In politics from brendas university. Jason soren is a lecturer in the government of government in dartmouth college. His Research Interests include Public Policy and federal systems, secession is him and ethnic politics. He is the author of secession is them, identity, interest and strategy and much of his International Academic work internationaln studies quarterly, state politics and policy quarterly and other academic journals. He has received is ba in economics and philosophy with honors and his phd in Political Science from yale university. We will hear from both gentlemen and then we will leave time for questions at the end. Ruger. Lease welcome will mr. Ritter thank you am a peter, and thank you to the cato institute. We are excited to be with cato and to integrate the launching point for discussion about what it means to be free and whether the state of Public Policy is in the states. Toould like you to think take you for coming out. What is the Freedom Index question market is the most copperheads of study and ranking of freedom in the 50 states. It is the first to examine Economic Freedom and freedoms that affect your personal lives and looks at three key areas. It looks at fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and personal freedom or freedom from paternalism and like peter said this is the fourth edition. We like to call at the bigger and better edition. It is up to 287 pages and includes all kinds of neat information, statistics, and most of me for the social science, analysis. Present the Freedom Index, why do we do this . We want to measure and compare the american states on how the polyp Public Policies affect freedom in the different spheres. Freedom is an and in itself, it is valuable for its own sake area that is one reason why we want to look at this and examine what is the status of this important moral in the states. But it also has a lot of dynamic effect. This will help us investigate questions about the relationship between freedom and outcomes such as Economic Growth and internalnd things like migration. It has a lot of different uses both from the analytical side and the Public Policy side. We think it is useful for legislators, for example, legislators can use this to know how their states are doing and where they stand relative to the other states in the union. They can also use it to identify areas of improvement. There are 40 other states that are doing it this way and seeming to have success with that policy, why cant we . Citizens can use this to hold legislators accountable, that is an important thing and that means they have to be informed about the status of freedom in their state and this will help them do that. Reporters can use this to gather data on how their state compares union. R states in the citizens can use this if they think about moving our businesses when they think about making decisions about where they ought to go relative to that Regulatory Environment that so affects what they do so there are lots of different ways that people can use this. Why study states . Some of what i have talked about relates to that. I want to make a broader point which is that we should study states because the american federal system still allows state governments fairly wide discretion over a range of important policy issues. Federalism is still alive despite it being in decline basically since the beginning of our countrys history but especially since the new deal. What i would say is that we should study states because federalism allows states to innovate and a lot of the action is actually happening in politics at the state level. A lot of prominent examples of this. While we have a lot of gridlock a lot of polarization, lots of things are getting done at the state level. Justice andcriminal policing reform, an important issue that is transpired is in today. You have states like new mexico, nebraska, and New Hampshire that have passed civil Asset Forfeiture reform. Or think about issues on the fiscal side where many states have tried to get a handle on the most recent Great Recession and how to innovate to deal with some of the fiscal problems that have resulted. Or marijuana policies where you have seen colorado, washington, and alaska changing their marijuana regimes. Her education policy where nevada has experimented with esas, not to mention regulatory reforms like the right to work wisconsin for indiana, and michigan. You have seen a lot of policy innovation at the state so it is import and to see what is going on and we provide the data to to do that kind of analysis. Another recent study states is state governments have to compete with each other both for citizens and the tax base. Why am part because migration is as american as apple pie and chevrolet. We are a country of people who have moved and we continue to do so with pretty robust internal migration. Thingld also mention one in relationship as to why we study states. Remember how Justice Louis brandeis talked about how states are laboratories of democracy. They can experiment with different policy regimes and see how it works without having a onesizefitsall approach that if it goes badly it is bad for everyone where with the states you can have a state experiment, see how it goes and other states can copy it or they could choose not to if the policy goes bad. So let me talk a little bit about how we define and conceptualize freedom. Is a moral, freedom concept and we define it in up the additional american way that is consistent with the long liberal tradition in the west and that is that individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberty, and property as they see fit consistent with the equal rights of others to do so. This is the law of equal freedom. Beingm includes unconstrained from unjust private and public interference, that is important but we only measure the latter. Were focused on state policies, big safety at the regimes of the different states that might take you from personal violence. We are looking at how states engage in the use of its powers. Another key caveat here is that we exclude abortion and the death of tea from our analysis, from the main analysis. The reason we do that is there are reasonable Freedom Arguments on the different sides of the issue. Jason and i have our own strong opinions about these two things but there are different Freedom Arguments. With abortion people have different views on what role the state should they justly in a liberal regime depending on when they think like should begin and we do note or want to impose a particular view on that because this is more of a scientific, theological, moral question so we leave that aside. We do provide it on these as well as alternative indices based on different regimes for those types of policies so if you look in the appendix of the book you will see that. We have three different abortion policy regimes and how that might affect the index. The main rankings and index do not include either of those policies. I do want to note something as an aside on freedom of morality. There is a critical caveat about the law of equal freedom that is at the heart of the study and that is that our approach does not imply normative neutrality. Thatst because we believe these types of policies should peoples freedom to do all kinds of different things, that does not mean that we think the exercise of those rights, the ability to do something, means that one not to do those things that it is either wise or virtuous or healthy to exercise those freedoms. However, consistent with our important i think moral concept that is at the heart of the study, we believe that people ought to be able to do those things. So what we call virtue libertarianism in a piece that we wrote is a option to both political conservatism and ethical libertarianism. Lets get to the data. We measure freedom given this is the fourth edition and we have done some back coating. We measure freedom for the year 2006,ear 2000, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014. We have 230 variables. It is quite comprehensive. That is important to measure the whole range of different freedoms but also if you have a concern about us including one one thingeighting more than another, the overall rankings are quite robust even for small policy changes for you we measure everything from state and local tax burdens to occupational licensing to even things like rum milk sales. Nooks sales. Milk sales. These are one third of the index. Let me talk about how we have waited these policies weight ed these policies. This is not simply our view about what matters to people and what ought to matter to them. We have tried to have an objective a system of weighting as possible. Individual policies are weighted by their freedom concerned by those who enjoy it and we do those in dollar terms. This is not a utilitarian weighting scheme. We are not looking at the cost in the benefits of any particular policy and terms of how it affects the utility to that person. We do not measure the advantage of the coercive regime. That is very consistent with the liberal tradition that we are racing the sun. Basing this on. We basically take for each variable, we give it a dollar estimate representing the financial, psychological, and Welfare Benefits of a standardized shift to a variable in a profreedom direction to those who enjoy more freedom and we do this based on existing. Conomic and policy research some policies do get a bump due to wider, unmeasured costs to insecure rights if these oficies in the cases where these policies touch on those things. If a policy is in coated in the state constitution or u. S. Constitution or we have been recognized i some state courts and relate to a fundamental right, we have given it a bump in terms of the weighting. New for this edition . We have updated the rankings and data for 2012 in 2014. That is important when we are trying to do that kind of looking at these policies overtime. We also have improved our estimates of the freedom value of each policy that go into the weighting i talked about. We have expanding expanded and improved measures, we are trying to get better at measuring underlying categories and dimensions. We give particular count to citizen choice among local governments. We have added an index of of them and an analysis relationship between cronyism and things like corruption and lobbying and jason will talk more about that when he comes appear. Of the new analysis relationships between things ien, freedom and partisan l Economic Growth and migration. There is a lot in that 287 pages. We have also updated the state profiles for each of the 50 states and included policy recommendations for all of them. We have provided those alternative indexes that i talked about. Rankings, thehe sexy stuff that people act here. Lets turn to fiscal policy and you see that in fiscal policy we are dealing with things like state and local taxation, government subsidies and government debt. You see here that new york brings up the rear and 50th place. Not surprising but something worth noting. Four states like New Hampshire, tennessee, south dakota, florida and oklahoma. Lets move to regulatory policy, the other half of Economic Policy, Economic Freedom. Here we have things like land use which are substantial, things like Health Insurance in marketf the preppaca, regulation, and so forth. New york comes in last. New york is an interesting case we can go into more where it does so poorly even compared to the 49th worst and 58th worst states. At the top for we see idaho, indiana, wyoming, kansas, and iowa. Add fiscal policies and regulatory policies together, we get Economic Freedom as a whole. There are other studies that measure Economic Freedom out there but we think we do a pretty decent job at combining regulatory fiscal as we see it and giving an overarching economic Freedom Index itself. That could be utilized even if youre not interested in those other aspects we measure here. In terms of Economic Freedom we see at the bottom we have new york my california, hawaii, new jersey, and maryland at the top. New hampshire comes in fifth followed by oklahoma, tennessee, idaho and the top state in terms of Economic Freedom is south dakota. Next we will talk about personal freedom. Here you have a range of policies that before the Freedom Index were not measured in any of these indices of freedom. We think that is a big value add for looking at this wider understanding of what it means to live in a free society. Basically some criminal justice policies at the top, incarceration and arrest, marriage freedom, educational freedom, gun rights, alcohol freedom and so forth. At the bottom of this list, new york escapes being 50th. We have kentucky falling there. In terms of the best, we have washington, maine, nevada, colorado, and new mexico as the top state in terms of personal freedom. Move to overall freedom. Harkening back to milton freedom. It is not easy to divide out the categories in terms of how we want to live. We have to measure the whole range. What does it look like . So if you click on this, maryland is 46. New jersey is 47th. Hawaii is 48. California is 49th and you may not the surprised what i said before that new york comes in dead last. It is funny that it comes up so often but not for the residents of new york who are suffering greatly from this time of type of policy regime which is one of the things why so many new yorkers have been moving since 2000. We have seen doubledigit movement in terms of the percentage of the 2000 population that have left the state. In terms of the top states, south dakota which was ranked quite highly in terms of Economic Freedom is in fifth voice on personal freedom really because they do not on overall freedom because they do not do as well on personal freedom. Followed by indiana which does pretty well on both. Alaska, and then, drum please, New Hampshire, the freest state in the union as of the fourth edition of their freedom in the 50 states index. So now i will turn to adjacent to talk about some of our analysis of these different relationships that i talked about earlier so thank you. Mr. Sorens thanks. My job today is to talk a little bit about the social science we do with these freedom scores. First taking a look at how freedom has changed over time for some of our top and bottom states, you see here that act in 2000, tennessee was the number one state. But relative to other states it has not done so well. Since then. Actit has fallen a little ahead of the pace. New hampshire was number two back in 2000, number one in 2006 and eight years later, retakes first place very at alaska did very well in 2000 and declined a lot by 2006 and since then has increased tremendously. With alaska i have to caution you our measures of state taxation are skewed to the fact that they correlate with oil prices. A lot of this improvement is measured improvement but there were not any policy changes, the state was collecting fewer corporate taxes because oil was so low. The problem with alaska. Oklahoma is our most improved date of all 50 states since 2000 and you can see that in this graph. It has increased consistently over time, increased across all three dimensions, even in areas like criminal justice, oklahoma has been a leader and starting to reform policies that were extremely tentative previously. Here at bottom you see new york, our number 50 state, there is a little bit of a hint of improvement since 2010 in fiscal policy, especially. But overall, it stayed well behind even a number 49 state, california. There has not been a tremendous amount of change over time. Hawaii has had one of the biggest declines in the last four years. Worst states in terms of change in the last four years. Heart of that due to the fact that in 2010, hawaii had the most free market Health Insurance regime in the country. Ppaca has taken that away and they have had a series of tax and cream increases under the governor there. We see that the state average overall has trended down since 2000. Some of this is due to the effective federal policies. Thee remove the effect of nationalization of Health Insurance regulation, state average overall freedom with like would look more this. It has increased since 2006 especially on fiscal policies. That has been fairly steadys and Great Recession. One of the new features of this addition is what we call freedom from cronyism index. Onlooked at restrictions business entry, pricing, and subsidies to business. Those are the elements of our cronyism index. It includes our entire occupational licensing index, includes restrictions on starting a new moving company, hospital certificate of need requirements for construction, price gouging laws, minimum market laws, subsidies to business, those are the Main Elements of this index. You see here that wyoming, idaho, kansas, colorado, and a soda are the least and maryland, massachusetts, and illinois are the most. With a lot of these Economic Freedom indices it seems that some of the deep loose states tend toward the bottom and the ones at the top 10 to be read. States. R cronyism relates to corruption in the and the number of lobbyists per legislator. Here is a scatter plot showing the relationship between on the x axis the log lobbyist to legislator ratio and on the y axis, freedom from cronyism, it is a Strong Negative relationship. 46 and it is statistically significant. States with more lobbyists per legislator tend to have more regulations. It could be that more lobbyists cause legislators to enact policies that benefit these Sheltered Industries or could just be that more crony is policies elicit more lobbying because they are trying to retain those privileges. We found a similar relationship between the index of cronyism and state Corruption Perceptions from a survey of state house journalists. A correlation of about. 5 showing that more cronyist states are more corrupt. If you look at public ideology and Economic Freedom, i have got democratic and green in 1996, vi of the state against Economic Freedom in 2000. Partisanship to be measured. Maybe it is feeding into policy call is causally and we do see a negative relationship although a curvilinear one. Moderate states are no less economic refreeze in strongly conservative states. , thef the deep blue states very democratic states that tend to have lower Economic Freedom and we find a similar relationship when we look at Economic Freedom 14 years later. Partisanship in 2012 has the same curvilinear relationship with Economic Freedom today. Affectsat how freedom certain outcomes. Do americans value freedom . One way to test this is to see whether they vote with their feet for freedom and we do find some evidence of this. We look at statistically we regress the net migration rate for each state in different times on the starting level of fiscal and regulatory personal freedom and we control for climate, amenities, measured a number of different ways, cost worker,g, capital per no matter how we tried to control for other things that might attract people to a state we find that freedom is statistically significantly associated with net and migration. People move from less free to free your states and that holds across these three dimensions although especially strong for fiscal policy and personal freedom. A couple of scatter plots showing the relationship between overall freedom on the left and in 2000. And the net migration rate over the subsequent six years. Again, ford is that your states have more net domestic migration. The least free state has the worst migration. The 2000 population of new york has on net moved to other states. We find a similar relationship Even Stronger actually a little bit after the Great Recession states that have more freedom again, have had greater net mastic migration in the seven subsequent years to 2006. We look at Economic Growth. Do we find that fiscal and regulatory policy are associated with subsequent Economic Growth . A little adam smith quote. Case, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice, all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. Does that hold true . Easy taxes, peace, and a tolerable administration of justice. We find that Economic Freedom is positively associated with personal Income Growth and we just personal Income Growth for a change in state costofliving so this is a real Income Growth. Which is important because some states that have the high per capita incomes are not actually as wealthy as you think because the cost of living is extremely we separate into post and preGreat Recession samples. St revelatory policy. Thisrong for theoretically. You would expect that with the evidence seems consistent. Does this cares about labor law, the civil liability system, what we call regulatory policy and that is what seems to affect the productivity of business. Alternativeome indices and what is interesting is how robust a lot of rankings are even if you had different outtion regimes in or take the right to work from the index. We include a no right to work work is partht to of the main index but some would argue against them. We have abortion laws and a prolife index, a moderate prochoice and a strong prochoice index in all different possible combinations. If you exclude right to work, New Hampshire is by far number one. If you have your life with right to work, oklahoma is number one. All of these, new york is number 50 number and what you do. Prochoice are strong prochoice depending on which of those you choose, New Hampshire and the lack staff alaska might trade off number one and number two. You could quibble with some of the variables. If you like you can download our create your own personalized index, we encourage that. Part of this is about generating a conversation about freedom. You will probably find that the states move around a little bit, it will be difficult to get new or new higher than 25 hampshire lower than 25. With that we would like to offer. Little bit of time for q a i believe peter has some questions for us as well. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Bookll have copies of this on the way out. It is a data lovers delight. It is full of charts and graphs and wonderful ways to look at material. Another way to engage at the website which is fr eedominthe50states. Org. There are a lot of ways to play with the data. Lets move to the questions. Anyone have a question off the bat and if you do not, i have one. Other than voter ideology, what might [indiscernible] anyone anything other than what the votes are saying . We do look at state Political Institutions to see if they take a difference. They do make a small difference, ideology. H as we looked at a number of different legal regimes and institutions to see what might influence freedom and we look at legislative professionalism. Thategislators paid a lot, is not related to freedom. We look at links of the constitution, some states have really long ones and some have short ones, that is not related to freedom. Some of the things that do seem to be related to freedom, we do legislator to lobbyist ratio matters. We also find that state age matters. The older states tend to have less freedom particularly in the economic sphere. Had awas an economic who a 1981sis about this in boat. He thought that older states would have more Interest Groups and that is why they would be less free. We find it seems to be related to unionization. Had strongtates labor movements and even today have higher unionization rates, even adjusting for whether you have a right to work law and as a result of that more Labor Regulation and things like that. There is not a tremendous amount of states that states can do to their institutions to ensure more freedom but possibly increasing the size of your legislature, that would reduce the size of that lobbyist to legislator ratio and maybe that would increase freedom. I have a question about new york. One of the theories about movement of people has to do with the difference between fixed and mobile capital. The idea is if you have a lot of fixed capital than you have problems because it is hard for people to leave and the government will have a lot of discretion what to do. Capital goes to switzerland and you have to be careful about that. What strikes me is that manhattan is filled with mobile capital. The most mobile capital in the world. Observe thats we not only is new york the worst state but it is falling away from the rest of the country. That does not seem to fit with the idea that mobile capital make loopholes for mobile capital, does it not matter, mi my assumption . Wrong about my assumption . The mobile capital you are thinking of, finance. The shares are owned by People Living elsewhere mostly and those Companies Operate elsewhere. They are trading in new york. Wall street i think is pretty fixed. It would be hard to move the stock exchanges outside new york city. Pool of wealths there that is going to stick around. California enjoys the same sort of situation where they have got two thirds of the Pacific Coast facing asia. Advantages for international trade, best climate on earth and yet people are moving more people move away from california and moved to it. This gets to the interesting regional comparisons you can make. Go to the heart of the midwest, places like illinois and indiana and you compare what is going on there in terms of outmigration and in migration. 2000nas population since is on net has stayed the same. Slightly negative. Less than 1 . , despite having lots of advantages over indiana in terms of having a great city like chicago, some of the best universities, that has suffered quite greatly in terms of outmigration compared to indiana. Essentially a most 8 almost 8 of illinois citizens in 2000 have fled the state compared to where indiana is with less advantages. You see the same thing between massachusetts and New Hampshire. Massachusetts has lost about 5 of its 2000 population while New Hampshire has gained 2. 2 . Some of that is because you have tax refugees moving to a better tax climate. Less freedom to more freedom from massachusetts to New Hampshire but also other parts of the region. You also see this on the west coast. It is robust across the different parts of the country. You see People Places like arizona and nevada. Those are places where lots of retirees are coming because of the better climate, cost of living. We are still seeing that relationship between freedom and migration. In terms of the percentages, california has lost 4. 9 of its 2000 population despite being paradise in terms of its clement and amenities. It is hard to beat southern california. Also hard to eat the cool things that are happening in Northern California and get people are having to leave that state where is places like arizona, hot as heck, right question marks and people like it. I do not. You have basically 16 , it has creased increased in terms of in migration. Nevada, almost 20 . It is Pretty Amazing what is going on in terms of this migration that i talked about being as american as apple pie. People are leaving. We want to caveat is by saying most people are moving from their reasons but on the margins, Freedom Matters and it letters in a statistically significant fashion. [indiscernible] from the top states in the bottom states . There is a Real Movement at the partisan level for criminal justice reform. Given that some of these criminal justice your bowls are so important in terms of their weighting in personal freedom, you will see changes. You have a lot of variety in terms of state response. Some states will jump on this criminal justice bandwagon and other states will not. They will try to state state tough on crime. Other states will adopt being smarter on crime. That is the case for some of the conservative states that are going to follow what is happening at oklahoma and even texas, even though it it does quite poorly in terms of personal freedom has been a locus of reform as groups like right on crime try to prove this idea. Some conservatives latch on and others say hold off. You are saying and intraconservative debate on criminal justice that will trickle down into their rankings in terms of the Freedom Index. Thoserens a lot of reforms take a while to affect the variables. You can start incarcerating fewer people now but there are still many thousands in this prisons. There will be a little bit of a legrier. There. Texas should improve given it was at the forefront of some of these reforms. Biggest been the hwho moves the highest and the lowest . Oklahoma was the best improver over this period. They were in the middle high in 2000 and now they are among the top five. Number three. That . Do you account for what went into that . What you find is states that move ideologically are sometimes out of equilibrium, so to speak. Oklahoma was a state that had long been full of new deal democrats that suffered during the great depression. And a lot of cultural affinities with the segregation south. Moreit became a much freemarket state in terms of public opinion. It took a while for policy to respond to that. The politicians caught on and started implementing the kinds of reforms that voters wanted. You might see similar things happening with a state like west was stronglych democratic until just a few years ago and is strongly republican and all of a sudden it is passing workers comp reform and right to work and all these things so maybe West Virginia which is one of our worst states is going to start to improve. Mr. Ruger illinois is the state that has worsened the most in terms of the rankings since 2000, not just in terms of rankings, in terms of freedom. Illinois has suffered 22 as you might guess pretty bad fiscal policy situation. It is a state that has not got a andle on spending or taxes, also is a highly regulated state compared to its neighbors. Hurt, affected the fiscal side of the house. When youre having your tax basically to neighboring states it makes some of these albums that were locked in like pension issues even worse because you have a smaller base to start with. Mr. Sorens what is interesting about illinois is it used to be one of the very worst states, it might have been number 50 in 2010, as recently as 2010. It has increased on personal freedom but mostly because the federal courts have forced them to. They struck down a lot of their gun laws. They werent laggard on samesex marriage. You would expect that a state that is far left would have moved on that pretty rapidly but they did not. They have improved on personal freedom, maybe not through their own virtue, so to speak. Thanks. Since we are in washington, what factors do you see that washington can have the best positive effect and the worst negative effect, things that you should try to avoid doing and things that congressmen should be trying to do to help at the state level or should they stay out of the way . Mr. Sorens we should rely on the wisdom of the founders and maintain federalism and so if the federal government increasingly centralizes policy responses to issues that are happening around the country, that is going to be a bad thing for freedom in general. It also does not allow for those laboratories of democracy to try out and innovate on policies in response to new challenges especially because even though we have a wonderful union, there is a lot of similarities across the different 50 states. There are important differences in terms of what is going on especially economically that we should allow for the states to experiment with at the local level. I would say it is mostly about staying out of the way but not staying out of the way in a irresponsible fashion. It is taking advantage of the wisdom of the founders and our federal system. They understood that local and state responses are going to be oftentimes better for the wellbeing of the citizens in different places and having a regime of freedom if you will is the best way for these problems to be dealt with. You look at how the u. S. Has performed on the economic index of freedom and it has been falling quite a lot over the last 15 years but that is happening at the federal level. The state level if you exclude policies that are nationalized by the federal government, states have been getting better. Part of this is Congress Stepping out of the way and converse people have to Congress People have to look as though they are addressing social problems, at least they could insert easy opt out for states. If you meet these very simple criteria you can have a waiver from this big bill we are pushing through. Mr. Ruger i would add one more thing. Whenever anyone talks about relying on the wisdom of the founders, the federal government does play a really Important Role and one that the federal government was not playing appropriately for many decades which is that the federal government especially through the court system should be a robust defender of individual rights when states and localities are violating rights. Spaces not an openended to do whatever they want. That is not what we are arguing and that would not be consistent with i think our liberal regime. If you look at International Comparisons between countries that are more economically free and those that are not, those with more freedom tend to have better social outcomes whether it is Life Expectancy or Educational Attainment or a host of other things. What are some of the other outputs from your look at freedom of the 50 states, you can point to showing that freedom does promote better social outcomes for people. That is a great question. We are leaving that up to other researchers and one of the reasons is there is a big warning that we would issue to attempts to look at, lets correlate freedom against Life Expectancy and things like that or College Education or Graduation Rates or something. The problem is that some of the least free states have because of their regulation made their cost of living very high. They are losing people but the people they are losing are disproportionately working class and low income households. You look at a state like massachusetts, great social outcomes but most households in massachusetts do pretty well. On things like patents per capita and things like that. But why is that . It is because no one can afford to live in massachusetts except the College Educated professionals. Theyre going to have good social outcomes. You have to find some way of adjusting for that. The causal impact of living under a state policy regime. That will be much more difficult and tricky but i hope researchers look into it. Is back to why are so many people fleeing if things are so good . That is a important revealed preference that people have. Like maryland and washington, d. C. And new york and california, there are lots of different amenities so you would imagine these would be attractive yet you see people leaving. That is a real sign. I want to hear your cronyism index in particular. The social justice would agree totally with that index so that brings up the question, the president famously said to small businessmen, you did not hold that because he has the social justice perspective. Creating somed at kind of social justice index and maybe that would they are in the Union New York kind of states, they are getting more Free Services and people are happier in the social justice lexicon, they have greater freedom. We think we are measuring justice here. We think it is important, a key component to be free to choose the way the way you want to live your life as long as youre not harming others, by letting their rights. We do capture some of the things a trance partisan audience would appreciate. That is why this is not a conservative or liberal index. It is not even a libertarian index to the extent that we are talking about what it means to live freely from various types of policy regimes. That encompasses things that you see across the pet spectrum that we care about. The crime adjusted incarceration rate, that is an important variable here. We also care about a number of different personal freedoms that you would not necessarily see in any type of conservative index. On the other hand we are saying that you cannot ignore the economic side. Back to milton friedman. Milton friedman talked about freedom as a whole. There are different components but to live free you have to have the ability across different areas. If you do not have Economic Freedom it is hard to have freedom of the press. If you have Economic Freedom but you do not have lots of personal freedoms, can you flourish as a human being the way we would like to across the range of things we care about as humans, to have the kind of wellbeing that we want. A kind ofreedom is necessary but insufficient cause of wellbeing but if you do not have it it is hard to thrive. Maybe at the top you can which is why we want to look at cronyism because we do not want the creation of a twotiered society. That even for those people can you thrive in all the ways you want to as human beings without freedom. Have Common Ground licensing. Like i echo what will said. And index is not just for libertarians. You could take this index and you could say this is how you could think about freedom but some things might be more important than freedom. Maybe and egalitarian would say i agree with occupational licensing and incarceration rates but not on taxes. Even if you say that i do not think anyone would say taxes are a positive thing in and of themselves. If you took those taxes and dumped them into the sea, that would the good. No one says that. They think the taxes are worthwhile because they are there are compensating advantages. You could add to our index other things like an index of how effective government is and the quality of Public Services and maybe you would have a fuller how Public Policy affects wellbeing or utility or Something Like that or equality. We do think that our index has to be at peace of the puzzle for just about anybody. I noticed in your overall is true. M index that in your cronyism index, i areced the top five states sparsely populated western states. The bottom five are pretty much all densely populated populace states. Ideaere something to the of wide open spaces allow for freedom and densely packed people dont want that much freedom . We have looked at the relationship between the urbanization rate and percentage of the state population that is urban and different elements of freedom. It relates more to personal freedom than anything else. We find a small relationship that more or less, leftwing have leftwing states have more freedom than rightwing states. We find more rural states have more personal freedom. For Economic Freedom, there is no relationship. I think what was going on is that the early industrializing states. The late 1800s. Laborped very powerful movements, consul aided concentrated proletarians, if you will. The left andt to as a result, they have had these kinds of policies. More of a government, fiscal role. That is why they tend to have less freedom. It is not that the urbanization itself causes problems. Eraou industrialized an of mass production and labor radicalism, that is a problem. If you are oklahoma city, if you falls, if your houston, if youre one of these cities that has recently grown largely based on services, largely nonunionized, those cities are pretty free market. There is nothing inherent about population density that causes people to vote a way freedom, except maybe on personal freedom. Issues like guns. The origins oft that. At the time of the first edition, what was it like out there for this kind of data . What prompted this to get started . It seems like everyone has got one. Unfortunately we had to do so much with so little in terms of our time. You were talking about over 200 variables that we had to code. Studiesthem rely on and and others you have to go to statute. There had not been an index that look at the personal freedom side, which reps about 1 3 of our research. That was new terrain. Side, we measure things differently than others. We weigh the policies different. We have a weighting scheme that is much more objective. It is a a lot of of weight given there are indices in the past. There are a lot of indices out there. It was the Economic Freedom of north america. It has a small number of but the advantage of their approach is they can get annual data back to 1980 or something. Most of the other indices that are out there, they mixed together policy indicators with economic competitiveness indicators. They will have patents per capita and government consumption as a share of gdp. Those sorts of things which need to be conceptually distinct. We want to measure state policy. State policy might affect economic competitiveness, but they are not an element of it. Remains ad distinctive feature of this index. Are happying said, we to have lots of different discussions of freedom. If we do that because we will robust come to a more discussion of freedom. Lets do one more and i think we will close it out. Do you have any kind of howell statebased organizations affect people . No. We encourage other people to use the data to explore other issues. We cant answer every question. Where does the data come from . Can they get to the raw stuff . It is at stakepolicy no state x. Com statepolicyindex. Org one thing. I will say about faithbased organizations is we see a relationship informally between christianf organizations in a state and educational freedom. Have,ind that states that for instance, there is a measure in the literature of christian right influence to the state republican party. The stronger that is, the more likely the state is to have School Choice and the more liberal their home school was. The more relaxed their form school laws. It is an interesting finding and it kind of makes sense. There should be copies of this on the table outside as you exit. You can play with the data, make your own charts. With that, lets think our speakers. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] coming up on cspan, the fight for 15 an hour convention, promoting raising the minimum wage. Vice, Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden campaign in scranton, consulting your. That is followed by donald trump on his foreignpolicy agenda. Cspans washington journal, live every day with policy issues that impact you. Hillary clinton reveals her economic plan to the country. Coming up this morning, we will discuss those plans with andy greene, managing director of Economic Policy for the center for american progress. Politicalen dinan, editor for the washington times, on the obama administrations plan to admit 6000 Syrian Refugees this year, the exceptions for their status approval, and debate around the refugee program. Be sure to watch washington journal live getting at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Today the Heritage Foundation looks at welfare reform 20 years after president bill clinton signed into law. That is live at noon eastern. Later, the rosen center on the 100 migratory 100yearold Migratory Bird treaty between the u. S. , canada, and mexico. That is light at 1 30 eastern, also here on cspan. Heldight for 15 movement its first ever nationwide convention in richmond, virginia last week. Workers from various industries took part calling for the raising of the minimum wage to 15 an hour. This is one hour, 35 minutes. [applause] our you doing out there . Hold on, hold on. I cant hear yall. I said how yall doing . [cheering] that is what i am talking about. How are yall doing today . All right. We want to welcome you to the fight for 15 convention. [applause] is betty douglas, a. K. A. Betty douglas. I am from st. Louis. How are you all doing today . [applause] for those of you that dont know me, i am from tampa, florida. [applause] and we are members of the National Organizing committee for the first 15 for the fight for 15. I am 58. I have three sons. I worked at mcdonalds. I have been working for mcdonalds nine years and i make 7. 90. Hold on, mama. Hold on. Are you saying you have worked for mcdonalds nine years and you only make 7. 90 . That sounds like chump change. That is like, what . 10 a year . That is less than . 10 a year. Man, you know that aint right. You know that isnt right. I am 27 years old. Im in tampa, florida. I work at chipotle and i only make nine dollars and hour. Like mama that he said, i also in the fast Food Industry for nine long years. That aint right. We are here today because we want 15 and a union. [applause] we want to see who else wants 15 and a union. Applause] do you want 15 and a union . I cant tell. I cant hear yall. Is that your best . Come on. [cheers and applause] all right. Were going to start this. It is going to start with washington, d. C. Come on, washington. Where is washington, d. C. At . What is up with this . All right. All right, all right, cool. How about baltimore . Baltimore, maryland . Bmore, where you at . Baltimore, i know youre in here. Baltimore, show me where youre at. All right, all right. Maybe a little tired. How about manchester . I know youre in here. Ok. I know for sure. Birmingham, alabama, is in the house. [cheers and applause] all right now. Were going to get to my state. I know miami in the house. Where yall at . All right, all right. Otown . Ut [cheers and applause] all right. We hear you. Buffalo . I know buffalo. Buffalo, where are you at . Buffalo . How about new york city . I know new york city is here. Thats what im talking about. Thats what im talking about. [cheers and applause] thats what im talking about. Yeah all right, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Philly . T where you at . Philly, where you at . [cheers and applause] come on, philly. I hear you. All right. Florida . Where you all at . Thats what im talking about. All right, all right. Cool. So what about atlanta, georgia . [cheers and applause] atlanta. Oh. All right, yell. Charlotte, North Carolina. [cheers and applause] thats what im talking about. Yeah thats what im talking about. Ok, i see you. Pittsburgh . Where you at, pittsburgh . Make an old woman dance. Come on, pittsburgh all right. All right, all right. How about harrisburg . Harrisburg in the house . Harrisburg . Harrisburg, where yall at . I know youre a little tired. Thats all right. Tired. Tired. Thats all right. Providence . Providence, where are you . Dont leave it like this. Its cool, mama. Check this out. What about greensboro, North Carolina . [cheers and applause] definitely want 15. They definitely want 15. What about greenville, North Carolina . [cheers and applause] i see you, baby. Capital ofe the North Carolina. Where is raleighdurham . Yeah. All right. A minute. Ute, wait i know hartford is in here. I know you are hartford, dont do me like that. Hartford what about boston . Boston . Where you at, boston . [cheers and applause] yall dont sound like yall want 15 back there. Thats all right. They still want 15. Now wait a minute. Im going to show you something. How about new jersey . I know new jersey is here. I know youre watching. [cheers and applause] we are in the south. See of charleston, s. C. Is here. Yeah. What about austin, texas . Yeah. Thats what im talking about. [cheers and applause] yeah. [laughter] want thaty might change. I know houston, texas is in the house. [cheers and applause] check them out. Thats what im talking about. Ok. Con down a bit. , down ca lm down. I am looking for little rock. I am talking about the dirties the 30sking about socked. Little rock, dont do it to me. All right. I got one that will show up and show out. At . Orleans, where you [laughter] they dont want 15. They want 25. What are you talking about . Its ok. They look tired. I know, i know. How about kansas city . [cheers and applause] say it again. Kansas city. Right, we all know you want it. Just making sure. So what about dallas, texas . Wher texas . All right. Thats right, baby. It is ok. What about el paso . I said what about el paso . All right, all right. All right. We in their hometown right now, yell. This is their hometown. [cheers and applause] all right. Thats what im talking about. Yeah i hear you. I hear you. All right, all right. You are up and you are out. All right. I love you. I love you. Wait a minute. Hold on, wait a minute. Got some thinking in it. Where is my fight song . [cheers and applause] jackson, where you at . Yeah that is all the time. Stop it. Stop it. All right. All right. Thats cool. Jackson. Where is jackson at . Show me. Come on, jackson. Where are they at . Jackson. Its all right. We are intimate sure of that. All right. I think thats all right. Thats ok. Thats ok. Hold on. Hold on. Thats all right. Thats all right. From detroit. Hold on. Cleveland]ng i just can hear yall. What did you say . All right. We hear you. We see you, detroit. About knoxville . All right. There they go. We hear you. So what about roanoke, virginia . Yeah, thats what im talking about. I can hear you all. They want 15. They want 15. They definitely want it. Theyre going to get it. What about phoenix, arizona . No phoenix . Your plane, man. You dont want 15 around here you are playing, man. You dont want 15 around here. Come on. Let them hear you. [cheers and applause] all right, all right. Watch this. Get ready to see something right here. What do they have for us . All right, cleveland [cheers and applause] i knew when i said cleveland. I told you. I told you. Oh clevelands not playing. They still want 15. Right, yall. All right. How about nashville . [cheers and applause] all right, nashville. Make your mama proud. All right. All right, all right. All right. How about chicago . [cheers and applause] we see all, chicago. All right. So what about oakland, california . All right. 15. Sacramento, california . What about san diego . Yay they are out there. Im to really show you something. Im going to show you something. Yall get ready. Here comes detroit. Come on, detroit. [cheers and applause] how about minneapolis . Where is minneapolis at . Ok. How about cleveland . Cleveland, ohio . Where are you at . On come on. What . What . What . What . Alright, ok, ok. Im sorry that i doubted you. Its not on there. All right. What about san jose . No san jose . All right. , on, yall. What about denver . Denver, do you want 15 . And what about montana . And i know we got Washington State in the house. What about columbus, ohio . And las vegas . And i know milwaukee is here. Where are you at . There they go back there, mama. I couldnt see them. I can hear them, but i want to see them. And i know portland is in the house. They had better be here. And last but not least, do we have seattle, washington in the house . Wait a minute. You sound like youre tired. Weve got one more. I know theyre going to show up. On come on milwaukee. They dont want 15 today . We want to hear you. All right. Cool. One thing we cant forget, though. Partners andnity Union Members in the building. These are folks that have fought with us in the rain, the sleet, and the snow. Im going to set you straight on something. In this country, we have a long and proud tradition of fighting am i right or wrong . , thats right. Another thing i know is that when we fight, we win1 you dont want to win. I said when we fight, we win i look around and i see all kinds of faces from all walks of life. Different faces. Kids, adults, but one thing i do know is that we are all in the same boat. [applause] i would not do that, chicago. Like for all the Community Partners and our Union Members to please stand up. Please stand up. Everybody give them a round of applause. [cheers and applause] there they go. There they go. We have the Teamsters Union in the house. We have of u. S. Cw in the house. We have communication workers of america in the house. I could not help but notice. 32 bj. I saw them walking down the halls. I cant help but notice. Said fdr you feru. And we would like to welcome you. Uys ive been working here at mcdonalds for about four years. I have been working in fast food often on for about 10 years. I get up around 4 30 in the morning and i try to catch the s by 5 30. I have to be at work at 6 00 a. M. Cars down so i dont make enough money to pay the rent, pay my bills, fix the car, get the gas, and be able to write to work. Virginia was paid a minimum wage of 7. 25. It is past time we raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Me and my family members, my son and daughter, we are together. I am a fulltime worker and i still cant make ends meet. We have a two bedroom apartment. We are working on three bedrooms. That a lot of us are at the Poverty Level or below the Poverty Level. You have a lot of people, whether you are black, white, latino, it doesnt matter your race. Intoof us are locked lowpaying wage jobs. That means that the majority of us are struggling. My dad, im not sure if he had a minimum wage job or not, but i know he did not have a highpowered job. He was able to pay all the bills. He was able to feed us three meals a day. Every day. And we made it. We were able to get a house. This is the capital of the confederacy. You could not only feel it, but you can see it. Jefferson davis is the big man. This city holds up high and mighty statues of the confederacy. Those are people who wanted to keep black people in lowwage status. People who are racist and they did not want freedom, justice, and equality for everybody. We want more. We want more in our neighborhood. So i joined the fight for 15 and i am so excited to be part of the fight for 15 because i know for me and myself as well as my family and help others to get the same thing so they can help their families as well. This community is suffering. Not only this community in richmond, virginia but all over the united states. These big corporations are taking advantage of the communities. We are tired and we are fighting it. We are not going to let go and we are not going to let down. Down. Welcome fight for 15. [cheers and applause] welcome to bismarck i am a fast food worker at mcdonalds here in richmond, v. A. I have seen economic changes in our city. Herman, may my dad he rest in peace did not even have a high school education. He was able to afford to take care of me and my whole family all by himself. We had a house, we had a car, and we had food on the table. [applause] and here i am, with a College Education and i am forced to live with my children in order to pay the bills. This makes me frustrated. I am frustrated because i cannot support myself by myself. It also makes me afraid because for my children and my childrens children that they will not be able to take care of themselves. We work hard. We deserve better. [cheers and applause]