Scary sentence of the day

The consulting firm, Tillingham, a unit of Towers, Perrin, calculates that the cost of excessive litigation in America is about two cents for every dollar of production...

That's from "Rich States, Poor States," a new economic freedom-like ranking by Arthur Laffer (yes, that Laffer) which will be the topic of next week's column. It's not perfect, but neither is the Fraser Index (their new state rankings just came out about a month ago, by the way), and the value comes in an alternative way in looking at a tough problem-- namely, how to quantify the policy environment of a state. There's a lot to like about it.