DALLAS — Reality doesn’t live up to reputation when it comes to freedom in Texas.
The Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank, recently updated and expanded its comprehensive study “Freedom in the 50 States,” which measures economic, social and personal freedoms at the state level.
And according to the study, Texas ranks dead last in personal freedom.
“We define freedom in a very traditional American way, right? It’s the right to use your life, liberty and property as you see fit, consistent with the equal rights of others,” William Ruger told us on Y’all-itics. “And then we look at these policies and we, again, we call balls and strikes and this is where it ends up.”
William Ruger, one of the study’s two authors, has been working on the freedom rankings for 15 years. This is the study’s seventh edition.
Ruger, a one-time Texas resident himself, says many Texas leaders resist the notion that our state ranks last in any category, much less the freedom category. And he says they assume something is wrong with the study.
But Ruger says the study is sound as they look at more than 230 different policy issues, so he argues there’s too many for any one issue to push the state over the ledge.
In the personal freedom category, those policy issues range from gambling and educational freedom to marijuana and alcohol freedom. They even look at incarcerations and arrests.
The news isn’t all bad for Texas.
The study also looks at overall economic freedom and ranked the Lone Star state sixth.
And they break that down into two different categories.
Texas ranks seventh in fiscal freedom, such as taxation and debt, and 20th in regulatory freedom, such as land-use, eminent domain and health insurance.
“For some people who may not love freedom as much as I do, you might say, well, we’ll trade off other values, equality, equity, you know, preventing people from doing bad things to themselves even if they were free,” Ruger said. “Look, that’s fine. But the fact is, if you love freedom, you have to let people and individuals make the choices that they make for themselves, again as long as they’re not directly harming other people.”
Which states are more free? How did Texas get so restrictive? And how much of an impact does the state’s abortion law have on the freedom rankings? Listen to the entire episode of Y’all-itics to get those answers and learn more about the individual categories used in the study.