No, that’s not (just) the Gophers’ ranking in Big 10 football.

It’s the Mercatus Center (and George Mason U’s) assessment of Minnesota’s relative level of freedom among the fifty states:

The state’s taxes are higher than average, but otherwise the state’s fiscal policy does not deviate much from the norm. Minnesota spends more than average on parks and public welfare. Selective sales taxes (not including alcohol, tobacco, and utility taxes) and individual income taxes stand out as particularly high.

On most regulatory policies Minnesota fits comfortably into the middle range of the states, but the state does stand out in a favorable manner for the quality of its court system and for miscellaneous regulations—mostly due to lack of a certificate-of-need (CON) law. On the other hand, Minnesota scores poorly on health insurance and labor market freedoms. Mandated benefits add 53.7 percent to the cost of a policy without mandated coverages, and the state requires both rate bands and “prior approval” of new rates in both the small group and nongroup markets.

On both firearms and marijuana policies, Minnesota is quite a bit more regulated than the average state. The state is ripe for change in both areas.

And to those among you who will doubtlessly call Mercatus a conservative tool, here are their recommendations:

• Trim taxes and spending in [areas suggested earlier in report].
• Roll back health insurance mandates (for example, mandates for speech and hearing specialists, osteopathy, dietitians, occupational therapy, reconstructive surgery, port wine stain removal, ovarian cancer screening, infertility services, and Lyme disease treatment). Even having average health insurance mandates would have raised Minnesota four places on regulatory policy.
• Enact legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.

Cool widget in this study? If you believe that single-payer healthcare and gun control equal freedom, you can do your own map using your own criteria.

For for it.

As it happens, my fairly libertarian map (stressing personal, fiscal and regulatory freedom)…

…tracks pretty closely with the original.