RALEIGH – If you believe that all human beings deserve individual freedom – either as a natural or God-given right or as a matter of practical necessity – then you can’t help but celebrate the advance of human freedom anywhere on the globe.

Such magnanimous feelings of celebration are consistent, however, with patriotic envy. As an American, I am more than a little envious – and frustrated – about the fact that the United States is no longer rated as one of the world’s freest countries.

For more than a decade, the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal have published the Index of Economic Freedom. It compares scores for 183 countries on 10 different dimensions of economic freedom: business, trade, fiscal policy, government spending, monetary policy, investment, financial policy, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor policy.

The scores on these 10 different dimensions are then combined to create the index. Countries scoring between 80 and 100 are considered “free.” Countries scoring between 70 and 79.9 are “partly free.” Scores between 60 and 60.9 earn the label “moderately free,” with 50-59.9 rated as “mostly unfree” and countries below that rated as “repressed.”

Few countries earn their way to “free” status. Until this year, the United States was one of them. But no longer. Driven in part by Washington’s worsening relative performance on spending and free trade, the U.S. scored a 78 in the 2010 ranking. With an 80.4, Canada ranked higher in economic freedom. As Terry Miller and Kim Holmes write in a July piece following up on the findings of the 2010 study, “the U.S. suffered the largest decline in economic freedom among the world’s 20 largest economies.”

It isn’t just our neighbors to the north who are outperforming America when it comes to respecting the economic freedom of its citizens. Keep in mind that:

• Bulgaria is freer than the United States when it comes to trade policy. American farm subsidies and tariff restrictions hurt American consumers and invite retaliation by other governments.

• China is freer than the United States when it comes to fiscal policy. Yes, you read that right. The Chinese tax system is less punitive to savings and investment and often imposes lower marginal tax rates than the U.S. does.

• Egypt is freer than the United States when it comes to government spending. At 37 percent of gross domestic product, total government spending in America is higher than in many other countries. As government expands, taxpayers lose the right to spend their own dollars as they see fit, and there is less competition in the delivery of key services such as education, health care, and transportation.

• Albania is freer than the United States when it comes to monetary policy. Not only has the Federal Reserve caused substantial economic woes by manipulating interest rates for short-run gain, but the U.S. also maintains a variety of other government policies that distort market prices and cause boom-and-bust cycles.

• Belgium is freer than the United States when it comes to starting and operating a private business. The regulatory burden is growing in our country – and particularly in our state, as JLF’s Daren Bakst has written.

• Norway is freer than the United States when it comes to protecting property rights. Again, North Carolina has some special problems in this area.

• Denmark is freer than the United States when it comes to operating basic government services without the reality or appearance of corruption. The federal government’s willingness to bail out big businesses and profligate state governments has only worsened the public’s perception of fairness and honesty among U.S. politicians.

• Singapore and Australia are freer than the United States when it comes to labor policy, though in fairness those are the only two countries in the world that better protect the rights of employers and employees to strike mutually beneficial deals in the market without government intervention.

In their latest paper, Miller and Holmes sketch out a strategy for improving America’s score in each of these dimensions of freedom. If followed, the strategy would push the U.S. back into the top rank of truly free countries. Time to get started.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.