Louisiana is the worst state to live in, according to self-storage company Pink Storage. The company has rated the 50 states using sixteen different criteria including income, congestion, housing, education, crime, and life expectancy. California is the fifth-worst, thanks to its low housing affordability, followed by South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, and the afore-mentioned Louisiana.
Any state that has scenery such as this doesn’t look too unlivable to me. Photo by glynn424.
Louisiana, South Carolina, and Tennessee score poorly on income while Arizona is mediocre to poor in several categories including high school graduation rates, number of police per capita (though its crime rates aren’t particularly high), and utility bills (to pay for air conditioning no doubt). Other states at the low end of the scale include Texas, Nevada, Oregon, Hawaii, and Alabama.
Meanwhile, the best states to live in are: Number 5. Wyoming; 4. New Hampshire; 3. Maine; 2. Iowa; and (drumroll please) number 1. North Dakota. Excuse me, say that again? You think North Dakota is the best state to live in? I think you must have missed something.
Grand Forks winter. Photo by Paul Kehrer.
Several generations of my ancestors lived in North Dakota. My mother went to high school and college in Grand Forks and was engaged to be married to a man who became one of Grand Forks’ most successful business owners. But then she went to graduate school in Chicago and met my father. She never said so, but I’m pretty sure she broke her engagement partly because my father offered an escape from North Dakota winters.
North Dakota is the fourth least-populated state with the fourth-lowest population density for the simple reason that it’s an ice box in the winter, sometimes seeing temperatures of 40 to 60 below zero. Only Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming (all of which also scored high on the best-states list yet are low in population) regularly have colder winters.
Pink Storage is a U.K. company, and having them declare North Dakota to be the best state is something like an American pronouncing that the best place to live in the U.K. is Azkaban Island. Maybe you have to live in a place to really assess its livability.
Pink Storage could have made climate one of its criteria, but even if it had, how would it have weighted the various criteria? This is a problem with all “best and worst” lists: the criteria selected and the weights given to those criteria are arbitrary. I’ve rarely attempted to make such lists, but others make them all the time because they generate lots of publicity.
If you ignore housing affordability, California is arguably the best state to live in: wonderful climate, beautiful natural environment, great schools, and lots of jobs. Such a conclusion could be confirmed by the fact that it has attracted the most people of any states. Some people might prefer the sunshine of Phoenix, the density of Manhattan, or the solitude that can be found in many rural areas, so objectively there is no best state. But a look at a the population data should have signaled Pink Storage that their methodology was simply wrong.
There is a high correlation among racial demographics. You can see what the highest performers have in common.
The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act on immigration was perhaps the worst law ever enacted in the US.
George Lincoln Rockwell also suggested that the Blacks should have been given their own territory. Hence, we would have not seen the White Flight to the suburbs.
If the upper peninsula seceded from Michigan, it might have made the “Best State” list as well. Cold, lightly populated and remote.
I think you must have missed something.
They missed lots of things. Nothing about weather and nothing about tax burden. For example, Minnesota is ranked #30 even though its winters are every bit as cold as ND’s and has some of the highest overall tax burdens.
BTW, thanks to Chinook winds, the Front Range of WY, where most of its population resides, is much warmer in the winter than three-quarters of the state. And WY has some of the lowest overall tax burdens.
Meanwhile, the best states to live in are: Number 5. Wyoming; 4. New Hampshire; 3. Maine; 2. Iowa; and (drumroll please) number 1. North Dakota….
Aka the whitest.
I said it a while ago…
Average Black/Latinos iQ is in the mid 80s.
(Only 3% of white and Asians score that low. )
Barely trainable , educate. Average Haitian iQ is 67. To stand trial in USA and be held culpable, 75 minimum.
That’s why they’re eating each other.
The college debt crisis resulted from universities/governments refusing to talk about racial IQ differences.
With average IQ in 80s only 3% score above 110, what you need for STEM degree.
Schools and bureaucrats coerced millions to burrow for a degree they couldn’t obtain or suckered them into the miserable liberal arts degree.
The ivory tower establishment and Noam chomskys of the world created millions of debtees….
Source?
Meaningless without taking into account billions of miles driven. Crimes per billions of miles driven are actually lower in California than many states like North Dakota.
“Louisiana is the worst state to live in, according to self-storage company Pink Storage.”
Did Pink Storage pay for this post? That said, it’s a fine starting point, but we need to get the Denver Automobile Dealerships Association (also a proud Antiplanner sponsor) to weigh in on this.
Now do Chuck Marohn’s Strong Towns, which gets half its funding from government and university grants. Is funding from non-profit organizations better than funding from for-profit organizations? Are the former somehow more pure and enlightened than the latter?
Strong Towns has done a better job than Congress for the New Urbanism and of course Smart Growth America.