FREEDOM! Missouri Ranked as One of the ‘Freest’ States in America

Freedom is one of the most important qualities of life a person can experience. That's why it's extremely encouraging that Missouri was just ranked as one of the freest states in America for a variety of reasons.

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Freedom in the 50 States just released their 2023 version of how free each state in the country is. Their breakdown includes many factors, but two primary metrics: Individual freedom and economic freedom.

How do you determine how "free" a state is?

They state that they came up with this ranking "based on more than 230 state and local public policies". With that massive data crunched, here's the ranking map. Notice that Missouri is considered the 8th freest state in America.

On the other side of the spectrum is Illinois which is in the bottom 20 percent. Iowa is also near the bottom quadrant which genuinely surprised me.

This year's freedom ranking included some brand new factors including "land-use regulation and occupational licensing". Honestly, I'd have to Google both of those to truly understand what they're talking about, but I will say that for my family it was much less complicated buying a home in Missouri compared to others we've lived in.