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GAH!
It's because their methodology is biased towards banking regulation and trade. Lowland countries like the Netherlands and Luxembourg were forced into the bank game a long time ago due to geography and the advantages their neighbors had. As such their long time support of freedom in these areas is a historical artifact and merely a comparative advantage.
It is no different then the US's strong support of our Aircraft industry. If we measured economic freedom by say, regulation and taxes on aircraft manufacturing, I'm sure the US would be #1 in this area.
A true measure of economic freedom would be in measuring the support of non-comparative advantage trade industries. Like say, what is the nature of Denmark's real estate market, to just give one example.
You find it convenient to keep pushing "Denmark is a free country and also happy" because you already started with the conclusion that market freedom = happiness and so I don't think you really question the methodology of the surveys in a way you might do to others. IT is not to say that free markets don't have a causal effect on happiness, but that it isn't the only thing that matters, nor would it justify impeding on free trade even if it made most people unhappy.
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The issue with Mexican immigration is loss aversion.
As this recent blogging heads diavlouge explains conservatism very well:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/20405?in=49:30...
Americans who oppose immigration don't see or know what they are gaining, and if they do, they don't think what they're gaining is as much as they lossed, even when the data doesn't back it up. When an American goes back to say, the place where they took their first girlfriend on a date and see it's now a whole in the wall Taco Shop, or the place where they had a job sacking groceries and everything is in a foreign language, and the everything look poorer or dirtier, and music is playing that sounds like noise and people are dressed wrong. I don't doubt them when they say they feel like they lost 'something.'
And the thing is, even if we had a surge of poor Canadians cross the border and do everything exactly the same, they would at least be able to recognize the new. It would not 'feel' like a simulacrum. Instead it would layer over it in a way that one wouldn't be able to recognize the fake from the real. At this point Canada is so good at faking America, that we film all our TV and movies there! I wouldn't have to suspend must disbelief that Canada is America then I already do when I flip on the television.
They feel they've lost something. And, maybe they honestly have. When they complain about a job lost to immigration, there is something actually lost, even if something better is gained. We should recognize that it bother's people a bit more when it's a person who does it, and not a machine, since they can't get mad a computer for doing their job better then them.
As libertarians we can keep speaking out to these people that we are gaining more then we lose, that we're better for the change, but people feel losses more then they feel gains. Every time we run into opposition in free trade, either in terms of the freedom of movement of labor or freedom of exchange of goods or monetary issues, we keep falling back on these old habits pointing out the good, and pointing out that it's 'really not all that different', and to them it looks like we're not emphatic to their position.
Maybe we should start with the position of empathy towards their loss, first, before we try to convince them that we're right. Maybe if we honestly actually said, "Yes, it is in a way a sad thing that the past is not recognizable, but that is the way the world is, and we're better for the change. To be static is to die. Some of the changes will be bad, but you have to take the package as a whole. Just as it was with your ancestors when they came here. In many ways that was a harder pill to swallow..."
and so on.
Otherwise a good post. Just wanted to get these two things off my chest.
Your version sounds a lot weirder.
Sorry, what do you have in mind?
I disagree. Maybe it doesn't matter all that much but who is to say? Thats the problem with determining quantitative values for ambiguous concepts like "economic liberty", preferences differ across individuals.
This is why these indexes tend to be kind of silly, weighted averages of different variables can't be done objectively. If you want to measure a certain variable and compare then do so, but why stuff several variables, with subjective weights into a single average and call it the such-and-such-index? What do I really get from this?
To take an absurd example, what if I come from a region that produces 99% of all global goods and services, yet levies a 100% tariff on all imports, the value received for "trade freedom" in this scenario would be about zero. What weight should I attach to this value? The Heritage index would give it 10%, I would give it zero. I would say I don't feel any less free from this tariff.
In addition, as Andrew Gelman has pointed out,sometimes the variation in some variables across regions may be quite small but relatively large for other ones. So what winds up happening is that the the index becomes a measure of only a couple of the variables yet reports to be a measure of a wider range. I consider this misleading. Although, I should say, this is a a complaint about relative ranking indexes in general, I haven't had the time to go through the Heritage index properly.
As for whether or not Mexican immigration will increase redistribution pressure in the American political system, no one really knows. You don't think it will, I do, I guess only time will tell. Lets say for arguments sake that Mexican immigration does increase redistribution, I see no reason why someone concerned with "economic liberty" couldn't oppose it as a result.
But aren't economic migrants from Mexico by definition skewed to the poor end of this scale? Not saying that these claims are valid, but if we're looking at the economic views of any group, we should be looking at the views of those who are actually coming here, not some abstract "average Mexican"
Craig, speaking of that the Inductivist has a recent post on preferences among blacks, whites & hispanics for preferential hiring.
b) The reasons why most Americans who know anything about this subject know that they need not fear anything from Danish immigrants regarding redistribution is a) It's the highly educated Danes who get fleeced by the government that flee to America, not the poor redistributionists living off the welfare state, and b) Denmark isn't very big, so there's no way for you to ever import enough of us to make any noticeable difference either way.
I would say not very well.
Then again, Mexican immigrants are not likely to have ever been involved in running Mexico. Does that count for or against their favor?
The people who are leaving seek better economic opportunities, but that doesn't indicate that they don't support the policies that led to reduced economic opportunities. In relatively democratic countries policies, perhaps even especially the worst policies, are broadly popular. Refuseniks/dissidents/refugees might be a different story, but that does not describe most of our immigrants. Even in that case, I think it was our misfortune to take in the "Forty-Eighters" from Germany in the 19th century.