Searching for Freedom November 20, 2020
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
A lot of folk have been talking about relocating of late – trying to find a state or country that most resembles our values of yore. That motivation is particularly compelling given the talk of the pernicous “Great Reset,” which appears to be a socialist/environmentalist wet dream, with administration by a global cabal of your betters. Honestly, I’d rather have anarchy. Go Antifa!
Nowhere in the Great Reset literature do they discuss things like personal freedom or independence. And by discounting property rights they’ve completely abandoned the notion of “every house a castle, every man a king.”
Your freedom is under siege.
So if you’re looking for states with more freedom, a good place to start is the Fraser Institute’s “Economic Freedom of North America 2020” report. On the very cover of the report they have this graphic:
The blue states have the most economic freedom. Here are the top 10 states listed (ignore Alberta):
Our national freedom score has dropped from 8.31 in 2004 to 7.97 in 2018.
Tomorrow I’ll try to plot economic freedom vs. the average state tax burden.
I feel pretty free in Spudland.
I thought Montana would be rated better than the 3rd Quartile.
Hunh. Just noticed that the figure and the table don’t match. This is because they had a “subnational index” which is used to compare states and an “all-government index” which adds “… three additional areas at the federal level from Economic Freedom of the World (EFW): 4. Legal Systems and Property Rights; 5. Sound Money; and 6. Freedom to Trade Internationally…”
The figure uses the subnational index and the table uses the all-government index. the ranking for the top 10 states with the subnational index is: