New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account (EFA) program is restricted to families that make no more than 350% of the federal poverty level. (That’s $90,370 for a family of three and $112,525 for a family of four.) Republicans in the state Legislature have proposed removing the income cap and allowing all students to participate in the program. Opponents of expansion have incorrectly asserted that taking EFAs universal would cost the state more than $100 million in Year 1. But to reach that number, they included thousands of ineligible pre-school students, out-of-state students and current EFA students. They also assumed without evidence that every eligible student would take an EFA. No school choice program in the country has a 100% take-up rate among eligible students outside the public school system, and no program has a take-up rate that’s even in the same ballpark. 

After removing ineligible students and using more realistic take-up rates based on actual program experience in New Hampshire and other states, we estimate that only 1,479 students not currently enrolled in a public school are likely to take an expanded EFA in Year 1, and 2,501 are likely to take one in Year 2. Because this new population of eligible students comes from households with incomes above 350% of the federal poverty level (FPL), the average EFA grant will be smaller than in the early years of the program in which eligibility was restricted to lower-income students, about 40% of whom received additional aid for having incomes lower than 185% of the FPL. We project a per-pupil EFA grant of $4,410 for newly eligible students above 350% of FPL vs. $5,204 in the current school year. That leads to an estimated fiscal impact on the state budget of $6,522,390 in Year 1 and $11,029,410 in Year 2. 

This report was prepared by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and EdChoice.

Accounting for Ineligible Non-Public School Students

State Education Department (NHED) data show 17,670 students currently enrolled in non-public schools in New Hampshire. That number includes more than 9,000 students not eligible for an Education Freedom Account. Using state data, we subtracted 1,516 pre-school students and 4,990 non-residents. New Hampshire has several famous boarding schools as well as smaller private schools within a short drive of our neighboring states. These schools attract thousands of non-residents who are ineligible for EFAs.

In addition, students who currently receive an EFA and use it to attend a non-public school are included in the total non-public school enrollment numbers published by NHED. Because they have an EFA, they are not eligible to receive another one. Therefore, they should be subtracted from the total. We conservatively estimated that half of current EFA students attend a non-public school. The percentage is likely higher. To avoid double counting, we removed these current EFA students from the non-public school student total.

Home-Schooled Students

When a home-schooled student takes an EFA, the state classifies that student as an EFA student, and not as a home-schooled student. Therefore, we cannot subtract the remaining home-schooled EFA students from the list of registered home schoolers. The state does not keep statistics on the total number of home schoolers. We used the state-reported figure of 3,499 home schoolers this fall and counted all of them as eligible for an EFA.

Accounting for Household Income

Families earning 350% of the FPL or less are currently eligible for an EFA, so making the program universal does not make them newly eligible. Census data show that 65.8% of New Hampshire households with children earn more than 350% of the FPL. So we multiplied the total population of eligible state-resident non-public school and home-school students by 65.8% to estimate how many would be eligible if the income cap is lifted. 

Take-Up Rates Among Eligible Non-Public School Students

Opponents of school choice commonly make the mistake of assuming that every eligible student will take advantage of school choice programs. That is not the case. No school choice program in any state has a 100% take-up rate among eligible students outside the public school system, and no program has a take-up rate that’s even in the same ballpark. 

To estimate take-up rates for expanded EFAs, we looked at New Hampshire, Arizona, which has a universal education savings account program, and Indiana, which expanded eligibility for its program from 370% of the FPL to 740% from 2021-2024. Annual take-up rates among eligible non-public school students in Arizona and Indiana ranged from 15.9% to 29.5%. New Hampshire’s take-up rates among non-public school students eligible for the EFA were 19.1% in 2021 and 32.3% in 2022. Since the other state rates were lower, we applied New Hampshire’s higher take-up rates to be more cautious.

Estimating EFA Spending Per-Student

Because the EFA program has been limited to lower-income families, a significant percentage of participants has received additional state aid for students who participate in the free-and-reduced-price lunch program. Thirty-seven percent of EFA students in the 2024-25 school year received this aid, which was $2,346 per-student. To be eligible, a family’s income must not exceed 185% of the FPL. Because every family that qualifies for this aid is already eligible for an EFA, we removed this aid when calculating the cost of expanding eligibility above 350% of the FPL. We estimate that the average per-student EFA cost for newly eligible students will fall from $5,204 to $4,410. 

Final Estimated Cost

After making these calculations, we estimate that 1,479 students newly eligible after making EFAs universal would enroll in the program in the first year, and 2,501 in the second year. At an average per-student cost to the state budget of $4,410, this would lead to a Year 1 cost of $6,522,362 and a Year 2 cost of $11,029,962.

For comparison, we also calculated the cost if the average per-student EFA grant remained at the current amount of $5,204. Using this per-student average, we get a Year 1 cost of $7,696,716 in Year 1 and $13,015,204 in Year 2. 

Even if we were to increase by 50% our estimated number of EFA enrollees in each year, using our more realistic $4,410 as the average per-student EFA grant, the total cost to the state would come to only $9,785,790 in Year 1 and $16,546,320. These projection are miles below the $100 million cost of EFA expansion that some opponents project.

Conclusion

It’s important to note that these numbers do not include cost savings to taxpayers from EFAs. It costs taxpayers an average of $26,320 in total state, federal and local spending to educate a single student in the public schools. But EFAs have averaged a cost of only $5,204 so far. Universal eligibility would lower the average per-student EFA cost even further. Even at the state level, the per-pupil cost would shrink, as EFA students receive only adequacy grant funds, while school districts receive some additional funding. State Education Department data show that the average per-student state adequate education grant in the 2023-24 school year was $6,177. For EFAs, the grant average was $5,204.

Opponents have claimed that making EFAs accessible to all students would cost the state more than $100 million in the next fiscal year, as every home-schooler and every student attending a non-public school would enroll in the program immediately. This is not only unrealistic. It’s impossible. The student figures used to reach the alarming $100 million number included more than 9,000 students who are not legally eligible for an EFA. 

When ineligible and already eligible students are removed, a more realistic picture of expansion’s affect on the state budget emerges. In our estimates, the fiscal impact on the state budget would be minimal, ranging from $6.5 million in Year 1 to $11 million in Year 2. Even if we increase our enrollment estimates by 50%, the fiscal effect rises to only $9.8 million in Year 1 and $16.5 million in Year 2. 

K-12 district public school enrollment has fallen by more than 54,000 students since 2001, as spending increased from $2.8 billion to $4 billion. Though the state has increased both total spending and per-pupil spending, the Education Trust Fund remains flush, with an estimated balance of $158.4 million at the end of the 2024 Fiscal Year, according to the preliminary Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for 2024. The modest fiscal effect of making EFAs universal is not only manageable, but it would allow the state to purchase a quality education at a lower per-pupil amount going forward.

Download this report here: JBC Brief Universal EFA Fiscal Impact

 

People have always relocated between New Hampshire and Massachusetts, for a variety of reasons. But the flow from Massachusetts into New Hampshire is larger than the outflow, and it has been increasing, an analysis from the Pioneer Institute in Boston shows. 

From 2010-2023, New Hampshire gained a net total of 98,879 immigrants from Massachusetts, nearly enough to create another city the size of Manchester. (These figures exclude the pandemic year of 2020.)

Florida was the No. 2 destination for Bay Staters during those years, with the Sunshine State gaining a net 90,372 new residents from Massachusetts.

“In 2023 an estimated 184,534 individuals over a year old left Massachusetts for other states while 145,021 relocated here from other states. That means that on net the Commonwealth lost 39,513 domestic residents,” the Pioneer Institute’s debut Mapping Mass Migration newsletter shows.

“Net out-migration remains elevated, with Massachusetts losing more domestic residents each year from 2021 to 2023 than it did in 2019 (no ACS data is available for 2020). In total, net out-migration has increased exponentially over the last decade; out-migration levels were 10 times greater in 2023 than they were in 2010.”

The Mass. exodus is costing the state billions. 

“Massachusetts lost $10.6 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI) to net out-migration between 2020 and 2022, more in those three years alone than the $10 billion it lost from 2012 to 2019,” a separate Pioneer Institute study in November concluded.

“In all, the Commonwealth experienced a four-fold increase in AGI loss from 2012 to 2022,” the study found. “The net loss of taxpayers followed a similar pattern, rising from just over 6,000 in 2012 to more than 26,000 in 2022.”

A University of New Hampshire analysis found that from July of 2023 to July 0f 2024, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island lost more U.S. residents than they gained, but mitigated those losses with “a substantial influx of immigrants.” 

In Massachusetts and Connecticut, “immigration provided over 90 percent of their substantial population gain. In Rhode Island, immigration produced the entire population gain,” the UNH Carsey School of Public Policy analysis concluded.

The Pioneer Institute analysis also noted Massachusetts’ foreign immigrant boom.

“While Census Bureau population estimates show an increase of 18,481 people in 2023, that was largely thanks to an influx of 50,000 new foreign immigrants. Without them the state would have lost significant population,” Pioneer noted.

New Hampshire and Maine were the only New England states to have more domestic in-migration than out-migration from July of 2023 to July of 2024, and the only ones to have more domestic than foreign in-migration, the UNH analysis showed.

The cost of living in Massachusetts is a major factor in the state’s population loss, and New Hampshire’s comparatively lower cost of living is a major factor in our state’s attractiveness.

“To make Massachusetts more competitive and attractive to current and potential residents and employers, Massachusetts needs to do more to lower its overall cost structure. Affordability solutions from growing the housing supply, easing tax burdens, and improving public transportation must be considered,” the Pioneer Institute’s December analysis concluded.

Likewise, finding ways to further lower the cost structure in New Hampshire would help keep the state competitive and potentially reduce the outflow of younger adult residents. 

That’s why regulatory reforms that allow for more residential and commercial development, more educational competition, and more occupational freedom (including right-to-work and reduced licensing requirements) are so important, along with lowering energy costs.

Lightening regulatory burdens and expanding market competition are proven ways to lower costs and improve service quality, both of which would make the state more attractive to employers and our own young people.

New Hampshire is the freest state in the country and on the continent. But on some measures of economic freedom, we do poorly. Most Granite Staters would probably be surprised to learn that New Hampshire is in the top 20 most regulated states in the nation.

New Hampshire’s recent regulatory growth

Researchers at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University have tracked the growth of state regulations since 2019. New Hampshire ranks as the 18th most heavily regulated state. We are more heavily regulated than every other New England state save Massachusetts, which ranks 9th. 

From 2019-2023, the number of state regulatory restrictions in New Hampshire grew by 14%, rising from 123,423 to 140,893, according to Mercatus’ tracking. 

Policy areas in which New Hampshire’s regulations exceed national averages include:

  • broadcasting
  • health services
  • environmental protection, public utilities and natural resources,
  • taxes and public finance

While state policymakers have focused in recent years on aiding economic growth by lowering business tax rates, the state’s regulatory burden has grown steadily, likely countering some of the positive tax cut effects.

Cutting regulations can stimulate growth. The Canadian province of British Columbia did it successfully, starting in 2001 with a reform requiring two regulations to be cut for every new one added. The regulatory cuts flipped the state’s economic growth rate from lower than the national average to higher, a Mercatus Center study has shown. 

Regulatory reform in other states

Several U.S. states offer ideas for how to reduce regulatory burdens:

Rejecting the Massachusetts model

Gov-elect Kelly Ayotte has promised to keep New Hampshire from becoming Massachusetts. In the area of government regulations, New Hampshire has been creeping in Massachusetts’ direction. Taking swift action to reverse this regulatory growth would reduce state interference in the private sector and improve economic freedom without requiring any new state spending. Reducing state rules might even have the effect of trimming state spending, as fewer rules could mean fewer bureaucrats.

Download this policy brief here: Policy Brief Regulatory Reductions 2025

Reviving American manufacturing is a hot topic in the nation and New Hampshire once again. A new Department of Business and Economic Affairs report on the state’s advanced manufacturing sector has drawn attention to that field’s recent growth here (well above the New England average) as well as its economic benefits (tens of thousands of jobs, billions in economic output).

Policymakers hoping to help specific industries tend to suggest protectionist measures (such as tariffs). But with manufacturing, as with the economy as a whole, recent research shows that enhancing individual freedom by repealing protectionist regulations is a more effective way to stimulate significant job growth. 

To create a surge in domestic manufacturing jobs, all a state has to do is pass a right-to-work law. 

Right-to-work laws do not prohibit unionization or collective bargaining. Unions remain perfectly legal and capable of organizing and bargaining for their members in right-to-work states. The laws simply prohibit employers from transferring any portion of non-union workers’ pay to unions without the workers’ consent. 

Several recent studies have found that the adoption of right-to-work laws causes a significant increase in manufacturing jobs. 

  • A 2021 Harvard University study found that the adoption of a right-to-work law led to a 28% increase in manufacturing jobs in counties that bordered a state without a right-to-work law. Moreover, those jobs were net gains, not substitutions. Right-to-work counties had employment-to-population ratios 3.51 percentage points higher than their neighbors over the border. The researchers also found that the newly right-to-work counties experienced increased levels of in-bound commuting from over the border. For New Hampshire, that would mean fewer people commuting to Massachusetts for work and more people commuting from Massachusetts into New Hampshire. 
  • “Job creation in industrial sectors such as manufacturing especially improves under Right-to-Work laws,” a 2015 Illinois Policy study showed. “Since Indiana passed its Right-to-Work law, Hoosier manufacturing jobs increased by 44,500, while Illinois lost 8,300 manufacturing jobs in the same time period. And Michigan added 46,900 manufacturing jobs since it enacted Right to Work, while Illinois lost 10,900 factory jobs during that time.”

New Hampshire had 70,000 manufacturing jobs as of 2022. A 20-28% increase in manufacturing employment triggered by adoption of a right-to-work law (the range between the Mackinac Center and Harvard studies) would mean the addition of between 14,000-19,600 new manufacturing jobs in New Hampshire. 

If we cut those estimated effects in half, that still would represent 7,000-9,800 jobs. For comparison, the population of Litchfield is about 8,500. 

If New Hampshire policymakers want to improve the state’s manufacturing sector without spending a dime of taxpayer money, there’s a very simple way to do it. Pass a right-to-work law. 

Thanksgiving is a time to count your blessings, and Granite Staters have a cornucopia of them. 

Aside from the obvious charms of the state’s natural beauty, its variety of coastline, lakes, hills and mountains, its plentiful ice cream shops and its abundant maple syrup, humans have created additional benefits of living here.

Below are five man-made reasons to be thankful for calling the “live free or die” state home.

  1. Freedom. New Hampshire ranks No. 1 in overall freedom in the Cato Institute’s Freedom of the 50 States report, last year scoring the highest freedom ranking in the history of the report. It ranks No. 1 in economic freedom in all of North America, topping U.S. and Mexican state and every Canadian province. Though New Hampshire has a high regulatory burden compared with other states, its low taxes and generally restrained government leave Granite Staters freer than any other people in North America. 
  1. Low taxes. Though New Hampshire ranks just 16th in total state and local tax burden according to the Tax Foundation, it is has by far the lowest burden in the Northeast. (Alaska, Wyoming and Tennessee tax their residents the least.) No other New England state is in the top half. Rhode Island ranks 36th, Massachusetts 37th, Maine 41st, Vermont 47th and Connecticut 49th. To find a state with a lower total tax burden, you’d have to drive south all the way to Tennessee or west all the way to Michigan. We can do better, but for our region we pay a lot less in taxes than anyone else.
  1. Government ROI. New Hampshire’s tax structure (no sales tax, no income tax as of next year, keeping many decisions at the local level) forces government to be more frugal. New Hampshire consistently ranks No. 1 in Return on Investment (ROI) for taxpayer spending. That is, we get very high quality services at a relatively low cost. We’re sort of the anti-California in that respect. A DOGE-like review of state spending surely could find some additional efficiencies. But relative to residents of other states, Granite Staters get more for their government dollar.
  1. Earnings. For a remote, rural, cold-weather state tucked up in the Eastern tip of the country, New Hampshire posts impressive personal financial numbers. Whether measured by per-capita or median household income, Granite Staters earn significantly more than our neighbors in Maine and Vermont. The median household income here is $13,500 (16%) higher than in Vermont and $23,000 (30%) higher than in Maine. Massachusetts’ median household income is only $7,700 (8%) higher than ours. New Hampshire also boasts the nation’s lowest poverty rate and the lowest percentage of families living in poverty. Granite Staters also have the lowest median debt in the country, according to Census data. We’re frugal and hard working in both our public and personal lives. “Household income and wealth are essential components of individual well-being,” as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts it. “The ability to command resources allows people to satisfy basic needs and pursue many other goals that they deem important to their lives.” Granite Staters earn a lot relative to most other states, and we’ve made sure that our government takes very little of it.
  1. Overall well-being. A lot of people believe that high taxes and aggressive government interventions are necessary to creating a high quality of life. New Hampshire proves that wrong. Our low-tax, limited-government state measures high not just on rankings of overall quality of life and places to live, but also in areas such as places to raise a family, child well being, health of women and children, safety and places to find a job. Government does provide basic services and infrastructure, but the culture and habits of the people matter more. Without massive interventions and redistributions, Granite Staters have created wonderful communities.

Capt. John Smith, who named New England, imagined the human promise of the region this way in his 1616 book “A Description of New England:”

“So freely hath God & his Maiesty bestowed those blessings on the ~ that will attempt to obtain them, as here every man may be master and owner of his own labour and land; or the greatest part in a small time. If he have nothing but his hands, he may set up this trade; and by industry quickly grow rich; spending but half that time well, which in England we abuse in idleness, worse or as ill.”

Of all the New England states, New Hampshire most embodies that hopeful vision of a free land where individuals can shape their own lives largely unconstrained by the controlling hands of powerful elites.

We’re not all the way there. But we’re closer than anywhere else in North America. And for that we all should be grateful. 

In the United States and across the globe, a stark political divide has emerged not between left and right, but between outsiders and insiders.

To a large extent, the 2024 election reflects an outsider revolt against elite misuse of institutions. Analysts and writers on both the left and the right have noticed this, though they don’t always read the results the same way. 

Left-wing writer Jeet Heer of The Nation headed down the right path, even if he missed the destination, when he wrote last week:

“The key to understanding the Trump era is that the real divide in America is not between left and right but between pro-system and anti-system politics. Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of NATO and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation). Trump stands for no fixed ideology but rather a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus. The main fact of American politics in the post-Obama era is that an ever larger majority of Americans are angry at the status quo and open to anti-system politics.”

That’s not quite right. Voters are angry at the status quo, but they have not turned against “systems” per se. No one’s calling to abolish the Catholic Church, the International Committee of the Red Cross, professional sports leagues, the Salvation Army, Rotary International, 10-minute oil changes, community college, municipal trash collection or the International Fertilizer Development Center.

Voters have turned against elite misuse of powerful institutions, particularly government institutions, to exclude non-elites and impose elite values and decisions on others collectively.

The signs of this have been growing for years. Chapman University in California conducts a Survey of American Fears to catalogue what Americans fear most. The latest survey, from 2022, found that Americans most fear “corrupt government officials.” 

Nearly 2/3 of Americans (62%) said they were afraid or very afraid of corrupt government officials. Another 25.4% said they were slightly afraid. Only 12.5% said they had no fear of corrupt government officials. While 37% said they were very afraid of corrupt government officials, only 16% were very afraid of climate change affecting where they live. (Just 6% were afraid of zombies.) 

If Americans most fear abuse at the hands of government officials, imagine how concerned residents of the “live free or die” state must be.

Collapsing trust in elites and powerful institutions leads to populist efforts to weaken or control (or both) those institutions. 

That loss of trust is a terrible development. But new leaders can restore trust lost by previous leaders. The new governing majority in New Hampshire has a golden opportunity to begin to restore that trust.

How? The wrong way would be to use government power to lock in a different set of controls that create different sets of insiders and outsiders. Voters want to restore the principle of institutional neutrality. They want government to treat everyone equally and stop “picking winners and losers,” as the common phrase goes.

In New Hampshire, policymakers can restore trust by removing institutional rules that create insiders and outsiders where none need exist, or that erect unnecessary barriers that make it harder for outsiders to choose their own path in life.

The best opportunities to return power to individual Granite Staters come with these five steps:

  1. Reduce state and local land use and development regulations. Our 2021 study of local land use regulations showed that New Hampshire is more heavily regulated in this category than most other states. Regulations that needlessly restrict development are not only the primary cause of the state’s housing shortage, but they prevent developers from creating the kind of communities people prefer, price lower-income families out of neighborhoods and communities, worsen labor shortages, and generally replace individual preferences with choices made by small groups of insiders.
  2. Increase access to educational options. Nearly everyone agrees that a child’s zip code shouldn’t determine his or her educational opportunity. Our current public education structure locks children in to a boundary-based model that creates insiders and outsiders by its very design. Education Freedom Accounts (EFAs), universal open enrollment and charter schools eliminate that structural flaw. Curiously, news reports on Education Freedom Accounts continue to omit the fact that EFAs can be used to attend public schools. Only by empowering families to shop for an education can we generate the public education improvements parents have demanded for decades.
  3. Reduce regulatory burdens on businesses and entrepreneurs. Making it harder and more expensive to start and operate a business hurts outsiders and protects larger businesses. New Hampshire has too many state and local regulations that raise barriers to entry, increase costs and create public “protections” that no one even needs. Entrepreneurship is one of the most important paths to prosperity. In New Hampshire, starting and running a business should be easier than anywhere else on earth. Right now, we’re not even close.
  4. Roll back overly burdensome environmental regulations. Protecting land, water and air is a legitimate role of government. Doing it the wrong way is costly and counterproductive. When regulations become absurdly complicated or expensive, they suppress economic growth, which is harmful because economic growth benefits everyone. New Hampshire can streamline its permitting processes and reduce its regulatory regime in ways that will improve economic outcomes while maintaining essential protections. In this category, renewable energy mandates are entirely unnecessary and should be repealed altogether. Restrictions on building energy infrastructure also need to go.
  5. Reform occupational licensing. Gov. Sununu and the Legislature made real progress on this in the last legislative session, but much work remains. New Hampshire continues to place too many regulatory obstacles in the way of individuals who want to enter dozens of career pathways.

New Hampshire is layered with rules that replace property rights and individual autonomy with decisions made by small groups of elites. Voters have indicated a strong preference for removing such restraints.

State and local policymakers have a rare opportunity to deliver real reforms that constrain government and empower individuals, rather than the other way around. Failure to deliver such reforms would risk further alienating voters and eroding trust in government.

New Hampshire this year slipped ahead of Texas to claim the No. 6 spot on a national index of state tax competitiveness published by the Tax Foundation.

Formerly the Business Tax Climate Index, the newly redesigned 2025 State Tax Competitiveness Index combines the Tax Foundation’s indexes for corporate, individual income, sales, property and unemployment insurance taxes. 

New Hampshire ranked No. 1 on sales taxes, 12 on individual income taxes, 27 on unemployment insurance taxes, 32 on corporate taxes and 39 on property taxes. 

That was good enough to place New Hampshire sixth overall, behind perennial top-five states Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska, Florida and Montana. 

Texas, previously in the sixth spot, fell to seventh, with New Hampshire edging up one spot by a fraction of a point.

(The foundation applied its new methodology to previous studies going back to 2020 so states could compare their progress.)

Texas ranked No. 1 on individual income taxes, but was in the bottom half on all other taxes. New Hampshire’s only personal income tax—the Interest & Dividends Tax—is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. 

Wyoming and South Dakota, the top two states for years, tied as usual for No. 1 on both corporate and individual income taxes.

Florida (with which New Hampshire competes for residents, workers and retirees) also tied for No. 1 in individual income taxes. It ranked No. 10 in unemployment insurance taxes, 14 in sales taxes, 16 in corporate taxes, and 21 in property taxes.  

The Tax Foundation praised New Hampshire lawmakers for voting in 2023 to let businesses fully deduct interest expenses in the year incurred, rather than over time.

“This change, following on the heels of rate reductions to New Hampshire’s two business taxes, helped New Hampshire’s corporate component ranking improve by eight places, from 40th to 32nd,” the report noted. 

New Hampshire was dinged for high property and corporate taxes.

The report noted that the Interest & Dividends Tax rate change from 4% to 3% did not alter this year’s ranking because the state was already so competitive. But eliminating the tax is seen as a positive step.

“New Hampshire will officially join the ranks of the individual income tax-free states once its low-rate interest and dividends (I&D) tax is eliminated in January 2025, further solidifying its competitive standing overall,” according to the report.

To improve New Hampshire’s tax competitiveness, the Tax Foundation recommends “eliminating the I&D tax…adopting permanent full expensing” and improving the state’s treatment of net operating loss carry forward,” all things legislators have tried to address in recent years.

Among his many memorable contributions to American arts, the great singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who passed away in September, wrote one of the most quotable lines in rock history.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

It’s a fabulous drifter anthem. 

It’s also entirely wrong. 

Part of the American political left at the time was infused with a hippie ethos that disdained possessions and social connections. Freedom to them meant getting “back to the garden,” to quote another anthem of the era. 

They should’ve read fewer radical poets and more Enlightenment philosophers.

Ancient humans had “nothing left to lose” in the sense that they had few possessions. Life was a pretty big thing to lose, though, and life in a state of nature was not exactly full of lattes and free health care. If you were lucky enough to survive childhood, you still had to escape war, pestilence, famine, all the Old Testament stuff.  You were only free until someone more powerful came along and subjugated you. And then there were no U.S. Marines to come to the rescue.  

For most of human history, either chaos or subjugation was the rule for most of humanity. Humans spent millennia poor and unfree. 

The development of democratic governments along with institutions that decentralized power and incentivized innovation and upward mobility changed everything. 

When humans replaced extractive institutions dominated by elites for inclusive institutions that empowered outsiders, as MIT economist Daron Acemoglu concisely frames it, an unprecedented era of human flourishing began.

In 1820, 75% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, as the chart below from Our World In Data shows. By 2018, only 11% did. 

“For most of human history, life expectancy has been short – perhaps 25 years for our hunter-gatherer ancestors and only 37 years for residents of England in 1700,” a paper by Harvard, Princeton and UCLA researchers in 2011 determined. “Dramatic changes began in the 18th century, with life expectancy in England rising to 41 years by 1820, 50 years by the early 20th century, and 77 years today.”

In the past 13 years, life expectancy in England has risen to 80.

Economic growth more than tripled human life expectancy and has nearly eradicated extreme poverty.

“Economic growth made it possible to leave the widespread extreme poverty of the past behind,” Oxford University professor Max Roser writes. “It made the difference between a society in which the majority were lacking even the most basic goods and services – food, decent housing and clothes, healthcare, public infrastructure and transport – and a society in which these products are widely available.”

What economist Dierdre McCloskey calls “the great enrichment” was driven by a surge in economic growth, but what drives economic growth? 

Acemoglu notes that short bursts of economic growth have occurred under authoritarian regimes throughout history. But, like the people, they were short-lived. Why?

“Authoritarian systems often rely on some amount of repression, because they seek to maintain an unequal distribution of political power and economic benefits. They also adopt economic institutions and policies that protect incumbents and create rents for those who hold political power,” he wrote in his epilogue to Introduction to Modern Economic Growth.

He found that “a distinguishing feature of growth under authoritarian institutions is that it protects the interests of the current elite. So in the final analysis, growth must always rely on existing techniques and production relationships. It will not unleash the process of creative destruction and the entry of new talent and new businesses necessary to carry a nation to the state of sustained growth.”

The entry of new talent and new business (and new ideas) is crucial for raising living standards and for maximizing individual autonomy (freedom). 

Institutions and policies that seek to protect insiders by suppressing competition, innovation and freedom of individual action hurt economic growth by curtailing freedom and thus limiting opportunity for outsiders. 

Democracy alone does not protect against such collusion by insiders. Even in democratic regimes, special interests pressure ruling authorities for protections against outsiders. 

Such protections remain woven into American and New Hampshire laws even today. 

From tariffs and confiscatory tax rates at the national level to occupational and business regulations at the state level to housing restrictions and food truck bans at the local level, regulation and taxation continue to slow economic growth and reduce opportunities for average folks. 

Building an inclusive, prosperous society requires reducing the barriers that insiders erect to protect their own power and status from being challenged by outsiders. 

When insiders collude with government to extract resources from an unfavored group or to protect favored groups from competition or innovation, freedom, opportunity and prosperity are diminished.

The Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy advocates for expanding free markets and limiting government coercion because these are proven methods of maximizing freedom, opportunity and prosperity for all Granite Staters. 

Government maximizes freedom not by redistributing wealth after its creation, but by supporting institutions and policies that lift restraints on individual economic autonomy, thus empowering all citizens regardless of social, political or economic status to pursue happiness on their own terms (providing they don’t harm others). 

Such inclusive institutions maximize individual freedom, incentivize innovation and stimulate growth and prosperity. 

Free markets and limited, inclusive government generate maximum amounts of widely shared prosperity by unleashing the full measure of human potential.

It’s no accident that the “live free or die” state is rated No. 1 in economic freedom in North America and has the nation’s lowest poverty rate. 

It’s no accident that New Hampshire has enjoyed historically higher economic growth than Vermont or Maine, and thus has higher household and per-capita income, despite sharing similar geographic and demographic characteristics. 

Free markets and limited, inclusive government make everyone freer and more prosperous.

Freedom is the foundation of sustainable prosperity.

Or to put it another way, freedom’s just another word for everything to lose.

Lose freedom, and all of our modern prosperity collapses.

Acemoglu documents this collapse in numerous authoritarian regimes of the past. People would win a little freedom, which would cause a spurt of growth, which challenged established elites, who responded by restricting freedom, which ended the growth.

From the Mayans to the Romans to the Soviets, the cycle was repeated.

Lose freedom, lose prosperity.

That’s why the Josiah Bartlett Center fights for policies that expand economic freedom. 

If you’d like to help us raise living standards and create greater opportunities for all Granite Staters, you can make a contribution online here. It’s an investment in a freer, more prosperous New Hampshire for everyone.

Travis Fisher and Josh Loucks of the Cato Institute this week used New England’s reliance on imported natural gas to show how bad U.S. energy policies hurt Americans. It’s so dumb, the only explanation is “government.”

“Just north of Boston in Everett, Massachusetts sits the poster child for irrational energy permitting in the United States. The Everett Marine Terminal is a facility that connects imported liquefied natural gas (LNG)—often from Trinidad, more than 2,200 miles away—to natural gas delivery networks in New England. This is an absurd outcome for at least three reasons:

  1. New England demands natural gas, which generated 55 percent of the electricity on the New England power grid in 2023 and heats about half of the homes in Massachusetts,
  2. Abundant natural gas resources are being developed nearby. However, states like New York can abuse environmental statutes like the Clean Water Act to block any new pipeline that would move shale gas to New England. The Marcellus shale gas play (the most productive formation in the country) extends through Pennsylvania into New York, which shares a long border with Massachusetts, and
  3. Even if no new pipelines were built through New York state from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, several American LNG export terminals (in Maryland, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) could supply New England if not for arcane laws like the Jones Act. As my Cato colleague Colin Grabow explains, the Jones Act “restricts domestic shipping to vessels that are US-flagged, built, owned, and crewed,” which effectively bans LNG shipments between US ports.”

Yes, New England imports natural gas from thousands of miles across the Atlantic because state and federal policies make it so difficult to move it from places like Pennsylvania, Texas or Louisiana to New England.

Sometimes it’s cheaper and more efficient to import products from far away rather than produce them at home. That is not the case here. The foreign imports are a result of government prohibitions or restrictions on domestic imports.

That’s just one of many results of dumb energy policies created by politicians intent on preventing markets from working. For more harmful policies, read the whole piece here.

Former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey headlines the Josiah Bartlett Center’s 2024 Libertas Award Dinner on Sat., Oct. 5, honoring N.H. entrepreneur and philanthropist Peter T. Paul.

Join us and many of the state’s top business and political leaders in Concord as we celebrate the amazing accomplishments of Gov. Ducey and Peter Paul, two champions of free enterprise.

We’ll start with a reception featuring fine hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar from 6-7, followed by a filet mignon dinner as we gather to toast the New Hampshire Advantage and one of its foremost business leaders. We’ll have a few fun, surprise auction items as well, which you won’t want to miss!

About Gov. Doug Ducey:

As Arizona governor, Doug Ducey successfully championed numerous historic policy initiatives, prompting the Associated Press to write that he “reshaped the state.” He cut spending to erase an inherited budget deficit of more than $1 billion. He enacted the country’s lowest flat tax, lifted unnecessary licensing requirements that made it harder for Arizonans to work, eliminated or improved more than 3,365 regulations (the equivalent of a $183 million tax cut), pioneered universal school choice for Arizona families, required students to pass a civics test for high school graduation, and managed to increase public school teacher pay. Because of his insistence on pursuing free-market, pro-growth policies, Arizona’s economy thrived. When he left office, the state government had 5,000 fewer employees and the state had 500,000 more people employed in the private sector. Columnist George Will called Ducey the “most successful 21st century governor.” Gov. Ducey currently serves as CEO of Citizens for Free Enterprise, a national political and issue advocacy organizations dedicated to promoting and protecting free enterprise.

About Peter T. Paul:

Born and raised in Troy, N.H., Peter T. Paul graduated from UNH in 1967 with a B.S. in business administration, then got his MBA from BU. He is founder and president of Headlands Asset Management LLC, owner and chairman of Peter Paul Wines in San Rafael, Calif., and president of West Biofuels. He also founded and serves as chairman of The Headlands Foundation, a non-profit organization that focuses on making life better for children and their families. Mr. Paul founded Headlands Mortgage Company in 1986, growing it into one of the nation’s premier wholesale lending institutions. His generous giving includes exceptional support for UNH, which in 2013 rechristened its business school the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics. Mr. Paul is a recipient of the Ernst and Young 1999 Financial Services Entrepreneur of the Year award. He received an alumni award for distinguished service from The Graduate School of Management at Boston University in May 2003 and the first annual Achievement in Business Award from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at University of New Hampshire, in April of 2008.

About the Libertas Award Dinner:

Date: Sat., Oct. 5, 2024

Time: 6-8 p.m.

Location: Grappone Conference Center, Concord, N.H.

 

For information about sponsorships, contact Drew Cline at [email protected].

Purchase tickets on our Eventbrite page by clicking the button below.