The Heritage Foundation, characterized as a right-wing think tank, concludes that "Israel is weak in business freedom and freedom from government. Complicated and inefficient bureaucracy makes closing a business difficult. Government spending is high, constituting over 40 percent of GDP, although revenue generated by state-owned businesses is not large. Though advanced for the region, Israel's financial sector is still subject to government intervention and control."

Venezuela and Bolivia are other nations that must be mentioned - they could initiate a trend.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is prepared to amend the Venezuela constitution in order to give the government, which has seized majority control of its oil industry, additional control of essential sectors of the economy and permit him to continue running for president.

Bolivia's President Evo Morales is more cautious than Chavez and doesn't have the resources that Chavez manages. Nevertheless, he has nationalized Bolivia's gas reserves and is prepared to do more, if nationalization proves to increase employment and not decrease exports.

Ecuador President Rafael Correa has indicated he will be part of the trend and follow Chavez's statist policies. Correa, after being elected president in January 2006, informed the national assembly he will pave the way for socialism. He has still not detailed a program for accomplishing the task.

The Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Ranking  measures and ranks 161 countries across 10 specific freedoms. Where do the statist oriented nations rank in relation to the United States, which ranks as #4?

Israel: 37
India: 104
Bolivia: 112
China: 119
Russia: 120
Vietnam: 138
Venezuela:144

Except for Israel, the Statist oriented nations are close to the bottom of the Economic Freedom list and are grouped close to one another.

In a world accustomed to democratic capitalism, the growth of statism might seem only a slight perturbation in the trend to more democracy and more free enterprise. A closer survey shows otherwise. Most developing nations, and there are some exceptions, although they might be rich in raw materials, realize they cannot readily create industries that can compete with already developed nations that have established markets, communications, transportation and infrastructure. Nevertheless, developing nations will not permit oligarchs to control their economies and destinies, as happened in Russia, Africa, and Latin America. Russia, Venezuela and Bolivia are contemporary examples of government participation in finance, industry and markets in order to use the material resources for the benefit of the entire nation. Other newly developing states, which have inexpensive and adaptable labor and control investment, prices, wages and currency can produce products which preclude competition. With Russia supplying the material resources and China supplying the labor for manufacturing, the emerging statist nations have the capability to control resource distribution and value added manufacture.

The democratic capitalist nations previously extracted the material resources and inexpensive labor of a Third World for benefit of the western societies and domestic oligarchs. The developed world guided the destiny of the lesser developed world. The Third World now extracts capital from the developed nations and uses their own material resources and inexpensive labor for the benefit of their own peoples. The new statist nations are prepared to determine the destinies of all nations.

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