Are you free to fill your gas tank in New Jersey (hint: no).
Are you free as an american taxpayer to bank outside the US? (hint: no).
Are you free to sell cars in the US? (hint: no)
Are you free to get medical diagnostics of your choice in New York state (paying the market price, of course)? (hint: no)
Are you free to live in California, yet own a liquor store in New York? (hint: no)
There are numerous other examples. The common thread in these examples is that some lobby managed to secure a legislation that guarantees their benefit at your expense. You have about as much power to change that as a Singaporian does to change things in their country.
Really, if you believe that the US is more free than the rest of the western world, you're probably unaware of the local law (and probably of the laws elsewhere)
If you think you are better off, you are sorely mistaken. You're not worse off either. It's just all the same.
And the truth is, Singapore's benevolent dictatorship and the governments of 8 other nations currently allow their citizens more economic freedoms than the democratically elected politicians in the United States. At least, that's what this Index claims, which seems to match reality to some extent. The Index doesn't measure the power of the government to take those freedoms away on a whim, or non-economic freedoms, but simply the current level of economic freedom in these countries.
