even... If not for the rake that the house takes.
This is already seen in online poker in cash games at some limits where there are a lot of regulars. And it's very often discussed (and criticized) in online poker forums, where they say that these regulars are just shifting the money all around, with the house being the only real winner.
So your oversimplification doesn't get anything straight.
When you play poker you play against other players and against the house (rake and buy-in fees).
To give you an idea: there are semi-pro who would be losing players but who are actually making quite a decent profit only thanks to the partial rake-back that the house gives them (regulars players playing lots of hands get back a % of the rake they paid, which is called the rakeback).
