New Jersey and New York Ranked as Worst States for "Individual Freedoms"
...researchers at George Mason University's Mercatus Center.... used a variety of statistics to rank the 50 states for their just-published report on which states are the freest -- and least free -- from taxes and government regulation.
... Ruger said there are two critical policy implications from the study that could have serious economic implications.
First, freer states are attracting citizens from other states while less-free states are losing citizens -- and their tax dollars. "This is true for both economic freedom and personal freedom," Ruger said. "People are voting with their feet and moving to open, tolerant, and economically free states and away from nanny-states."
Where did your state rank on this study? Do you feel the socio-economic effects of gov't regulation in your area?
From the report-
We divide fiscal policy equally into spending and taxation subcategories. These subcategories are highly interdependent; we include them both as redundant measures of the size of government. Redundancy in variables reduces error in measuring the underlying concept.
We rate lowest the narrow, technical variable, local government budget constraints (local ownsource revenues as a percentage of local spending). Local government budget constraints, a measure of how much local governments depend on their own resources rather than on grants from state and federal governments, are a prudent fiscal measure aimed at ensuring that local governments spend within their means.
Fiscal decentralization (local own-source revenues as a percentage of total state and local spending, adjusted for state population— higher is better) is considered to be four times as important, and state and local government employment as a percentage of total employment (lower is better) is considered to be three times as important. The remainder of the spending subcategory (onehalf of the total) is devoted to aggregate measures of state and local spending. Taxation is a simple subcategory. We include debt burden here because it represents future taxation. State and local tax revenues as a percentage of personal income (lower is better) account for threefourths of the total taxation weight—fully 9.4 percent of the total freedom score—while state and local outstanding debt as a percentage of personal income (lower is better) accounts for one-fourth of the total taxation weight.
What do you think about how the authors of this study factor in whether or not states are depending on federal funding as opposed to operating within their means?
On paternalism, I was particularly interested in how they viewed education, since that is of special interest to me. Ohio ranked #42.
Education is the most important subcategory under paternalism, worth roughly twice as much as marriage and civil unions, asset forfeiture, and arrests for victimless crimes and worth more than three times as much as alcohol regulations. It represents almost one-twelfth of the total freedom index. Besides taxing and spending, which are each worth one-eighth of the overall index, education is the most important subcategory. The reason we consider education regulations so important is that they affect the future course of liberty by affecting how and what the next generation is taught. Education regulations lie within the paternalism category because they are fundamentally justified on the claim that parents do not know how or where best to educate their own children.
Many families consider education policies, the quality of school districts, and homeschool regulations as high priorities when relocating.
Susan R
Blogging at At Home and School and Shelf Discoveries
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