...Economists know that long-term economic growth depends on economic freedom. That growth suffers whenever governments intervene in labor markets, when they raise taxes and when they increase spending.
In fact, Utah was one of the biggest losers in terms of economic freedom as we experienced the ninth-sharpest decline in the United States.
For Utah, the fall in the ranking was mostly caused by factors related to the recession and thus cannot be blamed solely on our state legislators.
We hasten to note that Utah remains in the index’s top 10. Nevertheless, we should urge our legislators to pay attention to Utah’s economic freedom and work hard to keep the state more firmly on track.
A recent study shows a significant positive impact on a state’s level of economic growth when its level of economic freedom, as reflected in the Index, increases .
One path our state legislators could pursue to return Utah to higher levels of economic freedom would be to heed the advice of the Privatization Policy Board and privatize many public services. Specifically, they would be well-advised to put all public services to the “Yellow Pages Test” — if you can find a service advertised in the Yellow Pages, government should not try to do it itself.
In Idaho, the city of Idaho Falls used the Yellow Pages test a few years ago and hired private contractors for as many services as they could find. Among other things, they privatized snow removal and street, water and sewer repair. It turns out that Idaho Falls spent half of what nearby Pocatello spent for public works with the same number of miles of roads and water and sewer lines in each city.
Why not put each piece of proposed legislation through the Yellow Pages test?
Such a test will stop any further sliding on the economic freedom scale. More importantly, it will ultimately lead to greater economic growth.
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Theoretically their job was to clear brush but at any one time two were working and the other six talking.
