https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings
Rankings based on Crime, Education, Healthcare, Natural Environment, Economy, Fiscal Stability, Infrastructure, and Opportunity.
Top 10:
Bottom 10:
50. Louisiana
49. Alaska
48. Mississippi
47. New Mexico
46. West Virginia
45. Alabama
44. Arkansas
43. Michigan
42. Oklahoma
41. Pennsylvania
The “natural environment” category measures pollution and ignores whether the state has natural features that are worth visiting.
That’s a pretty depressing top 10 list.
And complete bullshit! NH sucks; nobody should ever move here. I mean there…
well WTF!!!
Alaska 49th!?!?
Canada is missing from that list.
At least the top ones have those as well. Not sure what living in Utah would be like as an atheist.
Lets dive a bit deeper shall we:
Higher Education
#1 Florida
#2 Wyoming
#45 Massachusetts
If you read the methodology it makes sense. It doesn’t factor in best universities/colleges. Obviously, Harvard and MIT are higher ranked than UF and FSU.
The higher education subcategory informs the best states for education rankings as well as the overall Best States rankings. It comprises metrics reflecting the share of citizens in each state holding college degrees, as well as college graduation rates, the cost of in-state tuition and fees, and the burden of federal student loan debt carried by recipients.
Massachusetts comes in near dead fucking last for cost and student loan debt. FL is #1 for cost and middle of the road for debt.
The University of Utah is a great school, with full complement of all that you could want or need, for a very affordable cost to the everyone else that doesn’t want/need BYU.
I can’t speak to livability in suburbs. But the array of climate and parks and recreations in a half day drive is unparalleled.
Every state has some worthy natural features. But, if we are ranking states on that metric, Nebraska would be near the bottom. Minnesota has some cool features, but what percentage of Minnesotans visit the boundary waters in a year (to pick one example).
It doesn’t make that much sense 
MA is 45th in Higher Education, yet #1 in Education Attainment (% with degrees) and #5 in Education. 49th in lowest debt, 46th in 2y graduation rate, 41st in low tuition, #18 in 4 year grad rate.
SC is 44th in higher ed. 32nd in 2y grad, 40th in debt, 39th in tuition, 32nd in education attainment, and #43 in education.
I really don’t get how Pennsylvania is last. debt and tuition are both 48th, but all the other metrics they list are mid 20s
My brother in law lives in Utah as an atheist. He loves it. I guess he kind of ignores the religious folks. I don’t k ow if I could. He also doesn’t have kids and I think that might but more difficult being an atheist family raising kids there.
And then you have michigan ranked near the bottom when near every single resident spends time at the lakes (not just the great lakes).
Yes, and in addition it does a pretty poor job of measuring pollution. One of the environmental measures regards drinking water violations - and that’s not really an environmental measure at all. Another measure is apparently taken from the EPA Toxic Release Inventory, which also has little to do with environmental quality.
In the case of Alaska (my particular interest), Alaska has a lot of drinking water violations, because it has a lot of very small DW systems in the Bush that have a hard time maintaining compliance due to lack of resources. But the water quality in rivers, streams, and lakes is generally superb.
And Alaska usually ranks near the top of the TRI, because the largest zinc mine in the world stockpiles a lot of waste rock. It doesn’t really affect the overall environment much.
I think it depends on where you live in Utah. SLC and neighboring cities in the county are a lot different than somewhere in Utah County.
All I can say is Minnesota sucks, the winters are long cold and dark. Summers are hot humid and mosquito filled, there is maybe one week in the spring and fall that are glorious though. No one should move here. If you do, you have to find something that is kind of winter exclusive, so you have some optimism for winter.
In reality, nothing exception in MN, some neat outdoors and environmental like things. Our health care is pretty dang good, buoyed by Mayo clinic. Crime is pretty isolated in small pockets of the twin cities and the state cares to educate kids as much as kids care to be educated. In the totality, that makes it pretty exception. Moving here people struggle to meet people, Minnesota nice is only skin deep. Which means we have a lot of job opportunities for people, but many struggle with meeting close friends outside of work, which usually ends up with people moving out after some time.
Vermont is always ranked up there too as best place to live. And yes, I love it here but there are big trade-offs like any place. We have winter starting at the end of October and ending somewhere in April depending on the year. It’s long, dark and cold but maybe not quite as cold as Minnesota. People don’t realize how cloudy Vermont is all winter. Jan of 2024 we only had 2 days of sun.
And other trade-offs:
Housing crisis. Not much inventory and prices have more than doubled since the pandemic and everyone wanted to move here. Covid brought a ot of awareness to my state unfortunately.
4th highest property taxes plus income tax and sales tax. Vermont has all the taxes. If you are moving from NJ, NY or southern New England, property taxes won’t be a shock. But those from southern states are shocked when their property taxes quadruple and they are still dishing out state income taxes.
Dirt roads/mud season in the spring. Almost half our roads are dirt. Great for gravel bike riding. But very tough in the spring with all the mud and very hard on our cars/trucks!
Heatlhcare crisis - hospitals are in the red financially. One closest to me is in danger of closing. Healthcare insurance increases by double digits every year now.
Bugs! - we have black flies, mosquitos, deer ticks (that cause Lyme disease), deer flies (these are most heinous), wasps and probably a few others I’m forgetting at the moment. And we have house flies and lady beetles that infest all our houses in rural areas.
But there are a lot of good things too. We have land, nature, open space, clean air, water. Very lightly populated (except for a few counties). And we have so many outdoor sports and activities.
I spent all of September there a couple of years ago after a hail storm hit St. Cloud and I really enjoyed it. Just last night was thinking that I would be more than happy to work another one this fall (especially versus working hurricanes).
I worked another one a year or two later in May/June. I ended up buying a bug suit because the mosquitoes were so bad in the wooded areas. Funny story. I was inspecting a house that was surrounded by woods and the mosquitoes were awful. I put on my bug suit and was doing my thing. There was a sales guy from the roofing company there. He was wearing skinny jeans and nice shoes, and wasn’t used to the country.
He had a can of bug spray that he kept spraying. Except he wasn’t spraying it on himself, he was spraying it at the mosquitoes. He probably went through half a can.