Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s “Need to Know” series explores current events and recent scholarship on issues from a free-market perspective. Each memo offers a brief overview and commentary aimed at introducing AFP Foundation activists to the our perspective on the issues of the day.

The Fraser Institute’s latest Economic Freedom of the World Report paints an alarming picture of the loss of our economic freedom during the last decade. Since the year 2000 we have fallen from 3rd, to 7th, and then to 10th last year. Now, for the first time the United States has fallen out of the top ten – dropping all the way to 18th.

Is being pro-business and pro-capitalism the same? Does capitalism generate an unfair distribution of income? Was capitalism responsible for the most recent financial crisis? Dr. Jeffrey Miron at Harvard answers these questions by exposing three common myths of capitalism.