...Deregulation allows businesses to compete with one another for customers and it allows the market to set its own prices and therefore set the direction it plans to go. Another reason why the United Kingdom's economic freedom ranking dropped/strengthened is due to marginal tax cuts. Marginal tax cuts allow citizens to keep more of their gross income for personal consumption. Personal consumption helps the economy strengthen because when people have more money they generally consume more goods and services, which forces businesses to produce more goods and services. This causes companies to hire more workers, which lowers the unemployment rate. The problem with this situation is that increased buying and expansion could cause inflation to rise.
Another reason for the point drop/strengthening of the United Kingdom's economic status is Britain's privatized pension system. This system allows workers to invest their own Social Security taxes instead of the government investing the taxes for them. This system is very good because it takes the responsibility of retirement funds out of the government's hands and gives the responsibility to the individual person. By giving responsibility to the individual person, the government does not have to worry about financial shortfalls in the system, which would cause severe tax increases. The last reason why the United Kingdom obtained such a low score/high ranking is because of its flexible trading policies. Currently, the United Kingdom has a stable trading policy with a low level of protectionism. The United Kingdom has an average tariff rate of 3.5%, which allows exporters to export goods to the United Kingdom without being financially crippled by import taxes. Iran is ranked #151 by The Index of Economic Freedom as one of the most repressed economies in the world. In 2001, Iran achieved a ranking score of 4.70, which is derived from high scores in each of the ten ranking categories. Over the past five years Iran has had a very high economic freedom score and remains one of the world's most repressed economies. It is currently tied with its all-time high score, which was first reached in 1997. This continued rise in the economic freedom score shows a very unstable and volatile economy.
Iran's current Gross Domestic Product is $79 billion, the GDP growth rate is 1.7%, the GDP per-capita is $1,275, exports total $20.2 billion and imports total $13 billion. According to the Index of Economic Freedom, Iran's ranking increased to 4.70 from 4.55 in 2000 due to several factors. The first reason is because of a very high level of protectionism in Iran's trade policies. Iran has strict control over its imports with high tariff rates, import bans on certain goods, licensing and a customs service that confiscates many goods as they cross the boarder. The current tariff rate on imports is 11.5%, but after other import taxes the rate can be higher than 100%. This is a downfall for Iran because by restricting and blocking imports Iran is blocking trade, which will cause its economy to become stagnant.
Another reason why Iran is ranked as one of the most repressed economic systems is because of its high rate of inflation. Iran's inflation rate is currently 20.92%. High inflation makes it extremely difficult for businesses to sell their goods and for customers to purchase the goods, which also causes the economy to become stagnant because funds do not flow from the customer to the business and back to the customer because prices are too high...

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