This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 14, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The solution to state-level curbs on freedom may be voting with your feet.

So how do states that restrict freedom

perform economically relative to more free states? William Ruger is co-author

of freedom in the 50 states, a publication of the Mercatus Center we spoke following a forum for the

report held last week. The states that do well and the states do poorly are going to

have you know fairly good or fairly bad scores generally across the board.

Or they might have a couple of different areas where they do extremely well.

So for example, South South Dakota in terms of

economic freedom it's number one. In terms of personal freedom well you know it's it's

a little bit below average actually but it does so well in terms of economic freedom, which is composed of both fiscal policy and regulatory policy.

You know, and you see some states that overall are decent but really struggle let's say in one area

So Tennessee for example is kind of a classic quote-unquote deep-red. It does quite well in economic freedom. It's number six, but on

personal freedom it's number 39. And you know Vermont is is pretty much you know the

opposite you know Vermont does really well. is pretty much the opposite.

You know, Vermont does really well on personal freedom.

It's number two, but it's terrible on economic freedom.

It's number 44.

So it ranks at 30 overall. You know places like New York they just do poorly

across the board and that's one of the reasons why New York is so bad

compared to other states. So for example, you know, it's number 50

...