The latest Economic Freedom of North America report issued by the Fraser Institute marks the first time economists have had a full four decades’ worth of data on economic freedom across the fifty United States. Those less familiar with economic research claim that economics isn’t a science because economists can’t conduct controlled experiments. Yet where economists can’t conduct controlled experiments (behavioral economists do conduct controlled experiments), they employ complicated statistical techniques to compensate for the fact that they must take data as they come. Here, the Fraser Institute has given economists a treasure-trove of data that provide insight into the effect of larger and smaller government footprints among the states’ economies.
Economic freedom is not the same as less government. In fact, in many cases, improved economic freedom requires more government. Economic freedom is rather “right government,” government that, as Thomas Jefferson put it in his first inaugural address, would “restrain (people) from injuring one another, (but) shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits…” Societies are more economically free when their governments prevent people from harming each other, whether by violence, theft, fraud, defamation, pollution, or any of the many other ways the more powerful manage to exploit the less. But societies are also more economically free when their governments otherwise leave people and businesses alone to make decisions for themselves. Exploitation is as anathema to economic freedom as is the nanny state.