As we slide further and further into a socialistic state, many crave the liberty our founders envisioned hundreds of years ago. Here’s a chart of which states are the least regulated and most fiscally free.
The John Locke Foundation, a North Carolinian think tank, created an index to rate the freedom of individual states. The ratings were determined by giving 50% weight to fiscal policy (a measure of taxation and budget policy), 20% to educational policy, 20% to regulatory policy, and 10% to health care policy:
- The most free states in order from most free to 5th most free are: Florida, Arizona, Indiana, South Dakota, and Georgia.
- The least free states in order from worst to 5th worse are: New York, New Jersey, California, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
- The most fiscally free states are: South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada, Texas, and Florida.
- The most educationally free states are: Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Georgia, and Louisiana.
- The states most free from regulation are: Iowa, Georgia, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Vermont.
- The states most free in health-care choice are: Idaho, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and Indiana.