For decades, free-market economists have claimed that the slashing of state spending and the rollback of workers’ rights would unleash abundance and prosperity for all. And, over the past several decades, legislators have put that claim to the test using our very own “laboratories of democracy” to pass relevant laws state by state.

But now the lab results are in. By using the conservative think tank the Fraser Institute’s own metrics of “economic freedom,” we can see exactly what happened after these neoliberal policies were unleashed.