The annual United States Peace Index is out.  Maine is rated as the most peaceful state and Louisiana the least.  Among metropolitan areas Cambridge is the most peaceful and Detroit is the least peaceful.  The study also finds the U.S. is more peaceful than at any time in the last 20 years. Steve Killelea is the founder of the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The listings take into account five factors - homicide and violent crime rates, incarceration rates, number of police officers and the availability of small arms.  Extrapolating even further, he crunches the cost of crime on U.S. productivity.

He says Georgia ranked 36. Killelea says taxpayers could save more than $8 billion if Georgia ranked first like Maine.  He says the total cost of violence to the U.S. -- including lost productivity from violence -- was conservatively calculated to be over $460 billion.

Killelea says there's no correlation between the peace index and home values and the peace index and unemployment rates.  He does say that peaceful states tend to have healthier residents and stronger secondary education programs.