Posted by
The CL Project on Monday, March 09, 2009 3:08:47 PM
William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens from George Mason University have come out with a study called Freedom in the 50 States.
In it, they calculate Fiscal, Regulatory, Economic, and Personal
Freedom Rankings for each state. They then combine them into a single
Overall Freedom Ranking - and sadly our Golden State Ranks near the
bottom.
From the Executive Summary:
This
paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American
states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the
economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our
ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria,
defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own
life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so
long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s
ability to do the same.
It
should come as no surprise that California not only taxes and regulates
its economy more than most other states, it also aggressively
interferes in the personal lives of its citizens. California ranks #48
on economic freedom and #37 on personal freedom.