The Cato Institute’s Freedom in the 50 States index has Rhode Island slipping to 41st most free (i.e., 10th least free) for 2021, with the following ranks in its three major subcategories:

• Fiscal, #27
• Personal, #33
• Regulatory, #43

Keep in mind, of course, that this is freedom as defined by the libertarian Cato Institute, and people across the political spectrum may disagree with aspects of the organization’s approach.  For example, Cato gives big points for state laws related to same-sex marriage, whereas others see those same laws as government intervention in the culture, forbidding people from distinguishing between different relationships, which is the opposite of freedom and, moreover, is an attack on a fundamental social structure that supports our freedom more broadly.

Be that as it may, it’s interesting to track Rhode Island’s trends on the index over time.  Since 2000, the Ocean State has never done better than 32nd most free, and our current ranking is our worst.  Unfortunately, Cato doesn’t make it easy to drill down and see what policies affected scores, and we have to keep in mind that (1) other states’ becoming more or less free will affect our ranking and (2) Cato is surely adding and removing policies by which to judge the states, which could change the ranking even if no policies changed.

That said, we’ve generally been on a long decline, although 2012 gave us a boost.  Clicking through the subcategories shows that boost came thanks to “personal freedom,” specifically:

• Marriage, from 14 to 1 that year, owing to the state’s radical redefinition of the institution
• Education, from 48 to 8, probably having to do with charter schools and tax credit scholarships, although it’s important to remember that there isn’t much educational freedom in the United States, so it’s not hard to be top 10
• Health insurance, from 42 to 17, which I can’t explain except to speculate that other states went in an even worse direction
• Cannabis, from 14 to 8

So, as much as it’s possible to say, Rhode Island’s boost nine years ago may have been a function of the arguable aspects of Catoian freedom and the mildly more sluggish radicalism that leads Rhode Island progressives to proclaim the state government “conservative.”

In any event, we’ve lost all that ground in the years since, with no sign that our local society can muster the will to improve.