Which State is the Most Free?
2022-07-31 · Guest: Will Ruger and Jason Sorens (AIER and Saint Anselm College) · 52:45
Freedom in the 50 States ranking and analysis
Bob Zadek interviews Will Ruger and Jason Sorens about their comprehensive study, “Freedom in the 50 States,” published by the Cato Institute. They discuss the methodology of ranking states based on fiscal, regulatory, and personal freedom, and analyze why certain states like New Hampshire and Florida rank high while New York and California consistently rank at the bottom.
Topics: Freedom in the 50 States, Cato Institute, fiscal policy, regulatory policy, personal freedom, foot voting, federalism, taxation, migration, New Hampshire, Florida, New York, California
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek - Host
- Will Ruger - President of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)
- Jason Sorens - Director of Research and Education at the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College
Introduction to State Freedom [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running libertarian talk radio show in all of radio, and perhaps I should say in all of podcast land. Thank you so much for sharing an hour of your valuable time with me and with my guests.
Well, all of us live somewhere, probably in a state in the United States, and we occasionally look over the border of our state and are curious how our neighbors in other states are living as compared to how we are living. And perhaps if you’re a little bit grumpy, you’re wondering whether you would do better somewhere else. A difficult decision when you factor in the weather and things like that, but infinitely more difficult when you factor in valuable and important intangibles such as freedom—an abstract but important concept.
The Cato Institute has been publishing a 50-state survey, a detailed survey, a compendium comparing freedom that we experience in each of the 50 states, using hundreds and hundreds of various matrices in order to not measure a few concepts, but hundreds and hundreds of weighted variables. So Cato has performed a service that enables us to really understand why we seem to feel not that free and why others seem to be more free than that.
To help you understand whether your choice of where you live—foot voting, as it is often called—is the right choice, I’m happy to welcome this morning the editors, the authors of the 50-state survey published by Cato, which helps us understand why we do or do not feel free. With that introduction, I’m delighted to welcome to the show two guests. Yes, we have two guests. We have Jason Sorens and Will Ruger, who are the authors of the Cato study just published. It’s an annual study and therefore it is very current.
Will Ruger is the president of the American Institute for Economic Research. By the way, AIER publishes a free daily blog, which for me, I cannot start the day without checking out the AIER blog. After all, how can one start one’s day without knowing whether you ought to be in a good mood or a bad mood? And the optimistic view of AIER is the perfect way to start the day. My co-guest is Jason Sorens. Jason is the Director of Research and Education at the Center for Ethics in Society at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. And by the way, Jason, you don’t have to respond just yet, but New Hampshire—is there any relationship between the topic of our subject this morning, which is which states are freer than others, and where you happen to have hung out your professional shingle? You don’t have to answer that; I think it’s pretty obvious. So Jason and Will, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us this morning.
Defining Freedom in the Study [05:43]
Bob Zadek: Now, let’s get started. And I’ll just—so you guys don’t talk over each other, I will randomly pick one or the other of you to tell you to whom I’m addressing the question, then the other can chime in. That way, if one of you nods off during the broadcast, we won’t embarrass ourselves in front of our audience. So Will, first of all, give us the big picture of what this important compendium, this book, is all about, what it purports to do, and give us a bit of—we’ll get into the details, but give us the big picture on how you go about ranking states on what seems like an absurdly subjective measure, which is freedom. At first, welcome to the show, Will, and then help us get into the show this morning. Tell us what the book is all about and how it’s set about ranking states on the abstraction of freedom.
Will Ruger: Well, thanks, Bob, for having us. It’s exciting to talk about freedom, and that’s what Freedom in the 50 States is. It is looking at what a free society looks like, trying to understand using a proper definition of freedom—a very traditional American understanding of freedom—and then looking at a set of state policies. Like you said, we’re not just cherry-picking; we’re using around 230 different policy variables and looking how they support or infringe on those freedoms.
But I think it’s important to start with how do we define freedom. So we define freedom, like I said, very traditionally: people should not be prevented from ordering their lives, liberty, and property as they see fit, consistent with the equal rights of others. And so that kind of harkens back to the notion that your freedom stops at the tip of someone else’s nose. But it’s important because this means that you’re going to have a situation in which individual liberties are respected and government is limited, and we’re trying to capture which states live up to that definition of freedom more or less. And then we look at the different types of variables and we rank these.
And you know, you mentioned that Jason lives in New Hampshire. He moved to New Hampshire because it was free. It doesn’t get ranked there because he lives there, just to defend him. And that’s because Jason is someone who’s been a foot voter, and I think that’s an important way that our study can help people and businesses and others, not just researchers, but actual people looking to improve their lives on the margin by moving to a state that’s more free and avoiding states that are less. And so again, Jason’s an example of that.
We’re not making a moral judgment about how people utilize their freedom and whether that’s wise or not in this study. We’re just talking about which states allow people to order their lives in a way that’s free from government coercion. But we actually do believe—we’re not actually personally ambivalent about how people use their freedom. Jason and I harken from what we call the “virtue libertarian” approach. So we do believe a healthy moral ecology is key to supporting a free society. But again, for this study, we’re not making that judgment. We’re just talking about the policy regime, and people could use their freedom more or less wisely and in more or less ways that actually would support a free society. But that’s going to be something that they’re going to do on their own with their own decisions.
The Exclusion of Abortion and the Death Penalty [08:35]
Bob Zadek: Jason, of course, we all, when we talk about economic issues, it is often said that correlation is not causation. So I just wanted to supplement what Will said: there’s no direct relationship between the freedom New Hampshire experiences and your moving there. You are not the cause of it; you’re simply a beneficiary of that.
Now, Jason, expand a little bit about what Will said, because I think it’s really, really important to our audience, and I’ll explain why I believe that. But Will made it very clear: this book in no way starts with a set of moral assumptions, that is, how people should live. We all have an opinion; we pick our relationships based upon, among others, the values that those who are close to us feel. And of course, we do that. That’s a private affair. And it’s very important that the readers and our listeners understand that irrespective of your values, your moral values, you would not—you could not disagree for that reason alone with any conclusions in the book.
And in the book, you gave two wonderful examples. And just explain to our audience how these two examples, because you mentioned them in your book, were kind of irrelevant to your calculation. That is to say, it didn’t matter to you in the ranking. And the two examples that I recall from the book are the death penalty—reasonable people can disagree—and abortion. And libertarians don’t hardly agree on abortion. So tell us about how you treated or didn’t treat issues such as that, and then we’ll get into the economics, the guts of the book.
Jason Sorens: Sure. Well, so just to amplify on Will’s point, I think a good example of this would be something like drinking too much. So if you drink too much, that might be the wrong thing to do. I would say that’s the wrong thing to do. But should we punish you for that? For us, there are two problems with that. First of all, a right action is only virtuous if you’re freely choosing it. So you’re not actually making someone a better person by punishing someone for drinking too much. But second of all, we think that in a sense, when you punish a consenting adult for doing something that you disagree with, you’re kind of setting yourself up as that person’s parent or maybe even God, right? You’re treating that person as someone less than you are, and somehow you, as perhaps the government, have the right to tell this person what to do.
So for those reasons, we don’t think that it’s okay to punish people for private vices, but we can still try to reason with people and encourage them to live better lives. When it comes to the death penalty and abortion, these are issues that we do not put into our index because it is possible to view the death penalty, it’s possible to view abortion as either an exercise of freedom or a protection of freedom even, or an infringement on freedom. And there are complex arguments on both sides. And we did not want to take one particular side in that debate.
So our main freedom index does not include those two policies. It includes things like taxes, regulations, criminal prohibitions on private behavior like drugs and guns and so on. But what we do offer in the appendix to our study is three different indices that do include abortion, depending on whether you’re pro-life, moderate pro-choice, or strong pro-choice. And of course, given the recent Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs, this issue is going to become ever more important. I’m sure in the next edition of the index, those indices will be fairly prominent. So you can go in there and depending on what your view is—do you think that the vast majority of abortions should be banned? Well, then you take a look at our pro-life version of the freedom index. Do you think that maybe late-term abortions should be banned but otherwise it should be legal? Look at the moderate pro-choice version of our index. And if you think that all abortions should be legal, look at the strong pro-choice version of our index. So we want to make this a usable tool for the reader. Depending on what your views are about freedom, you can find an index that matches that. And yes, freedom is a little bit subjective, but very clearly we can distinguish between freer and less free societies. Right? So in the 1970s, the United States was freer than the Soviet Union. Today, Singapore is freer than North Korea. These are judgments that we can make; they’re just obvious when the gaps in freedom are so huge. We’re not claiming that the gaps in freedom among US states are that huge, but they’re still significant, and we’re going to try to measure that in as objective and scientific a way as possible, while understanding that nevertheless, from individual to individual, different freedoms are going to matter more.
Fiscal Policy and Liberty [14:32]
Bob Zadek: Now, Will, your book is divided very helpfully into various sections. And as you in Part One of the book, you have subdivisions, and we’re going to go down the subdivisions so the audience can understand terminology as well as methodology. And the first is, of course, fiscal policy. And you do a lot of analysis of the states in terms of their fiscal policy. Now, I dare say when one hears those two words side-by-side, “fiscal policy,” one doesn’t automatically see the relationship between that and the abstract concept of freedom. So just so the audience can understand the point of all this, why should a reader care about his state’s, his or her state’s fiscal policy and its effect upon freedom?
Will Ruger: Yeah, I mean, I think fiscal policy, when you start to think about it, actually is pretty intuitive for why it’s related to freedom. And I wanted to kind of pick up on something that Jason said, but when the state coerces you, it’s disrespecting your moral dignity, right? And when it comes to fiscal policy, when the state is using its coercive power to levy taxation and debt onto you and your children and grandchildren, when that taxation is at a level that it’s above what is necessary to protect our basic liberties, to do the kind of fundamental purpose of government, you know, then it’s disrespecting your liberty and thus disrespecting your moral dignity. It’s substituting its views about what your money, what your hard-earned money should go for, for your own.
And so we measure fiscal policy, which is about 30% of our index, and we look at things like taxation both at the state and local level. We also look at government consumption, right? The how much the government is consuming in terms of society’s resources, things like government employment and debt. And again, it’s 30% of the index, so it’s not the totality of what it means to be free, but certainly fiscal policy impinges on one’s freedom, particularly when we’re talking about the kinds of excessive taxation that you see in places like Hawaii or New York and others where fiscal policy…
Bob Zadek: Now let me just—let me just jump in. I want to just jump in just for a moment if I may, because you said something that was so important and so obvious it might be overlooked. And that is taxation. To the extent that government taxes you, that is a direct denial of freedom because somebody is going to spend that dollar and make a decision how that dollar will be spent. It starts off being your dollar; you have total dominion over how that dollar is spent. Once it’s taxed, the government is saying, “No, you have no choice other than indirectly through the ballot box, you have no choice on how that dollar is spent, no freedom on how to spend your dollar. We will collectively make that decision for you.” So one can see while taxation seems to be just wrong, there’s a very important freedom component.
Will Ruger: Yeah, and again, I’m a classical liberal or a kind of quote-unquote “statist libertarian” in the sense that I’m not an anarcho-capitalist. You know, so I think that government—that a limited government that we need to protect our lives and property needs to be supported in some way. The problem is that we’re well beyond that, both at the federal and state level, in terms of the amount of resources that, again, are the product of our consensual behaviors, right? Government doesn’t create wealth; individuals do in relationship with other individuals. And so as long as it’s justly acquired and justly transferred, there should be the basic norm that individuals should be allowed to maintain—to keep and utilize and expend their wealth as they see fit. You know, that’s something that I think really comes through in Robert Nozick’s book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, where he talks about the issue of quote-unquote “distributive justice,” which is itself a problematic term because it assumes—in many ways when people talk about it, it assumes that there’s some distribution of a pie as opposed to the pie being created by people and the just distribution being the result of, as he talks about, consenting adults engaging in consensual acts of capitalism.
The Politics of Low-Freedom States [19:55]
Bob Zadek: So there—what strikes me as being strange, there is a wide disparity in your many, many tables in the book of how fiscal policy varies profoundly if you take the extremes between the worst and the best states and all in the middle. Since it is almost impossible to conceive that voters would happily seed freedom—maybe I’m being naive—so can you give us any insight whatsoever into what is there about the politics of the states that do very poorly in fiscal policy? Let’s take New York. New York, I think, is the worst or down at the bottom. California is down at the bottom as well. What is there about living in New York that makes you—that makes one—this is a speculation, Will, it’s not a calculation—and maybe I’ll address it to Jason. Jason, what is there about the dynamic that causes people on the coast just to devalue freedom so that they are willing to tolerate and to support with their ballots the surrender of freedom?
Jason Sorens: Yeah, well, some people are willing to give up some freedom in exchange for other goods. And it sounds as if even Will is willing to do that a little bit. He’s willing to have a little bit of taxation to provide some public services, namely, you know, police protection, courts, and military defense and things like that. And I agree with him, actually. But and so in that sense, our index is not just for libertarians, let alone anarchists. Our index is for everyone who cares about freedom, which seems like everybody. Everybody cares about freedom to some extent. It’s not the only thing maybe that you care about. You’re willing—might be willing to trade off some freedom for other goods. But how much freedom are you willing to trade for other goods?
Right? So even a, you know, someone to the left of AOC, a hardcore socialist, might say, “If we’re taxing people at 100%, we’re taking everything that they own and everything that they earn and we’re giving it to politicians and their families for them to buy beach homes and things like that.” Even a diehard socialist might say, “That’s unjust, right? That’s—that is a limitation on our freedom that is not justified.” And so clearly taxation is a cost. It’s a—right? So if we can achieve the same goods with lower taxation, all to the good, right? And so we’re measuring that. We’re measuring like, what is the cost that we’re paying for what we’re getting?
Now, some people might be willing to pay that cost. We actually take that into account in the way we weight these variables. We haven’t talked about the kind of the science behind this yet, but we do look at how much Americans actually value these different freedoms in the way that we put all the variables together for our ultimate index. And that applies to taxes too. So what’s going on in New York and some other high-tax places—Hawaii, you know, Maine—it’s that a lot of voters are willing to pay higher taxes for more public services and they vote for politicians that want to do that. So that’s part of what’s going on. So we do find that states that are more democratic in the big D party sense, that vote for the Democratic Party at state elections, those states tend to have less economic freedom. So they tend to have higher taxes and economic regulations, not necessarily less personal freedom, but definitely less economic freedom.
And we find that changes in voting for Democrat or Republican also cause changes in economic freedom. So a state like West Virginia that used to be strongly Democratic, now is strongly Republican—like a huge change in their partisanship—and slowly as a result of that, we’ve seen policy change. West Virginia’s increased quite a bit on economic freedom in our index, which was something we actually predicted several years ago in one of our editions. We saw this happening and we said, “Well, given our findings, we expect West Virginia to increase on economic freedom,” and they did. So that’s part of what’s going on. That’s maybe the biggest thing that’s going on and why some places have higher taxes than others—it’s just what the voters want.
But there’s also this residual of kind of—you might call it cronyism, maybe you even go so far as to call it corruption. There are some states where tax dollars are systematically more likely to be wasted or to be given to private companies, given out in subsidies. These also tend to be states, we find, that have more economic regulations on starting a business or entering a profession, right? So if they have entry barriers that make—that reduce competition in the marketplace, that also seems to be a special interest giveaway. And we find that these states also have higher lobbyist ratios, lobbyist-to-legislator ratios. They also have more corruption convictions and are rated by state journalists as more corrupt. So that’s part of what’s going on. It’s not the main thing that’s going on. The US is less corrupt than, you know, I don’t know, name your country, Democratic Republic of Congo or places like that where bribery is just a way of doing business. But there is some corruption in the US, there is some special interest influence, and that drives taxes up, right? Because now you have to spend money to buy off those special interests as well as to provide your basic public services.
Weighting the Freedom Index [26:16]
Bob Zadek: Now, Will, on fiscal policy—fiscal policy is a very broad topic. Therefore, there are clearly lots and lots and lots of components that collectively make up the concept of fiscal policy. How does one go about—how did you go about—giving weight to the components of fiscal policy? How would you go about making a decision which of the dozens and dozens of components of fiscal policy are more important than others? Is that purely subjective or was there a more objective system to it all?
Will Ruger: Yeah, I mean, for fiscal policy, just like for regulatory policy and what we call “freedom from paternalism” or personal freedom, we do it the same way. We want to make sure that we’re being as objective as possible. So what we do is to create the index, we weight the different variables according to the value of freedom that’s affected by a particular policy to those people whose freedoms are at stake, right? And we could do that by giving a dollar estimate representing the benefits—and not just the welfare benefits, but the financial and psychological benefits—of a shift of the variable in a pro-freedom direction. And that’s a mouthful, right?
But basically what you’re looking at is what would be the cost to a potential quote-unquote “victim” here, or the benefits to someone who would enjoy that but couldn’t because of state policies, right? And so we give a kind of freedom value. For some things that are related to kind of basic constitutional rights, those get a boost given that they’re so fundamental to what it means to be free. And again, it’s complicated, but we’re trying to boil it down to something relatively simple. And it tends to work out that fiscal policy is about 30%, and then when it comes to personal freedoms and regulatory policy, you know, then essentially what you’re talking about is dividing that last 70% into about 33% for personal freedom and about 35% for regulatory policy. Within those categories, you have lots of different variables which we can go into—everything from, like I said, government employment to raw milk sales, gun laws, cigarette bans to, you know, occupational licensing.
Trends in State Freedom and Federalism [29:03]
Bob Zadek: What can you tell us, because you know better than anybody, what is happening? Are you getting through? Are legislators seeing the effect of their policies and are changing? Tell us what you have observed on a macro basis as to what’s happening in personal and economic freedom between the states.
Jason Sorens: Yeah, it’s a great question because we now have 20 years of data going back to 2000. There’s a little bit of a lag in data availability, so 2020 is our latest year. But what we do find is that overall, freedom at the state level has declined. But that’s a little bit misleading because that includes the impact of federal policies. And so if we exclude the impact of federal policies, freedom has actually increased significantly over time.
So what’s going on there? The big thing is Obamacare. So that is an example where Congress took over something that was previously done at the state level and it increased federal regulation. And now all states have to conform to this much higher level of health insurance regulation. And so that has been a big impact on freedom. But states themselves, if we just look at the policies that they control that Congress hasn’t taken over, states have been increasing freedom over time, especially since about the Great Recession. And especially in some of the more red states. So it is interesting. We have some reason for optimism here that states, when left to their own devices, are trying to increase freedom. And you know, and they’re reaping some of the benefits—those that do are reaping some of the benefits with stronger economies.
Bob Zadek: It seems to me that states are—maybe I’m starting at the wrong place—but there is a strong impulse and states are feeling more confident, individually or collectively, in shrugging aside federal attempts to undo federalism and retain their appropriate level of control over people’s lives. Am I being too Pollyanna? Is that not sufficient to be a trend in just a couple of isolated examples, Will?
Will Ruger: Yeah, I mean, look, federalism has been declining since almost the very beginning. You know, and there are lots of ways in which the federal government has restricted the states and the states haven’t effectively pushed back. Some of that is because of the notion that once the Supreme Court has spoken on it, the states have to line up. So and that cuts both ways, right? So the Heller case and then the recent Supreme Court case on the New York gun laws, that restricts the ability of states to set policy in a federal system, but it’s in a pro-liberty direction. And then there are other cases like with Obamacare where states were actually trying to kind of figure out different ways to reform healthcare and had different healthcare regimes, at least in terms of how the government was engaged in healthcare, and then Obama comes along and federalizes a lot of those aspects in a way that was negative for liberty and negative for our economy.
So there’s just many, many examples where this is the case. Now, again, like libertarians have a lot of different thoughts on this. I mean, you could make very good arguments, particularly given the misbehavior of states in an anti-libertarian direction, that there needs to be a federal role in protecting, you know, kind of fundamental rights. But the question is how much and how extensive should that be, and how much should be left to the states? And then also because I actually believe in the Constitution and believe we should follow constitutional processes, there might be things you might like to do at the federal level that if you want the federal government to take it on, we should actually do something that the Constitution specifies, which is we could actually amend the Constitution. And I know why people don’t want to do that, because it’s hard, but it was meant to be hard. And we should leave a lot of things to the states that the federal government wants to interfere with. And we could talk all day long about how the Commerce Clause has been abused to give—to provide a veneer of constitutionalism to actions that are fundamentally against the Constitution when it comes to federal powers.
But again, we are where we are, and I would like to see states push back more, particularly when it comes to how states might be conscripted to try to enforce federal laws that are in contravention of state priorities, right? So in a case like marijuana, right? And again, I’m a virtue libertarian; I’ve never used marijuana in my life, I never want to, I don’t care to. But I think it would be proper for the California authorities and the states at the state and local levels to simply not prioritize that part of their policing relative to, say, personal and property crimes, even if the federal government has it as a listed drug. You know, and again, the federal government can—I mean, I wouldn’t go full Jackson and say, “You know, the Supreme Court has spoken and let them enforce it.” I mean, I do think that we should respect the rule of law and our constitutional structures, but I do think that states have powers and abilities that we should respect and that the system is set up for some level of contestation. And I think that’s consistent with constitutionalism, isn’t it, Jason?
Jason Sorens: Yeah, I mean, one of the interesting things we found is that when Congress gets involved and federalizes a policy, it decreases freedom. And Obamacare is the biggest example, but there are also some other cases like with GMO labeling and some others where Congress has imposed a nationwide regime and preempted state laws. It has generally tended more often to decrease freedom than increase it. When the courts get involved to federalize something, it tends to increase freedom, especially personal freedom. Lawrence v. Texas, Obergefell, examples like that. So if you want a constitutional regime that promotes freedom, I think what you want is an engaged judiciary that’s upholding constitutional limits on government at all levels in the interest of individual rights, and you want a Congress and executive branch that are held in check. And that’s the perfect combination for more federalism and more individual freedom.
Polarization and Partisanship [36:38]
Bob Zadek: In your book, you—I would call this an unadvertised special—there was an interesting discussion of the effect at the state level of polarization on freedom. Now, polarization, as you explained it in the book, is of course voters dug in on their particular point of view, their political opinions, so that they are incapable of making any adjustment, compromise if you will. And while people are entitled, of course, to their opinion—the old saw, you’re entitled to your opinion—tell us what you have observed to be the amount of economic and personal freedom in states where there is profound polarization, culture war, the blue and the red, versus states that have, however one measures it, less polarization. Because I find that to be in your book an interesting discussion. Jason, you want to take a shot at that?
Jason Sorens: Yeah, well, we don’t look so much at what political scientists call “affective polarization,” where people don’t want their kids marrying someone from a different party, people have negative opinions about people from the out-party, that kind of thing where there’s kind of this inter-party hatred. We’re not looking at that. But we do look at how partisan changes at the state level affect freedom. And as I mentioned earlier, we do find that states that move toward the Republicans—I’m very much a pure independent these days, so I have no kind of dog in this fight, but this is just what we find statistically—is that states that move toward the Republicans subsequently see their economic freedom go up. States that move toward the Democrats, we see their economic freedom go down.
With personal freedom, we see no such relationship, though. Instead, we see that more progressive states tend to have more freedom for like drugs, marijuana, and a few other things, maybe a little bit less likely to regulate gambling or alcohol. But with states that have more conservative leanings, we tend to see more educational freedom, so more school choice, more freedom to homeschool. We also see more freedom to own and carry guns. Right? So those are not surprising perhaps, but they kind of cancel out, they kind of wash out in our index. If you’re really, really good on guns and school choice but really bad on criminal justice policies, you’re going to end up in the middle of the pack and vice versa. The states that tend to do better on personal freedom, which we haven’t talked so much about yet, tend to be almost more rural states. And they could be more conservative or more liberal, but you know, it’s your Nevadas, number one, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado. Those are near the top of the scale for personal freedom for us. So kind of a mix of red and blue. Whereas at the bottom of the personal freedom scale, you get New York, Texas, New Jersey, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky. These are states that tend to be a little more urbanized, often on the conservative side, maybe the more Deep South states tend to have lower personal freedom, whereas it’s more like the Mountain West and upper New England that tend to have more personal freedom.
Migration and Foot Voting [41:01]
Bob Zadek: Well, it is clear from a lot of published material that voters are leaving high-tax states and moving to low-tax states, which is to say two things. Number one, voters seem to care about that, and maybe because it’s so easy to quantify what’s the dollar amount you’re paying in taxes versus State A in comparing State A to State B. I have two questions on that topic. Is there statistically a breaking point when if a state goes above—now, an individual voter doesn’t have that number, but collectively you might be able to see a number. Is there a number where once a state exceeds it on taxation, it can expect voters to leave? And the second part of my question is, do voters seem to leave and move from one state to another based upon levels of personal freedom, or is that simply impossible to measure so voters cannot make a decision as important as where you live based upon personal freedom?
Will Ruger: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think there’s a breaking point where we could just say, “Yeah, that’s when they leave.” I think what we can say is that the states that are less free—states like New York, Hawaii, California, New Jersey, Oregon—these states that are at the bottom of the freedom index, we’ve seen people leaving and leaving in droves. I mean, places like California, Illinois, and New York in particular have seen their populations, in terms of the people who were there in 2000, shrink over time. Now, of course, places like New York are attracting immigrants from outside the country because if you live in Burma or you live in Russia or you live in most parts of the world, they’re less free than New York is. But people who are in New York, you’re seeing that out-migration.
And people forget that places like upstate New York have been emptying out in many ways. And a big part of that is the policy regime that they face. So they are voting with their feet, and we do find a very strong correlation between our measures of freedom and out-migration and in-migration. So especially when you think about some of the pairs, right? So Indiana’s doing a lot better than Illinois. Nevada and Arizona doing better than California. New Hampshire doing better than its neighbors in a very, very blue and very less free New England. And I think that our findings are pretty robust and have been over time. I think in all six editions of the freedom index, we’ve seen this relationship. And sometimes it’s mediated through other things like businesses leaving, but oftentimes I think—and you see this, right? You saw this during COVID in particular where a lot of folks went to Florida. And you’ve seen business activity move. So for example, I know of places that have moved conferences to places like Texas and Florida because of the fact that they were going to be less restrictive in how they went about their business.
But I do, you know, again, before we finish up, I do think that we’ve been kind of almost burying the lead or hiding the marble here, which is I’m guessing that your listeners would like to actually hear about more about the top states and the bottom. So maybe we can get into that, Bob.
The Rankings: Winners and Losers [45:01]
Bob Zadek: I was going to do that right now. So tell us who are—which of our listeners are total losers and are living in third-world countries disguised as states, and which are living in the country our founders have given us? And tell us what the lessons are so people can start calling U-Haul and make adjustments in their life. So Will, since you teed up the topic as our last topic this morning, give us the headlines of the best and the worst and also the up-and-coming states that are sort of have caught on and are changing their behavior.
Will Ruger: So the top state for freedom this time is New Hampshire. And just to show that Jason and I weren’t cooking the books because Jason lives in New Hampshire, that was not true in the printed fifth edition, where Florida was the number one state at that point. Now, it’s not that Florida has done badly; it’s just that New Hampshire has performed quite well, particularly in recent times. So New Hampshire and Florida both doing fantastic on freedom. Florida especially on fiscal policy. New Hampshire more across the board, but they I think win out probably on the margins because they do better on personal freedom. But Nevada is third, followed by Tennessee and South Dakota. So that’s our top five.
And like I said before, our bottom five is New York, Hawaii, California, New Jersey, and Oregon, with New York being the worst. And New York is the worst by a wide margin. It’s not even close. So what’s amazing is that people think of places like New York, “Oh, it’s a great place, you’re so free.” You’re actually not. The heavy hand of government is pushing you down as much as possible. So you may be able to go to lots of Broadway shows, fantastic restaurants, and other things, but don’t confuse consumerism for freedom.
Bob Zadek: What makes the states that are most free—why are they the most free? Is it totally random? What is it, if you can tell from your study?
Jason Sorens: Well, it’s, you know, the thing is that every state has some things that they do well and things that they do badly. And so really among the top states, they all do some things well and some things not so well. New Hampshire, for instance, even though it’s our number one state, tends to be much worse than average on zoning regulation. That’s the area where it just falls down. And otherwise, it would be much farther ahead of everybody else. Florida, criminal justice has been an area where they’ve been extremely restrictive over time. So that’s where they fall down. Nevada, you know, it’s got some economic regulations, it doesn’t have school choice, some things like that that drag Nevada down. South Dakota does really well on regulatory policy. You find these Midwestern states, they’re very open to new business, they don’t regulate their labor markets very much, they’re very low corruption and things like that. But, you know, they often have these legacies of income taxes and things from the New Deal era when they were much more left-leaning. And so they have some work to do to kind of get the fiscal policy right and also get the personal freedom. Some of them are very deep red and tend to restrict marijuana and gambling and things like that quite a bit.
So it’s really every state has its own sort of individual path that it needs to pursue to increase freedom. It is the case, Bob, though, that the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic and the West Coast have some real struggles with freedom. You know, and that’s a problem.
Conclusion and Call to Action [49:06]
Bob Zadek: As we wind down to turn this into news you can use, the voters in each state—the only way they affect change is by foot voting or ballot voting. Those are the only two choices. And we’ve discussed foot voting. In ballot voting, no candidate that I have ever seen, except perhaps Justin Amash or Thomas Massie, run on a platform where they say, “I stand for freedom. Just I will always take a position in any bill before me based upon its effect upon freedom.” Freedom is not a compelling reason—doesn’t seem to be a compelling reason to select a candidate. How can our listeners look for and use their ballot vote in the most effective way to cause change? And we have a couple of seconds left. So Will, why don’t you take a shot at that?
Will Ruger: Yeah, I mean, look, I work at a 501(c)(3) organization, so I can’t speak to particular legislation or back candidates. What I would say is that in everything that individuals do, they should think about how freedom is important and provides a context in which they live their lives. And so freedom should be an important variable that they consider in anything they do. You know, I also think that as a political scientist, you might say that some of the more strategically rational behaviors you can do are actually—and again, voting’s fine, I don’t want to say people shouldn’t vote—but working on campaigns is oftentimes a more scalable way to contribute in our democratic process than even voting.
Bob Zadek: We’ve been spending the past hour talking with Will Ruger and Jason Sorens, who have just co-edited Freedom in the 50 States. What a goal that would be if we actually had it. It’s been published by Cato. It’s a must-read if you want to understand why you wake up so grouchy or with such a big smile on your face. Will, how can our audience follow your work, and then Jason, you provide the same information if you would?
Will Ruger: Sure. Follow me on Twitter @willruger, and also you can look at www.freedominthe50states.org to find lots of stuff about the study. And again, thanks for having me on the show today.
Jason Sorens: Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m on Twitter as well @jasonsorens.
Bob Zadek: @jasonsorens, that’s S-O-R-E-N-S. Thank you so much, Will and Jason, for your work on the book. It is a must-read. It’ll make all of our listeners infinitely more interesting as a dinner companion. It is mandatory reading. Thank you so much for giving us an hour of your valuable time. Thanks to Jason and Will, and most importantly, thanks to our loyal audience for giving us one hour of your time. I hope you are the better for it. Thanks a lot and have a good day, everyone.