Written By : Dave Blount

Researchers from the University of Warwick and Hamilton College have listed the 50 states and DC in order of the happiness of people who live there. The top 1O:

1. Louisiana
2. Hawaii
3. Florida
4. Tennessee
5. Arizona
6. Mississippi
7. Montana
8. South Carolina
9. Alabama
10. Maine

I count two minor blue states, a purple state that the ObamaCare debacle will quickly drive back to red (Florida), and seven solid red ones.

Hyper-regulated and overtaxed New York — the least free state — by some remarkable coincidence comes in dead last, with the rest of greater NYC’s Tri-State Area right behind it. Other oppressively liberal states like California, Massachusetts, and Illinois also rank near the bottom.

One of the researchers draws this bizarre conclusion:

This suggests that life-satisfaction survey data might be very useful for governments to use in the design of economic and social policies.

Rather, Big Government should learn from the data that the more it interferes in our lives through economic and social policies, the less happy we are. Coercive bureaucracies don’t make people happy; liberty does.

On a tip from Wiggins. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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