What's right with Kansas?

Editor's note: Joel Miller's eye-opening book, "Bad Trip: How the War Against Drugs is Destroying America," is now available from ShopNetDaily.

In Thomas Frank's widely acclaimed book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" the cranky author pompously rails against conservative values taking root and blossoming into public policy. He labels working-class support for free markets "derangement" and "the politics of self delusion."

Kansas, he says, "ranks among the nation's most eager audiences for bearers of backlash buncombe," by which he means free-market conservativism.

The big joke on Frank is that the same year his book was published, 2004, Kansas also ranked No. 1 nationwide in economic liberty, according to a state-by-state statistical survey analyzing the financial impact of Big Government. The survey was conducted by the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank, and tracks tax rates, state spending, licensing laws, environmental regulations, tort laws, income redistribution, and more than a hundred other variables that invariably hamper economic liberty. As the study shows, no matter where you live in America, Big Government costs you more than you think – in lower income and troubled job markets.

Start with income. While research shows that the size of one's paycheck is tied to climate, population density and age, even church membership, liberty plays a crucial part in income growth.

Frank makes the absurd comment that once in power, conservatives push for "an economic regimen of low wages." But in the six years between 1996 and 2002, as their state was tilting further rightward, Kansans saw their personal per capita income grow more than 25 percent. No, if you really want to see income take a dive, factor the additional financial burden individuals bear because their state has tightened the economic thumbscrews.

Using a model that calculates those costs relative to Kansas, PRI found that the loss of economic freedom leads directly to loss in per capita income.

Illinois residents lose $2,188 per year.

New Jersey residents lose $2,392.

New Yorkers, $2,441.

Hawaiians, $2,963.

And Rhode Islanders! They lose a whopping $3,607 per year.

Of course states that are more economically free than these see lower deductions. Across the fruited plain, the national average is $1,161. Look at it positively: If all states were as free as Kansas, income for the average American would jump more than a thousand dollars a year. If Joe starts working at 20 and retires at 60, and if he's pulling just 3 percent interest on that extra cash, he comes out $87,541 ahead. Now flip it. Because states are not as free as Kansas, over a 40-year working life, Joe is taking it in the shorts by nearly 88 grand. In more economically oppressive places like my home state, California, it's worse – about $125,000. No wonder PRI calls this measurement the "oppression tax."

And the oppression stretches to the job market as well.

To get the picture painted by fans of Big Government, flip to chapter 4 in Frank's book, which details how the free market came to triumph in Kansas. He closes on the sour note of Boeing's consideration of outsourcing jobs away from its Wichita plant. Kansas courted Boeing and now – Frank chimes with an I-told-you-so zeal – Boeing planned to stiff them. With "[p]rofit alone swell[ing] Boeing's cold heart," the state and its pro-business policies were getting burned, Frank sums.

Spot-on proof voters are deluded and deranged for supporting free-market policies, no?

No.

The PRI study addresses what Frank does not: In 2003 Kansas sported a 4.77 percent unemployment rate in the civilian labor force. With Sunflower State unemployment 11.34 percent lower than the national average, only 15 states had better job numbers than Kansas.

Chalk up the success to economic freedom – and then take a look at the other end of the spectrum.

States where Big Government takes a more intrusive approach to markets suffer in the jobs category. Note the two most economically oppressive states in the Union, California and New York, which PRI ranked 49th and 50th in economic liberty. The Empire State had the 12-highest unemployment in the nation in 2003 at 6.16 percent – almost 15 percent higher than the national average. And the Golden State had the fifth highest unemployment, 6.68 percent – 24 percent higher than the national average.

Forget outsourcing, Big Government kills jobs.

"American conservativism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world," says Frank in the conclusion of "What's the Matter with Kansas?" One of the examples he provides: "laissez-faire capitalism, which [conservatives] adore without reservation."

On the contrary, Frank. Conservatives adore capitalism because it leaves us free to pursue economic success without the barriers of overprotective, obnoxious, power-fetishist government.

And as Frank amply proves by example, it is liberals who loathe reality and fail to make "certain mental connections about the world." Such mental connections would show Frank that capitalism leaves you free to dream and accomplish. The economic regimentation of liberalism pokes holes in your purse and endangers your job.

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