posted March 11, 2009 06:02 PM            

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 other individuals’ ability to do the same.

This study improves on prior attempts to score economic freedom for American states in three primary ways: 1) it includes measures of social and personal freedoms such as peaceable citizens’ rights to educate their own children, own and carry firearms, and be free from unreasonable search and seizure; 2) it includes far more variables, even on economic policies alone, than prior studies, and there are no missing data on any variable; 3) we adopt new, more accurate measurements of key variables, particularly state fiscal policies.

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posted March 12, 2009 10:15 AM            

quote:

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We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South
Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low
taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism.
New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode
Island, California, and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner,
while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the
country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the
Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom.
Regression
analysis demonstrates that states enjoying
more economic and personal freedom tend
to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration.

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posted March 12, 2009 04:35 PM            

so although for the more technically minded this may make sense i find the report a little opaque...i DO realize and appreciate the "nanny" mentality in california when it comes to the PUBLIC schools, and more in fact when it comes to regulating adults, but as far as homeschool issues go i don't get it.

i also find it interesting that although alaska comes up high on PERSONAL freedom, it is very low on FISCAL freedom...and that the "nanny" states seem to tend to be the most populated ones, while the top 4 are among the least populated...