If you look at all world's countries in terms of GDP per capita[1] and economic freedom[2], the countries with higher GDPs per capita have higher degrees of economic freedom, and conversely the countries with the lowest degrees of economic freedom have lower GDPs per capita. This is obviously not perfectly scientific, but I don't have the time to describe the whole theory of developmental economics in a HN post.
'Filthy rich' in the sense that a king is rich is different from a nation being rich in an economic sense. The wealth of a country, measured by GDP, is a measure of productivity. A king has the ability to purchase many things, but he's not rich in the sense of economic productivity, in fact his economic productivity may well be zero.
>If you look at all world's countries in terms of GDP per capita[1] and economic freedom[2], the countries with higher GDPs per capita have higher degrees of economic freedom, and conversely the countries with the lowest degrees of economic freedom have lower GDPs per capita.
Actually, in the top 20 list we can see Qatar, Brunei and Kuweit(basically rich due to oil), Singapore (where the state owns most infrastructure, from telcos to the "media company", cars are heavily taxed, as in $100,000 for a 10 year licence to drive one, and the state subsidies the citizen's housing), Norway, Denmark and Sweden (which, by Us standards are "socialist"), and other not quite the role models of a "free market".
Also, in the index for "economic freedom", the US is 18th and 12th (in the two different rankings), below Bahrain and Chile -- seems that "economic freedom" is shortcode for "rich corporations are allowed to do whatever they like, including corrupting local power elites".
In any case, they hardly make the case for the "free market".
Qatar and Kuwait are still within the top 20 in the economic freedom list, as is Singapore (at number 2) and Denmark, while Norway and Sweden are still in the top 30. Economic freedom is multi-faceted: while Singapore may be 'socialist' in in the ways you describe, for instance, it also has extremely low personal and corporate taxes, no capital gains tax, and fewer regulations, which contributes to its high economic freedom ranking.
The US scores below Bahrain and Chile because there are some ways in which the US market is quite unfree. For instance, bank bailouts of large corporations, massive agriculture subsidies and tariffs, and incredibly onerous regulations in some industries. Even Sweden has a freer market than the US in some ways, for instance via its voucher system: parents are able to choose to which public school they'd like to send their children, rather than having it determined by where they live like in the US.
Surely it's not a coincidence that the top 20 countries in terms of GDP per capita are almost all within the list of top 30 countries in terms of economic freedom.
'Filthy rich' in the sense that a king is rich is different from a nation being rich in an economic sense. The wealth of a country, measured by GDP, is a measure of productivity. A king has the ability to purchase many things, but he's not rich in the sense of economic productivity, in fact his economic productivity may well be zero.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_f...