Freedom in the 50 States: Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

I saw this paper linked to on Random-American and wanted to share it with my readers here. This is a study that ranked the 50 states in the union in terms of personal and economic freedom. From the abstract:

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on other individuals’ ability to do the same.

The website containing the study can be found here.

This is very interesting reading. It appears that if one remains in the U.S., Colorado and New Hampshire are the best bets for places to live if freedom is what you are after. However, I have to wonder what value any of this is with an out of control Federal government intruding into every corner of our lives. Do these places stand a better chance of fending off the Feds somehow?