Red and blue just won’t do.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways that government impacts your life. Long ago, politicians and bureaucrats focused solely on money — i.e., extracting taxes for a skimpy supply of “public services,” and regulating businesses for little more than the pursuit of safe workplaces and undeceived customers. But the Nanny State scrapped such restraint, and today, the citizenry finds itself subject to personal-affairs micromanagement the Founders/Framers couldn’t have imagined.
The bifurcated nature of government meddling is the reason is why the designation of states as “red” or “blue” is deeply flawed. Some of the laboratories of democracy have a light touch on the fiscal and regulatory fronts, but cannot resist the urge to tell their inhabitants what to do in their private lives. Others boast of embracing “true freedom,” yet are implacably hostile to making a buck. Some are all-in on liberty — for real. Others gaze at China and wonder, “Why not here?”
Since red and blue fail, let’s replace the false choice with a sophisticated matrix: green, yellow, pink, and gray. Yes, four colors are tougher to remember than two. Hang in there. With the help of the latest edition of the Cato Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States report, we’ll sort it all out.
The “first index at any level to measure both economic and personal freedoms” ranks New Hampshire as the greenest state. Don’t think “environmentalism.” The wildly successful effort to combat pollution has morphed into a death cult often commanded by children, so green should stand, once again, for good. Our usage is for states that leave people the hell alone.
New Hampshire is No. 1, overall, in the institute’s survey. It earned the distinction by landing at No. 1 in economic freedom and No. 4 in personal freedom. Sadly, in a nation built on libertarianism, the Granite State doesn’t have many close contenders for the top slot. (Drive about 2,700 miles to the southwest, and two prospects deserve honorable mentions: Nevada and Arizona.)
Shifting to the right on our pie chart, Texas, appropriately enough, is the most yellow. The Lone Star State is “fiscally decentralized,” with no income tax and a right-to-work law. Yet its “incarceration rate is far above the national average” and its weed statutes are “the worst in the country.” Austin “requires fingerprints for driver’s licenses and does not regulate automated license plate readers.” Tennessee is yellow, too, as are Idaho and Wyoming.
California, Maine, New Mexico, and Vermont fall into the third category. They’re pink. “Lifestyle liberalism” best defines these states, which are not marked by a surfeit of “prohibitionist policies.” But complaining about government looting your wallet is probably pointless — as are efforts to stop job-killing regulations. The Golden State suffers from “one of the highest” tax burdens in the nation and is “fiscally centralized.” It is “one of the worst states on land-use freedom” and imposes “high minimum wages.” Occupational licensing? Don’t ask. Unsurprisingly, “California is one of the worst states for consumers’ freedom of choice in homeowner’s and automobile insurance.”
Can it get worse than Gavin Newsom’s “progressive” paradise? Sadly, yes. Gray states are the worst of the worst — thoroughly inhospitable to the depressingly small cohort of Americans who support capitalism and oppose government nannying.
And the worst of the worst’s … worst? The state that elected Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. to the U.S. Senate in 1972. No. 44 overall, Delaware is the only bottom-ten finisher in both economic and personal freedoms. Decades ago, it was “near the top” in rankings of the former. Today, its tax take is higher than average, a mandate for politically correct electricity stalks ratepayers, and labor laws are “fairly anti-employment” As for the latter, “[a]lcohol is banned from sale in grocery stores,” no school-choice measures have been enacted, and “assault weapons” were prohibited in 2022.
Hawaii and New Jersey nip at the heels of the president’s home state, but Delaware is dark gray. Explains a lot about the chief executive, doesn’t it?
Glance at the geography of our color palette for state-level public policy, and one conclusion leaps off the screen: Regions don’t mean much. New England is as socialistic as Europe? Try telling that to Granite Staters. The heirs to the Confederacy hate all forms of Big Government? Not in Texas and Tennessee.
We who study the states of our “curious and often unsafe country” understand that they shouldn’t be reduced to which party’s presidential candidate earns their Electoral College support every four years. America is complicated. The red-and-blue dichotomy isn’t useful. It needs to go.