Remember, this index was put together by the Cato Institute, a very libertarian organization. According to the American Heritage Dictionary:

  1. One who advocates maximizing individual rights and minimizing the role of the state.
  2. One who believes in free will.
  3. One who maintains the doctrine of the freedom of the will (especially in an extreme form): opposed to necessitarian.

Looking at the index numbers that are given, I would say that this organization believes in the free will of the corporations and everybody else can just suck it. Take a look at where your state ranks in the individual freedoms list, and comment on what you think they actually believe.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    1 year ago

    We’re (Utah) right in the middle on average, which I think is pretty accurate. Some notes:

    • doesn’t seem to be anything about renter rights, our state is pretty awful with protecting landlords over tenants
    • cable and telecom freedom - yeah, no; we had our state overturn my city’s municipal internet and we had to sell the network at a loss; that has apparently changed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a ton of other nonsense in the legal code
    • gambling, tobacco, and alcohol - we scored dead last here, and I’m surprised we’re the worst at alcohol (I knew we were bad, but we’ve had some solid reforms since)
    • cannabis - not sure how we score so moderate here; we allow medical marijuana, but our legislature nerfed a “grow your own” ballot initiative, and I don’t think you can get THC here (I don’t use marijuana, so I’m not super educated on this point)
    • marriage freedom - we only have marriage freedom because of a district court decision, so I feel like we should be lower
    • government debt - not sure why we are only 15, we should be much higher since I’m pretty sure our legislature is required by law to pass a balanced budget, so we really don’t have much debt (this site says we have ~10% debt to GDP)
    • government employment - not sure how this is related to their freedom index, but we’re somehow lower than California, which is surprising; I find our gov’t services to work pretty efficiently, so I don’t think we’re hurting for gov’t employees at all
    • state/government taxation - I feel like we should score better here; our state income tax is <5% (can only be used for education), sales tax is ~8% (kinda high), and property taxes are generally pretty low (I pay like $2k on a ~$500k property). I wish we’d eliminate our sales tax on food (3%), increase property taxes, and reduce sales tax, but in general, our taxes are pretty reasonable

    I don’t understand most of the rest, but I feel like the number my state ended up with is reasonably accurate, though I’d probably remove several of the categories since I don’t really see how they’re related to freedom.