Professors William Ruger and Jason Sorens have just released their "Freedom in the 50 States" Index and -- wait for it, drum roll please -- Indiana is one of the five freest states, along with New Hampshire, South Dakota, Idaho and Nevada. The least free were New York, New Jersey, California, Hawaii and Massachusetts. The Index ranks the states based on public policies affecting economic, social, and personal freedoms (e.g., bans on trans fats and the audio recording of police, an individual health-insurance mandate, mandated family leave, etc.). "This year they added a section on the consequences of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the stimulus), as affected by state and local policies. They also included specific policy prescriptions for each of the 50 states based on their data as well as a survey of state policy experts."
But then, why do so many people live in least free states like New York and California?
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Given their utterly subjective definition of "free" - it seems to mean most Republican - the survey is meaningless. For example, they didn't consider Massachusetts' freedom for gays to marry, or California's freedom for cancer patients to purchase marijuana. Those, clearly, are freedoms for ordinary people, not just corporations.
Remember the guy -- was it Daniel Moynihan? -- who talked about "defining deviancy down"? I think this is an example of "defining freedom down." We're all familiar with freedom in the macro sense -- free to pursue our interests, to move around, to worship freely or not at all, to challenge government without fear of reprisal -- because we all live it; that's why America is still the place so many people want to come to. These are freedoms in the micro sense, which should probably be called "privileges," things government can withhold or grant at its whim.
I always thought of Indiana as being LESS free than Ohio, because in Ohio, voters have to vote on levies for their schools, their fire departments, their libraries, while in Indiana, such taxes are foist upon the residents by bureaucrats. The power to withhold tax is the power to destroy.
The funny thing about it is that in the various parts of Ohio I've lived - Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, as well as near Fort Wayne - there have always been exceptionally good libraries, and I don't remember ever seeing a library tax levy voted down.
It seems that government CAN do some things well.