re: Mapped: America’s Happiest States in 2024

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only cringe yankee carpetbaggers

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Yeah...because when the hurricane has hit/is about to hit neighbors don't get together share food and drink and make sure that everyone has everything put up or is ok. Second lines...maybe you need more non white friends...finding joy as a way to process grief is very much alive and well in many cultures in South Louisiana, and the Delta region as well.

Weather... Yeah. Hurricanes, heat, and humidity.
Work environment... Yeah, chemical plants and fast food.
Community environment... Includes crime and violence, so, yeah.

I get the low ranking. The problem with these rankings is it is state by state. There are communities in every state that are very different, but skew rankings. It is not a wonder that the lowest ranked states have the highest poverty and/or highest number of minority citizens.

Well I live in Louisiana and I’m not super happy, but now I know it’s not my fault!


But my mortgage is only at 2.75%.

What to do what to do

With few exceptions, the further right a state is, the less happy it appears in their chart. Hmmm

NM, WV, MS, AL, Arky, LA are least happy. Poor people are not as happy. Shocker. So much for the whole money can’t buy happiness.

Also, this poll is racist as the states with the largest African American populations are apparently not as happy.

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With few exceptions, the further right a state is, the less happy it appears in their chart. Hmmm

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Thats because these criteria are chosen by 24 year old white girls who have never been in those right leaning states.

I expected more purple in the northeast. Why else are they flocking to SC in droves?

I really don't think that's right. We're a happy bunch.

I align better with Mark Twain than some random happiness poll based on economic and health metrics. I try to be happy wherever I live, and there's much to make one happy in LA.

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I don't want any of your statistics. I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it.

I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc. You never see but one side of the question.

You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime, (and which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone,) nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking.

Of course you can save money by denying yourself all these little vicious enjoyments for fifty years, but then what can you do with it? -what use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal soul; all the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life -therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use in accumulating cash?

It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are always down on your knees when the contribution box comes around; and you always pay your debts in greenbacks, and never give the revenue officers a true statement of your income. Now you know all these things yourself, don't you?

Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unloveable as you are yourselves, by your ceaseless and villainous "moral statistics?"

Now I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either, but I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatever, and so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same man who read me a long lecture, last week, about the degrading vice of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your vile, reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.

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The happiness level of each state was determined by calculating the weighted average of the 30 metrics, using data from four research studies that identified correlations between these key metrics and happiness.

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So, it's factors they think should result in happiness.