By Mary Shinn | Cronkite News
Arizona has a reputation as a state full of mavericks and independent thinkers, but a couple of academics have bad news for state residents.
We’re No. 11.
The George Mason University report, Freedom in the 50 States, ranked Arizona 11th in the nation on a scorecard of personal and economic freedoms that takes into account everything from tax burden to seatbelt laws – to the freedom to party unfettered.
It may have been that bachelor-party ranking – Arizona finished 49th in the category that measured alcohol, prostitution and marijuana laws – that brought the state’s overall standing down.
“We happily concede that different people value aspects of freedom differently,” the report’s authors wrote, by way of explaining why they break freedom into 40 different areas based on 200 types of policy.
The report, the third produced by George Mason’s Mercatus Center, measured overall freedom by balancing tax policy and regulation – high points for Arizona – against personal freedoms, where Arizona lost ground.
Arizona was No. 1 for gun-control freedom, second for educational choice and 15th for its tax burden. The report made fiscal and regulatory policies count for almost 70 percent of the overall grade, which is why Arizona did well. The state moved up 12 places in the standings from the last report, in 2009.
Jason Sorens, a political science professor at State University of New York at Buffalo and one of the authors of the report, conceded that the final score is not a perfect measure of individual freedom. What they were trying for was an index that reflects the average American’s idea of freedom, he said, an almost-impossible goal.
“Some people might be happy to pay taxes as long as everyone else is,” Sorens said of the relative importance the report placed on freedom from taxation, for example.
The goal, Sorens said, is to “get people to think about what freedom means to them.”
