Qatar and Kuwait are still within the top 20 in the economic freedom list, as is Singapore (at number 2) and Denmark, while Norway and Sweden are still in the t

Qatar and Kuwait are still within the top 20 in the economic freedom list, as is Singapore (at number 2) and Denmark, while Norway and Sweden are still in the top 30. Economic freedom is multi-faceted: while Singapore may be 'socialist' in in the ways you describe, for instance, it also has extremely low personal and corporate taxes, no capital gains tax, and fewer regulations, which contributes to its high economic freedom ranking. The US scores below Bahrain and Chile because there are some ways in which the US market is quite unfree. For instance, bank bailouts of large corporations, massive agriculture subsidies and tariffs, and incredibly onerous regulations in some industries. Even Sweden has a freer market than the US in some ways, for instance via its voucher system: parents are able to choose to which public school they'd like to send their children, rather than having it determined by where they live like in the US. Surely it's not a coincidence that the top 20 countries in terms of GDP per capita are almost all within the list of top 30 countries in terms of economic freedom.