Americans are happier in states where governments spend more on public goods, among them libraries, parks, highways, natural resources and police protection, a Baylor University study has found.”Public goods are things you can’t exclude people from using—and one person using them doesn’t stop another from doing so,” said researcher Patrick Flavin, Ph.D., associate professor of political science in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences. “They’re typically not profitable to produce in the private market, so if the government doesn’t provide them, they will either be under-provided or not at all.”