Insane New Study Claims Colorado More ‘Free’ than Wyoming

I don't believe this for a second. A new study claims that the citizens of Colorado are more "free" than Wyoming. I will share what they say and then do my best to prove it all wrong.

I'll give credit to the study "Freedom in the 50 States" research. This is not a pure opinion piece on their part as they baked in over 230 different metrics to determine how "free" the citizens of a state are. They also included this nifty map so you can see their results for yourself.

Let's look at their breakdown of freedom in Wyoming. Here are a few of their exact words:

As a highly resource-dependent state, Wyoming’s fiscal situation can fluctuate greatly from year to year, causing some volatility in its freedom scores over time. However, its overall freedom ranking has stayed relatively stable during the past three years, ending up in the middle of the pack each year. The Equality State is in the bottom third on fiscal policy and the bottom 10 on personal freedom, but its overall ranking is salvaged by a top-five showing on regulatory policy.

It appears to me that they're dinging us for natural resources and admit that it "fluctuates greatly". Correct. But, I have to ask how in the world you don't put more weight on the high score regarding regulatory policy when you're trying to decide freedom? I'm shaking my head on that one.

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Why do they rate Colorado so high? (No 4/20 pun intended) Again, here are a few of their exact words:

Colorado’s overall state and local tax burden is an estimated 8.9 percent of adjusted personal income, lower than the national average. State-level taxes have remained more or less constant during the past 20 years, with some gyrations due more to economic fluctuations than policy changes.

Fine, but my question again is how is Colorado higher (again no pun intended) than Wyoming when it comes to taxes?

When we are arguably far superior to Colorado in lack of regulations and tax comparisons, it's mystifying to me that they place us much lower in their "freedom" rank.

Credit to the Cato Institute that did this that they make all of their data available to you to look at yourself to agree or not.