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Comment by hopefulengineer | Hacker News Reader

progressives would have an easier time convincing conservatives to support their policies if the most liberal places in the country weren't complete hell holes with the worst income inequality

be the change you wish to see in the world and all that

California, New Jersey, and Illinois all in bottom 5 for quality of life, New York at 37.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/quality-of-...

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These rankings are suspect. Mississippi is #6 in quality of life, yet they are near dead last in almost everything else (health care #50, education #46, economy #48, opportunity #49, infrastructure #49). How can someone have a high quality of life if they are poor, uneducated, and unhealthy?

The answer seems to be that US News defines quality of life in an extremely narrow manner. The measurement seems to place a high emphasis on community engagement (likely tied to religiosity) and natural environment (which seems to favor areas without large cities).

The reasons for this are because they are the only places offering adequate services for low income families so people migrate to these areas. They become overburdened because most cities are not pulling their own weight. It sucks but it's better than being elsewhere for them. This only works with a collaborative effort from all over the US, not just a handful of progressive cities doing all the work while people stand in the sidelines criticizing it for not working.

Most liberal places are hell holes ? I mean Marin County is 80% Democrats is one of the best places to live in the world. In fact the entire coast of US from San Diego all the way to Washington is all blue. What about huge cities like LA and NYC ? Are they hell holes too ? I don't really need to point out what areas of the US are true dystopian, with no jobs, declining life spans, opiod epidemics, and so forth.

Also, urban areas will have blight. That is true for any country in the world. But what makes the US unique is the historical context of slavery, reconstruction, segregation, white flight, incarceration etc. It's like 400 years of history and baggage.

>I mean Marin County is 80% Democrats is one of the best places to live in the world

sure, if you're white and well educated. The brown serf laborers have all been nicely segregated away so you don't have to see the misery

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/03/17/marin-county-ra...

You can also easily go to a very brown area and see the same thing. I mean Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Fremont, Dublin, San Ramon are heavily Indian cities, if not outright majority, and heavily blue. They are also awesome places to live.

This seems to be very dependent on which factors one values; that ranking only has three non-nature related factors, which seems frankly insufficient.

One could similarly point to the suicide rate and write the same sentence with liberal/conservative switched (California, New York, etc are all at the bottom of the age-adjusted suicide rates in US states).

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