>Your tables don't specify the units of measurement.
Rankings. As I said:
>In the exercises that follow, the 125 countries with scores for both
>1996 and 2003 were ranked by their freedom scores and their growth
>rates, and their positions in the two sets of rankings compared.
>(The test ends in 2003 becuase 2004 GDP data aren't available yet.)
>The first chart, nearby, compares countries' freedom ranks in 1996
>with their ranks in 1996-2003 growth contest. (It'd be impossible to
>label this chart, so countries are represented by nameless dots.)
>The dots are all over the place. If freedom and growth really went
>together, the dots would hug the dashed line. (For example, if a
>country ranked 45th on freedom also ranked 45th on growth, its dot
>would fall on the dashed line.) For the statistically inclined, the
>correlation is -.02, which means that the association is actually in
>the opposite direction - more "freedom" means less growth - but the
>correlation is meaninglessly small.
>I would also suggest dropping your closing paragraph. It would be foolish
>
>to suggest that the factors in the index are "meaningless", or that everyone
>
>on the right doesn't try to make sense. At best, you can argue with how
>
>the index is constructed and what it means. To go beyond that is
>
>demagoguery. Right now we have far too much of that on both
>
>sides of the political spectrum.
I'm tired of the way these fuckers get away with murder. Ward Churchill screws up and the lynch mobs are trying to get him fired. Heritage pulls some nonsense out of their butts and no one ever calls them on it. Fuck 'em.
Doug