Is Connecticut the Best State to Live In?

[pbrower2a]

1995 Millennial Wrote:   I am proud to be a Southerner and would never want to live in the north or anywhere else in the country or world.

   I don't need no stupid report telling where the best place to live is.

   1. You are likely part of the Southern culture. Trying to adapt to the culture of some other parts of the country could be as difficult as a religious conversion. You might enjoy the Art Institute, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum of Natural History, and a concert of the Chicago Symphony. But you might never feel at home in Chicago.

   That's not your fault. I would have a tough time adjusting to any part of the South. I might enjoy a day or two in New Orleans, too, but it might be a one-time excursion.

   2. Your kinship ties and your hearth and home are there. You know the institutions and have made your adaptations which might not fit so well in Yankee country. If you are religious, then you might not be comfortable with the way in which people sing the church hymns elsewhere. I would have a difficult time adjusting to the South except for very urban areas.

   3. Much of the South has an 'honor' culture. Personal scores are to be settled lest one's masculinity is in question. If someone in a bar tells you that your mother is a whore and you slug him for that in the South you may get a slap on the wrist. Where I live you walk away or face a lengthy prison term for felonious assault. (The only bar that I frequent offers good, inexpensive take-out fish. Note that I said "take-out"). The supposed solution in Michigan is to sue someone who says that your mother is a whore is to initiate a lawsuit.

   4. If you can avoid the bad habits -- smoking, obesity, and indifference toward education -- you can live well in the South. Take such bad habits to New England and you have solved nothing. People can fail economically in the supposed 'best states'.

   5. Most of the North has a fire-and-ice climate. Here in southern Michigan our summers are at times as stifling as those of the Gulf Coast. We need air-conditioning, too. We also have lake-effect snowfall, and we get some of the heaviest snow in a mid-latitude area without mountains. Our houses cost more to build because they must be air-tight to prevent the hemorrhaging of heat (and money through payments for fuel oil). We have leaves to rake and snow to shovel (really I know how to make shoveling snow easier: use the shovel as a plow). We need more space in our dwellings to hold three seasonal wardrobes.

   6. If you have a good family that is not destitute, you can live well in the South. Mercifully the worst effects of racism are gone forever. If your family owns substantial property or a successful business you can live well. That is true anywhere unless the Commies are about to take over. If you are connected to a political machine you can live well in the South. That's not to say that I would want to be a landless farm worker or a sweatshop employee in the South.

   7. Happiness comes from finding meaning and purpose in life. All else is fluff. If you have found meaning and purpose in your life, then that is all that counts.

   Last edited by pbrower2a; 12-29-2014 at 04:51 PM.

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Eric the Green;476615 Wrote:Well being index follows a similar pattern: blue states better than red states, with the exception of the plains and mountain states.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/160730/fourth...-last.aspx

highest scores: 5 blue states, 3 red states, 2 swing states.
lowest scores: 9 red states, 1 swing state.


Western and Midwestern states earned seven of the 10 highest overall wellbeing scores, while New England states held the other three spots. Southern states had the six lowest wellbeing scores, and eight southern states were within the 10 lowest wellbeing scores. This regional pattern in wellbeing has remained consistent over the past five years.

Poverty rates by state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S...verty_rate

top 20 best poverty rates, I count 12 blue states and 6 red states. top 10: 7 blue states and 2 red states. CT is ranked #9.
bottom 20 worst poverty rates, I count 5 blue states and 15 red states. bottom 10: 2 blue states and 8 red states.



darker color = more poverty

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Older Adults in South Have Fewer Healthy Years Left
By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer | July 18, 2013 12:00pm ET

Older adults living in the southern United States have fewer healthy years of life ahead of them than those living in other parts of the U.S., according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Researchers measured "healthy life expectancy," or how many years a person can be expected to live in good health. (Healthy life expectancy is thus a certain percentage of a person's total life expectancy.)

The lowest-ranking state was Mississippi, where 65-year-olds can expect to spend 61.5 percent of their remaining life in good health. They have an average of 10.8 healthy years ahead of them, out of an average of 17.5 years total of expected life ahead of them.

The highest-ranking state was Vermont, where 65-year-olds will spend 78.2 percent of their remaining years in good health, with 17.5 healthy years ahead of them, out of 19.4 total remaining years.

At age 65, people living in the South had an average of about 13 healthy years ahead of them. The exception was Florida, where older adults had about 15 healthy years ahead of them.

Total life expectancy was highest in Hawaii, where adults live an average of 21.3 more years after they turn 65 (and 16.2 of those years expected to be healthy).

More here:

http://www.livescience.com/38264-hea...ncy-south.html

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Eric the Green;478308 Wrote:

% of 25 to 34 year olds who have completed an associate's degree or higher.

http://dashboard.ed.gov/statecomparison.aspx?i=o&id=0&wt=40

% of students graduating college with a bachelor's degree within 6 years of full time, first-time entry



That one looks amazingly red-blue. Not all of the maps and lists for pre-school and K-12 show such a clear-cut pattern. Many times, this is because of the small samples involved (like how black students do in Vermont, or hispanics in Montana).

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JDFP;478397 Wrote:Hey pbrower:

I lit up my non-filtered cigarette

I don't smoke.

Quote:and took a big gulp of my Budweiser tonight and raised my first gulp to you for your erudition here.

I love Budweiser's ads but found their beer insipid, generic stuff. When I did drink (I can't now -- gout!) I preferred wines and beers with strong flavor.

Quote:I waited until after the NASCAR game to do it, of course,

NASCAR is everywhere, but it is boring. As a visual spectacle, golf is far better. Nobody would race cars at Pebble Beach.

Quote:as I didn't want to take my peripheral vision from the sportsmanship (it just ain't the same without Sterling Marlin though).

I figure that auto racers of any kind must show good sportsmanship because of the dangers inherent in NASCAR, Indy, and Grand Prix speeds with little but sheet metal as protection.  
 

Quote:Do not worry, good sir, for I certainly shall put on a Hank Williams Jr. song for you as well as I go through my six pack of beer contemplating your careful epiphany of we Southerners.

As I listen to a thoroughly un-American string quartet by Franz-Josef Haydn and get stuck with a Diet Pepsi instead of a nice, subtle German wine or a dark beer.  

Quote:I have to prepare my carefully prepared care package (including RC Cola and moon pies, naturally) for the heroes in Afghanistan defending our nation tonight I'm sending in the morning - but after that I'll drown my sorrows with some Porter Waggoner and contemplate Rand Paul's victory in 2016.

My idea of a care package includes classical music. Like this:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IcUYDAItvY  



And, yes, books by my distant relative Bertrand Russell.

Quote:I'll make sure to hug my .357, "Lucy" as I call her, she sits company beside my Gideon New Testament,

Sometimes I think I should have been brought up on Hillel.

Quote:tonight before laying her by my side before drifting off into sleep tonight.

I'd rather sleep with a cocker spaniel even with fleas.

Quote: And in the morning I'll kiss my Reagan portrait, after eating my fattening breakfast at Waffle House with a big bowl of Bert's chili with some Tobasco sauce, before heading into work.

j.p.

Oh, please!

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Annie Lowrey writes in the Times Magazine this week about the troubles of Clay County, Ky., which by several measures is the hardest place in America to live.

The Upshot came to this conclusion by looking at six data points for each county in the United States: education (percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree), median household income, unemployment rate, disability rate, life expectancy and obesity. We then averaged each county’s relative rank in these categories to create an overall ranking.

(We tried to include other factors, including income mobility and measures of environmental quality, but we were not able to find data sets covering all counties in the United States.)


    It’s the Economy: What’s the Matter With Eastern Kentucky?JUNE 26, 2014

The 10 lowest counties in the country, by this ranking, include a cluster of six in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky (Breathitt, Clay, Jackson, Lee, Leslie and Magoffin), along with four others in various parts of the rural South: Humphreys County, Miss.; East Carroll Parish, La.; Jefferson County, Ga.; and Lee County, Ark.

We used disability — the percentage of the population collecting federal disability benefits but not also collecting Social Security retirement benefits — as a proxy for the number of working-age people who don’t have jobs but are not counted as unemployed. Appalachian Kentucky scores especially badly on this count; in four counties in the region, more than 10 percent of the total population is on disability, a phenomenon seen nowhere else except nearby McDowell County, W.Va.

Remove disability from the equation, though, and eastern Kentucky would still fare badly in the overall rankings. The same is true for most of the other six factors.

The exception is education. If you exclude educational attainment, or lack of it, in measuring disadvantage, five counties in Mississippi and one in Louisiana rank lower than anywhere in Kentucky. This suggests that while more people in the lower Mississippi River basin have a college degree than do their counterparts in Appalachian Kentucky, that education hasn’t improved other aspects of their well-being.

As Ms. Lowrey writes, this combination of problems is an overwhelmingly rural phenomenon. Not a single major urban county ranks in the bottom 20 percent or so on this scale, and when you do get to one — Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit — there are some significant differences. While Wayne County’s unemployment rate (11.7 percent) is almost as high as Clay County’s, and its life expectancy (75.1 years) and obesity rate (41.3 percent) are also similar, almost three times as many residents (20.8 percent) have at least a bachelor’s degree, and median household income ($41,504) is almost twice as high.

We used disability — the percentage of the population collecting federal disability benefits but not also collecting Social Security retirement benefits — as a proxy for the number of working-age people who don’t have jobs but are not counted as unemployed. Appalachian Kentucky scores especially badly on this count; in four counties in the region, more than 10 percent of the total population is on disability, a phenomenon seen nowhere else except nearby McDowell County, W.Va.

Remove disability from the equation, though, and eastern Kentucky would still fare badly in the overall rankings. The same is true for most of the other six factors.

The exception is education. If you exclude educational attainment, or lack of it, in measuring disadvantage, five counties in Mississippi and one in Louisiana rank lower than anywhere in Kentucky. This suggests that while more people in the lower Mississippi River basin have a college degree than do their counterparts in Appalachian Kentucky, that education hasn’t improved other aspects of their well-being.

Wayne County may not make for the best comparison — in addition to Detroit, it includes the Grosse Pointes and some other wealthy suburbs that could be pulling its rankings up. But St. Louis, another struggling city, stands alone as a jurisdiction for statistical purposes and ranks even higher over all, slightly, with better education and lower unemployment making up for a median household income ($34,384) that is lower than Wayne County’s but still quite a bit higher than Clay County’s $22,296.

As Ms. Lowrey writes, this combination of problems is an overwhelmingly rural phenomenon. Not a single major urban county ranks in the bottom 20 percent or so on this scale, and when you do get to one — Wayne County, Mich., which includes Detroit — there are some significant differences. While Wayne County’s unemployment rate (11.7 percent) is almost as high as Clay County’s, and its life expectancy (75.1 years) and obesity rate (41.3 percent) are also similar, almost three times as many residents (20.8 percent) have at least a bachelor’s degree, and median household income ($41,504) is almost twice as high.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/upshot/where-are-the-hardest-places-to-live-in-the-us.html?action=click&contentCollection=Magazine&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article&_r=0#

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If you want to set your own criteria for the best state to live in, you can take this test:
(climate is a big factor on this test)

http://www.selectsmart.com/states/

Guess what? On this survey, for me, Massachusetts and Washington tie for the best state to live in!  Now which way do I head on Interstate 90 (Indiana Toll Road)?

1. MA 100%
2. WA 100%
3. CT 96
4. HI 95
5. OR 93
6. PA 93
7. CO 93
8. VA 92
9. VT 89
10 CA 89

My lowest 13:

39. NV 58%
40. NM 57
41. OK 57
42. KS 56
43. LA 53
44. MO 53
45. SC 52
46. AL 51
47. WV 48
48. MS 46
49. KY 43
50. TN 37
51. AR 34

Pennsylvania is something of a surprise.

I put a high negative on high-school dropouts and violent crime (which seem to go together), and I don't like smoking (I don't like paying for others' bad habits) It's probably easier to keep in shape if one is around fit people instead of getting to speak of bear-sized Wal*Mart customers on carts "At least I am not that bad!"

My own state. "Michigrim" is 33. Nice lakes and far from the worst politics -- but Southern-style demographics.

Taxes and high real-estate prices? You get what you pay for. I wouldn't want to be a renter in Arkansas, no matter how low the rent,  because if you miss one day on rent you can go to jail after ten days.

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Eric the Green;508474 Wrote:Certainly the infrastructure, and protection from crime. It's a different mindset. People in rural areas like to be self-reliant and have lots of land under their personal control without government interference. Some may be living in part off the land, and they want to drive their own vehicles and have guns. People in urban areas are not so concerned about that. They want walkable cities and amenities like museums and concert halls and transit systems, and they need city services. They also are less disturbed by diversity and by people who get social services, and often are more conscious of the environment, green energy and climate change (even though they don't live in the country). These two environments attract people with different values.

Once past childhood, people in rural areas must be more self-reliant just to dodge boredom. They must tolerate lowered expectations in personal choices, including opportunities. Public transportation hardly exists in rural areas, and it is basically for connecting people in the "Golden Years Paradise" to the shops downtown and the local Wally World.

If one has a job as a teacher, one has few alternatives. That helps depress wages for teaches, because all that someone with a teaching credential could do is to work in a sweat-shop factory, sling hash, work in a store, be a teller, or do farm work. Contrast the alternatives for a teacher in a giant city: the skill set for a K-12 teacher (the really good ones are salespeople above all else) is ideal for many other careers. Big-city teachers are either very dedicated to what they do or they are marginal at best. They also have to be paid enough to live where they teach.  A cop? there just might not be the opportunities for corruption for a small-town cop. But in the big cities, cops must be paid well enough that they find bribes from local career criminals a temptation that makes the badge a cover for a career of dubious service to those that the cop is expected to protect.

Highway construction is inexpensive in rural areas. A two-lane blacktop is adequate in Suburbia only in funneling suburban commuters onto bigger roads that really take them to work. In rural America that is all that one needs to connect two towns in the same high-school football conference. If there is a freeway it connects places outside the region to places outside it. In the Dakotas, I-29, I-90, and I-94 connect people from Seattle to Minneapolis, Winnipeg to Omaha, etc. -- and they are divided highways with only two lanes in each direction. They were built cheaply because land is cheap, comparatively few dislocations of utilities are necessary, and few houses need to be demolished or moved. To add a lane on each side of a ten-lane expressway in northeastern New Jersey requires extensive and costly condemnations of property and relocation of utilities -- and the ten-lane expressway may be inadequate for traffic counts.

Government services in big cities are more extensive -- and more necessary. A semi-literate fellow in rural areas might be able to get a job as a logger, ranch hand, or farm laborer. A semi-literate fellow in urban America might be unable to find a job adequate for supporting himself due to the higher cost of living.    

Quote:States have also been diverging between red and blue, as have counties. How far it will go, and whether the division will melt away as progressive values take hold again, or as conservative values remain strong, we don't know yet. Although there are red/rural and blue/urban areas in most states, there's a strong difference in degree, and some states are more urban and others more rural. The further north and coastal you get, generally speaking, the more blue you get.

'Conservative values' used to mean 'having a stake in the status quo'.  But having a stake in the status quo means enjoying a good life and being able to pass on the chance for that to one's children. That means adequate schools, roads that don't get gridlocked, public health services that can deal with dangerous diseases quickly, and cops paid well enough that they aren't on the informal payroll of mobsters.

It's worth remembering that the states that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 went with one exception for Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. Of course Barack Obama could win only one state that Nixon did not win in 1972 (Massachusetts) or that Reagan did not win in 1984 (Minnesota). Those two states were the best two for McGovern in 1972 and Mondale in 1984.

Eisenhower won both Massachusetts and Minnesota -- twice -- which is remarkable for a Republican, as no Republican had won both states together for a very long time and has not won the two together since.  Ike also won Rhode Island, one of the two non-Southern states that Hoover had lost in a near-sweep of all states that in 1928 still had living people with memories of the Confederacy. On the other side, Obama won Indiana (which had been won by a Democrat only once since 1936, in the LBJ blowout) in 2008 and won Virginia, a state reliably R in Presidential elections since 1948.

Suburbia has become legitimately urban. The infrastructure built to last the lifetime of original owners  who settled Suburbia soon after WWII has begun to deteriorate as the lifetimes of the original purchasers end around age 90. Shopping malls built to attract GIs to the 'anchor' stores (JC Penney, Sears, Montgomery-Ward, Dillard's) and Boomers to the specialty shops have often become irrelevant -- and 'died'. The rural qualities of Suburbia have vanished except where the suburbs are really new (note well: John McCain did well in suburbs of Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Atlanta, and broke even in Orange County, California).

Barack Obama won with the urban vote (no surprise) and much more of the suburban vote than Democrats usually get.  Democrats are learning from that. He may have set a pattern difficult to dislodge with the Parties set in their ways in ideology.

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(Deleted due to failure of the link).

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In case you wonder why I refer to the Wolverine State as "Michigrim":

Michigan: A Decade of Decline

Why is Michigan the only U.S. state whose 2010 score is lower than its 2000 score? While the full answer requires analysis of demographic shifts, global economic conditions, state and local policies, and more, a look at how Michigan responded to profound structural changes in the labor market provides useful insights. In 2000 Michigan ranked a respectable nineteenth on the HD Index for states and fifteenth in terms of the earnings of the typical resident.
Nearly one in five jobs was in manufacturing, and workers with only a high school degree could earn decent wages in unionized manufacturing jobs.

But rapid technological change and other shifts in the car industry and consumer preferences resulted in the disappearance of hundreds of thousands
of the state’s manufacturing jobs by 2010. Health and education outcomes continued to improve over the decade—a legacy of collective investments in rosier times—though more slowly than in many other states. But typical earnings in Michigan declined by $7,000 per person—the largest drop, by far,
of any state. Continued dependence on high-wage jobs for workers with only a high school education was no longer prudent. But while other states ramped up their investments in education, Michigan lagged. North Carolina, with the same size population and even more drastic losses in the proportion of
jobs in manufacturing over the decade, spend three times more per person on higher education than Michigan in 2010.

Further, heeding the warning signs about manufacturing’s decline, North Carolina’s state institutions went into overdrive to help residents seize opportunities in the new economy. On the Milken Institute’s 2010 Technology and Science Index, which measures tech talent and research and development investments, North Carolina ranked thirteenth, as compared to twenty-sixth-place Michigan.

North Carolina’s public and private investment in building a workforce with the skills for new jobs in the life sciences, telecommunications, and software development helps sustain a competitive economy and a decent standard of living.