Love Liberty? Curious about the State of the Nation? Cato just wrecked your plans for the day

The Cato Institute is a libertarian-leaning think tank that has just performed a Herculean public service by putting together this interactive chart and all the research to back it up. Now you can measure a state’s freedom by firearms, tax, education, prison, drugs, and a whole host of other factors by typing in the things you find important. Check out your Freedom!

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

Freedom in the 50 States is one of the most comprehensive and definitive sources on how public policies in each American state impact an individual’s economic, social, and personal freedoms. The Cato Institute’s new 2016 edition examines state and local government intervention across a wide range of policy categories—from taxation to debt, from eminent domain laws to occupational licensing, and from drug policy to educational choice.

In addition to the study being available as a free download, over 230 policy variables and their sources are available on a specially designed companion website that enables policymakers, concerned citizens, scholars, and others, to create customized indices of freedom, or download data for their own individual analyses.

Freedom in the 50 States is an essential reference for anyone interested in state policy and in advancing a better understanding of a free society.