Texas Has the Fewest Personal Freedoms
Texas has the fewest personal freedoms
Texas was found to be the state with the fewest personal freedoms, according to the Cato Institute's new Freedom Index.
And they may be quite determined to give those last few freedoms away in a bid to defend themselves from the imaginary threats.
They will trade their freedom in for imaginary freedom
Ex-Texan here.
It's a wonderful place to be a straight, white, Christian, middle-class male.
For every one of those things you are not, it gets worse.
What about rich instead of middle?
Even better. It's only when you're rich that you actually pay less taxes in Texas. See how they're anagrams?
As a persone who lives in TX, i can confirm anyone who has a " Don't Tred on Me" or a "Come and Take It" sticker, flag, or shirt likes to be treaded on and will willingly give it up
They're secretly hoping some liberal dominatrix walks on them and beats them up until they give up their guns?
Why can't it be me 🥵
Go up to them and quote Luke 10:19 at them, but make them look it up.
Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
"Tread on me, Daddy," and "Come and take it out on my ass"
The Cato institute dissing Texas is actually hilarious. Republican infighting is the gift that keeps on giving.
chef's kiss👌
Never trust anything the Cato Institute says, as a rule. It's almost certainly garbage.
Sure, but when a conservative propaganda machine claims that even Texas is too authoritarian ...
I kind of did the same with The Heritage Foundation.
They have a page cataloging every single instance of voter fraud they could find, and they're up to... 1,474. Total. Since 1982. Regardless of party. In the same span of time, just looking at presidential elections, over 1.1 billion ballots were cast.
This is an abjectly evil "think tank" behind Project 2025, which actively pushes the big voter fraud lie to push mass disenfranchisement, and even they could only find an astronomically small rate of voter fraud.
Came here to say this.
Ironically, Cato Institute is bankrolled by Koch brothers, the architects of modern republican party
Is it ironic though? Seems exactly what I would expect.
Yep. We can look at the source to see what their metrics are. They have economic freedoms and personal freedoms.
The metrics for economic freedoms they used are fiscal and regulatory freedom. Focusing on fiscal, that branches down into: state taxes, local taxes, government spending, government employment, government debt, and "cash & security assets." It's obviously a libertarian based definition of "economic freedom", wherein they feel someone with $5 to their name and no obligations is more economically free than someone with $100 to their name and $10 of taxes. Completely illogical bullshit.
But you can look at it and see that a lot of them are incoherent or intentionally overlapping even if you buy into their base ideology.
Why are government spending and government taxation separate entries? Is someone with low taxes less "economically free" because their government budget is able to afford to be larger anyway? Why does government employment factor in at all? Surely — especially after you've accounted for any budgetary, taxation, and debt based impacts — there's nothing inherent to government employees existing that can be argued to impact someone's "economic freedom." Even within their base libertarian fantasies, the overlap and design of the categories will specifically make a richer, but otherwise completely identical, state less free than a poorer copy-cat.
The rest of their categories are even more bullshit. They have an entire section under personal freedom categorized as "Travel Freedom." A sane person might define that as both the right and the capacity to travel places. They define it as "This category includes seat belt laws, helmet laws, mandatory insurance coverage, and cell phone usage laws." So a state is less "free" according to Cato if it makes it illegal to text while driving.
tl;dr it's all libertarian bullshit.
I agree. I thought it was noteworthy that Cato put Texas last. They are not a neutral news source. But they did put Texas last in personal freedoms.
I don't know anything about them. Care to elaborate?
It's basically just a psyop by Charles Koch, trying to spread propaganda to land favourable policy changes for him and his kind.
It's extremely biased, but not garbage. I say this as someone that has watched and read right wing news for years. Heritage Foundation is garbage. Cato is ideologically consistent and actually has good arguments. AEI is also good for extremely biased arguments.
For real freedom, move to Scandinavia.
Unless you want to protest cultures of sexism, hemophobia, and bigotry , in which case you will get charged with hate crimes for burning some paper.
From the part of small government, comes…..
But they let you have guns, cheap oil, and the premise you should mock other states for not being Texas.
In the overall freedom rankings, New Hampshire rated number 1, followed by Florida and South Dakota, while New York was dead last, with Hawaii 49th and California 48th. For personal freedoms, Nevada came tops followed by Arizona and Maine, with Wyoming 48th and Idaho 49th
Florida ranks number 2 for overall freedom? Not sure how much I trust the Cato institute’s methodology.
Cato is a very conservative\ libertarian group. The fact that they put Texas last for personal freedom seemed noteworthy to me.
They are 100% biased.
You can see their methodology. Texas came last for personal freedom, but their corporate freedom gave then a top ten result
No shit, being able to own as many guns as you want but having a militarized police force that'll try to figure out how many teeth you can swallow if you don't pray to them isn't actually freedom.
But don't they have the gunz and the low taxez?!!!?
Texas has one of the highest tax rates for poorer people last i hear
Yup. When you take into account all state taxes, including their very high property taxes, you pay less taxes in California than texas if you make less than 660k.
After 660k? You save tons and tons of money. There is a reason a bunch of billionares have moved their "permanent residence" to the state
It's like raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnn...
Shh stop with the rain talk or Perry is going to start suggesting prayer as a solution to drought again ..
But muh freedoms?
Are far less than they are in other parts of the world.
Yes, that is what this post is saying.
All that sweet, sweet economic freedom causes Fled Cruz.
Gun owners and WASPs: the irony!
Land of the oppressed.
It's not too surprising given that Texas was founded as a slave republic.
I suppose things might be mitigated, though:
women who need abortions can go to New Mexico for such (that and more regular use of pregnancy tests).
maybe get a driver's license out of state and use it in Texas—I also wonder if one can use fake fingerprints.
maybe have open-carry marijuana protests on Hitler's Birthday.
I drove from Houston to San Diego once. It was 26 hours and a ton of it was within Texas. You can drive for 8 or more hours and easily still be in Texas.
Also, out-of-state license whilst residing in Texas is illegal. You only have so many days (14, IIRC) to change your address on your Texas license if moving within Texas. I got hit with that at a traffic stop.
30 days to change address if you move within the state, 90 if from outside. 521.054, 521.029
30 days for car registration - 502.040
How many nations were not once slave states? It seems very low. Texas as part of Mexico also enslaved people till 1830.
Not nations, but only 13 of the US states allowed slavery. Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. So roughly 26% of the total states of the US, however since there were only 36 states at the time of the Civil War, that would bring the percentage of slavery supporting states to a whopping 36.111R% of the existing states at the time.
It seems very strange that Oklahoma isn't on that list. I know why, but still.
Those Texans were presumably Americans and as such were hypocrites when many went on about freedom while tolerating, at times engaging in, genocide and slavery.
In 1829, slavery was officially outlawed in Mexico.[26] Austin feared that the edict would cause widespread discontent and tried to suppress publication of it. Rumors of the new law quickly spread throughout the area and the colonists seemed on the brink of revolt.
The new Texas constitution specifically allowed slavery and said no free person of African descent could reside in the new country without Congress's consent.[82]
Here’s the full report, (https://www.freedominthe50states.org/). Perhaps some folx are not all that concerned with TX.
Yeah, a lot of their "fiscal freedom" stuff is insane.
"Government employment refers to the state’s workforce, which can crowd out employment in the private sector."
Uh huh. Fuck off, conservatives.
The education freedom section is worse, they equate undermining the public education system with "freedom" and while they didn't weigh home schooling highly, they counted any kind of state standards or curriculum requirements for home school as "unfree"
folx
Seriously?
Should be noted that one of the reasonings for this rankings that Texas does not have school voucher programs. That's something that Democrats and even rural Republicans greatly disapprove of. Something the Republican Governor is trying to force through with frankly tyrannical actions at times. I can't help but think this article is actually trying to push that same endeavor more than being a haha look at this kind of thing. Some of y'all need to read past the headline.
Ironic.jpg
.jpg?
They're using memetic compression, the best compression you can get, by simply uttering the filename of the meme we can recreate the entire image or gif. Clearly this is the referenced image:
themoreyouknow.jpeg
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The methodology looks at issues from taxation to debt, as well as eminent domain laws, occupational licensing, drug policy and educational choice.
In the overall freedom rankings, New Hampshire rated number 1, followed by Florida and South Dakota, while New York was dead last, with Hawaii 49th and California 48th.
The state outlaws the use of recreational or medicinal marijuana, and anyone who possesses up to two ounces of weed may face Class B misdemeanor charges.
The largest issue for Texas, when it came to its low personal freedom score, concerned its criminal justice system, the study's researcher said.
While Texas has limited freedom on the personal level, it's unlikely to make a difference because the state has a solid housing and jobs market, with the exception of Austin.
"So far, Texas hasn't had a problem attracting people with lower housing costs and a good job market," Sorens said.
The original article contains 663 words, the summary contains 149 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
How is number 17 the lowest? According to their list it is NY. https://www.freedominthe50states.org/
Go to personal freedoms, it's the lowest.
Only way they'll get any back any time soon is through legislation on the national level.
But since Texas' problems are Red State Problems, Democrats don't give a shit on the national level.
It's why cannabis is still illegal at the federal level. It's why the federal minimum wage wasn't increased. It's why Democrats didn't bother to codify Roe. If it's a Red State Problem, it's not a problem. It's "got mine, fuck you" writ large.
And when everyone who can leave states like Texas does, it will cement Republican majorities in those states. It will make it harder for Democrats to get majorities at the national level. When the same backwards legislation that is just a Red State Problem that Democrats can't be bothered with right now is imposed on blue states, Why shouldn't I do what Democrats in blue states do when people who can't flee red states suffer under Republican policy? Why shouldn't I laugh and act like they deserve it?
But since Texas' problems are Red State Problems, Democrats don't give a shit on the national level.
It's why cannabis is still illegal at the federal level. It's why the federal minimum wage wasn't increased. It's why Democrats didn't bother to codify Roe. If it's a Red State Problem, it's not a problem. It's "got mine, fuck you" writ large.
You’re right that there need to be laws at the federal level, but you’re completely incorrect about democrats not giving a shit about passing legislation. The reality is that there aren’t enough votes to pass any of the legislation you mentioned in the House or the Senate, and the people who are blocking the progress are Republicans.
For example, the Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would massively raise the minimum wage over the next few years. Every single sponsor of the bill is a Democrat. It will not pass because Republicans will probably kill it in committee before it ever gets to a vote.
On abortion, Democrats have been trying to codify protections into law since 2013. Each time, the bills have been killed by Republicans.
The reality is that there aren’t enough votes to pass any of the legislation you mentioned in the House or the Senate, and the people who are blocking the progress are Republicans.
They had majorities in both houses and found excuses to not do it.
For example, the Raise the Wage Act of 2023 would massively raise the minimum wage over the next few years. Every single sponsor of the bill is a Democrat. It will not pass because Republicans will probably kill it in committee before it ever gets to a vote.
They can introduce things they have no intention of ever passing as much as they want. When they get a majority, they'll find the no votes if they reintroduce it at all.
Republicans: make life shit.
Democrats: fail to stop it.
People: why would the Democrats do this to us?
Well, it's beyond local Democrats in some red states now. Their voters are leaving for other states. If Democrats don't act on the national level while they still can, the trend will continue until it's too late.
Take it seriously or don't. It can get as bad for your state as it is for mine. Republicans aren't hesitant to legislate at the federal level.
Thank you for that. I feel bad for we who live in red states and can’t afford to leave, but you brought up a perspective I’d not before considered. Not the voting part, but yes, d/r, good/bad fash still a fash. Afab.