Live Free or In New York
Tags: Mercatus Center, personal freedom
That pretty much sums up the results of a recent Mercatus study I heard about on WBEN this morning that ranks New York dead of all 50 states for freedom. The study measures economic and social liberty in all the states, and the Empire state was at the bottom.
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.
It is actually quite insane that I had more liberty in Massachusetts than I do now living in New York.
Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at Blogs For Victory. Follow Matt on Twitter.