This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, January 26,

2003. I'm Caleb Brown. The Human Freedom Index tracks the broad range of

freedom across countries on planet Earth, and 2020 do the Cato's Ian Vasquez details what happened and why the United States continues to fall in its commitment

to protect liberty.

Ian, you've always got a negative assessment whenever we talk about the Human Freedom Index, which is in general what you say is

human freedom is not doing great. The United States is slipping in its rankings of human freedom, but this is the first year that we've

had the pandemic included or the year that where the pandemic really took hold included and

you've also gone back in time to assess human freedom prior to 2008.

So what does that bigger picture tell us about human freedom?

Well, that's right.

We now have data beginning in the year 2000 and going through 2020.

So we can paint a pretty clear picture of global freedom and freedom within countries

around the world during that time period.

Frankly, the story of human freedom

over part of that time period is a positive one.

It increases globally up until around the year 2007 where it hits a peak.

And then we see a slow decline, but it's still at levels that are historically high.

And then in 2020, with the pandemic,

it falls off of a cliff and the declines in human freedom are so large that we can

say that the coronavirus pandemic really was catastrophic for human freedom.

The level of human freedom around the world falls back below what it was in the year 2000. So it really sets us back in terms of freedom

for more than two decades. And we see freedom falling in virtually every country out of the 165 countries

...