re: Why would anyone willingly live up north?

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why can't someone just think LA is a shitty state from personal experience?

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There are some shitty things about LA and the South, but mainly I don't want to be banned

Aren't you looking to move out of the South?

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Aren't you looking to move out of the South?

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I'm entertaining options. I would like to remain somewhere warm like out west or maybe Tampa Bay. I really can't stand the cold. Also, the northeast, while has a lot of great qualities seems too crowded for me. My brother likes it because he lives in a suburb where his elementary aged kids can ride their bikes to school and be perfectly safe, yet he can walk home from the bar when he gets drunk. Another brother lives in a small city in the midwest and even though he lives near the center of town, there's like no crime or traffic and the schools are good. They have a lot of civic pride.

Now, why do people live in crime-ridden cities up north? beats me. If you're going to live in a shite hole it may as well be warm.

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And why can't someone just think LA is a shitty state from personal experience?

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Well from personal expierence I could say a lot of places suck, but maybe because it's my own fault or a shitty situation I was in at the time. Therefore I keep my mouth shut.

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Yes move to DC, the shithole dedicated to raping the American taxpayer

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I must admit that life *is* much nicer on top.

I'd put Midwestern hospitality right up there with southerners. Those folks are so nice it's painful sometimes. The weather is a personal thing. Some folks hate Louisiana humidity and hurricanes. Some hate the bone chilling cold in Chicago.

Having lived in both I can say that neither is perfect, but each has qualities that stand out. It comes down to where can I make a living in my particular industry I suppose.

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence is the strong and persistent inflow of Americans to the South. The South still attracts the most domestic migrants of any U.S. region. Last year, it boasted six of the top eight states in terms of net domestic migration — Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina and Georgia. Texas and Florida alone gained 250,000 net migrants. The top four losers were deep blue New York, Illinois, New Jersey and California.

These trends suggest that the South will expand its dominance as the nation’s most populous region. In the 1950s, the South, the Northeast and the Midwest each had about the same number of people. Today the region is almost as populous as the Northeast and the Midwest combined.

Perhaps more importantly, these states are nurturing families, in contrast to the Great Lakes states, the Northeast and California. Texas, for example, has increased its under 10 population by over 17% over the past decade; all the former confederate states, outside of Katrina-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, gained between 5% and 10%. On the flip side, under 10 populations declined in Illinois, Michigan, New York and California. Houston, Austin, Dallas, Charlotte, Atlanta and Raleigh also saw their child populations rise by at least twice the 10% rate of the rest country over the past decade while New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago areas experienced declines.

Why are people moving to what the media tends to see as a backwater? In part, it’s because economic growth in the South has outpaced the rest of the country for a generation and the area now constitutes by far the largest economic region in the country. A recent analysis by Trulia projects the edge will widen in the rest of this decade, sparked by such factors as lower costs and warmer weather.

But some of this comes as a result of conscious policy. With their history of poverty and underdevelopment, Southern states are motivated to be business friendly. They generally have lower taxes, and less stringent regulations, than their primary competitors in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Indeed this year the four best states for business, according to CEO Magazine, were Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Tennessee. They are also much less unionized, an important factor for foreign and expanding domestic firms.

Despite a tough time in the Great Recession, overall unemployment in the region now is less than in either the West or the Northeast. As manufacturing has recovered, employment has rebounded quicker in the Southeast than in the rival Great Lakes

Yet the education gap is shrinking, particularly in the South’s growing metropolitan areas. Over the past decade, the number of college graduates in Austin and Charlotte grew by a remarkable 50%; Baton Rouge, Nashville, Houston, Tampa, Dallas and Atlanta all expanded their educated populations by 35% or more. (See “The U.S. Cities Getting Smarter The Fastest“) This easily eclipsed the performance of such “brain center” metropolitan areas as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco or Chicago. Then there’s the question of critical mass; Atlanta alone added more than 300,000 residents with bachelor’s degrees over the past decade, more than Philadelphia and Miami and almost 70,000 more than Boston.

- Forbes

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Why are people moving to what the media tends to see as a backwater?

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most interesting part of the article

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Perhaps the most persuasive evidence is the strong and persistent inflow of Americans to the South.

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The only thing it is evidence of is that there's been a lot of undercutting. People are willing to work for less than what it takes to uphold the quality of life that midwesterners demanded. Companies move jobs to Mexico, China, and all sorts of shitty countries all the time. It doesn't prove anything. On top of that, it doesn't help that people are more than happy to escape those brutal winters and are enchanted by the cheap and abundant land that the south has to offer.

I would happily live in the Pacific Northwest.