The Mercatus Center at George Mason University ranked New York State as the least free state in the United States. New York ranked 50th (worst) in Economic Freedom, 48th in Personal Freedom and 50th in Overall Freedom. The rankings are based on an index which measures economic and personal freedom in each American state by analyzing “state and local government intervention across a wide range of public policies, from income taxation to gun control, from homeschooling regulation to drug policy”, according to the Mercatus web site.
Mercatus Analysis of New York State:
New York is by far the least free state in the Union. It has also experienced the most interstate emigration of any state over the last decade. New York has by far the highest taxes in the country. Property, selective sales, individual income, and corporate-income taxes are particularly high. Spending on public welfare, hospitals, electric power, transit, employee retirement, and “other and unallocable” expenses are well above national norms. Only Alaska has more government debt as a percentage of the economy. On personal freedoms, gun laws are extremely restrictive, but marijuana laws are better than average, while tobacco laws are extremely strict, and cigarette taxes are the highest in the country. Motorists are highly regulated, and homeschool regulations are excessive, but nondrug victimless-crimes arrests are low. New York has the strictest health-insurance community-rating regulations in the country, which have wiped out the individual market. Mandated coverages are worse than average but were actually cut back substantially in 2007–2008. Eminent domain abuse is rampant and unchecked. Perversely (in our view), the state has stricter contribution limits for grassroots PACs than for corporate and union PACs. On the positive side, occupational licensing is somewhat better than average.
The study was produced by Jason Sorens is an affiliated scholar with the Mercatus Center and an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Buffalo (SUNY), and William Ruger, an affiliated scholar with the Mercatus Center and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Texas State University – San Marcos.
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is university-based research center. Founded 25 years ago, Mercatus describes iteself as working “to advance knowledge about how markets work to improve our lives by training graduate students, conducting research, and applying sound economics to offer solutions to society’s most pressing problems” with a mission to “generate knowledge and understanding of how institutions affect the freedom to prosper and find creative solutions to overcome barriers that prevent individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives.”