Posted on 07/02/2015 5:25:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Fourth of July holiday brings Americans together to celebrate their liberation from Great Britain over hot dogs, hamburgers, and fireworks, but it also serves to remind us about freedom; thus, it would only be fitting to take a look at how free the nation's largest state is. Unfortunately, for Californians, the answer isn't as celebratory as the picnics many will be having on Friday and Saturday.
Using the Freedom in the 50 States index compiled by George Mason University's Mercatus Center, it easily becomes apparent that across the three categories of freedom - fiscal, regulatory, and personal -California is at or near the bottom of the pack in the U.S. Moreover, California is trending in the wrong direction.
* Fiscal Freedom: To determine fiscal freedom, Mercatus examines the level of government debt, spending, and employment, the degree to which the state is fiscally decentralized, and the state's tax burden. In the most recent rankings, California ranked 44th in the nation on fiscal freedom, representing a 6 spot drop since 2001. Driving California's poor fiscal freedom performance is the state's tax burden, where the Golden State ranks 45th. This shouldn't be surprising. Of the four main taxes - income, corporate, sales, and property - California's personal income taxes, corporate taxes, and sales taxes are among the highest in the country. Interestingly, California performs fairly well in the other fiscal freedom sub-categories, suggesting that California could significantly improve its fiscal freedom if it seriously addressed tax reform.
* Regulatory Freedom: Regulatory freedom examines the state's liability system, labor markets, and a host of regulatory regimes. On this metric, California performs the worst in the nation and one spot worse than in 2001.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...
For those interested, here’s the Freedom in the 50 States index compiled by George Mason University’s Mercatus Center:
http://freedominthe50states.org/download/print-edition.pdf
No, not really.
Next question?
Good info, thanks.
Bkmk.
It depends on who you are. For many, it is more "the land of free (stuff)". For the rest, it is tax soft-slavery.
Do you really have to ask?
Piling onto all of that with mandatory vaccines.
There’s a mistake in the first paragraph of this article — a number of people in California probably don’t care about the 4th of July or its meaning, or if they do, they think its racist and imperialist. So its just another day off for them. The whole state slid off the deep end into a toxic Hell of extreme environmentalism and political correctness, and the insane spending and productive enterprise bashing that results from a completely unrestrained entitlement state.
No, and it hasn’t been for twenty years.
My sentiments exactly. To think that Hollywood royalty like John Wayne, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Dinah Shore, William Powell, Betty Grable, and Gloria Swanson and numerous others from that era were both Republican and conservative nearly brings a tear to your eye.
All of these indicators are showing that soon California is going to be in the sort of trouble that Greece is in now, which in turn is not at all dissimilar from what took place in the Soviet Union and East Bloc thirty or forty years ago. Socialism does not work, period.
As a 4th generation Californian I am weary of
all these California threads. The libtards run
the place,true, but those of us who are
conservatives get lumped in with the lefties by
morons here who think we march in lockstep
with libbies . Let’s see a few libtard NEW YORK
threads at FR. After all, it was NY libs who
brought their bullshit out West that got Cali
going down the wrong path in the first place.
No and neither is America.
apparently this author, Carson Bruno, does not read Victor Davis Hanson, or he would know the answer already.
No. It’s called the Peepul’s Republik of Kaleephonia for a reason.
Let them have their fun.
...the nation’s largest state....
***
Um, no, California is not.
RE: ...the nation’s largest state....
Maybe he’s referring to population...
If so, the correct phrasing would have been something like “the nation’s most heavily populated state”.
Can’t take a writer’s ideas seriously when he is this sloppy.
Well,then.....let me have my fun, too!
America isn’t the land of the free anymore.
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