Another Questionable Ranking of the States

I came across this CNBC article when I saw a headline elsewhere, saying that Tennessee ranks dead last in quality of life. I was somewhat surprised by that, as I moved to Tennessee a little more than three years ago and love it here. Even if I had $4 million fall out of the sky and we could afford to move anywhere, I wouldn't want to move to any other town. So what's up with that ranking?

Coincidentally, there seems to be a strong correlation between political orientation and their rankings. I can't seem to find where in the CNBC article it has the rankings for all 50 states, but the Yahoo News article that pointed to CNBC lists the top and bottom ten.

Don't blame me for the weird way they formatted the lists. I would have ranked them 1-50. So here are the ten best states, with 1 being the best.

8 (tie): Virginia (167 out of 265)

8 (tie): Nebraska (167 out of 265)

8 (tie): Massachusetts (167 out of 265)

7: North Dakota (171 out of 265)

6: Hawaii (173 out of 265)

5: Connecticut (179 out of 265)

4: Minnesota (189 out of 265)

3: New Jersey (201 out of 265)

2: Maine (207 out of 265)

1: Vermont (228 out of 265)

And here are the worst states, with 1 being the worst.

9: Oklahoma (97 out of 265)

8: Arkansas (95 out of 265 )

7: Alabama (92 out of 265)

6: Georgia (89 out of 265)

5: Louisiana (87 out of 265)

4: Utah (87 out of 265)

3: Indiana (73 out of 265)

2: Texas (72 out of 265)

1: Tennessee (61 out of 265)

So, according to CNBC's criteria, all nine of the worst states (with the exception of Georgia, which seems to be a 50/50 state) are Republican-majority states. And of the ten states with the best quality of life, all but North Dakota and Nebraska are Democrat-majority states. Yes, sometimes Virginia or Massachusetts might elect a Republican governor, but I am guessing that most office-holders this century in those states have been Democrats. If someone wants to dig into the electoral data from any states and prove my guesses to be wrong, go for it.

The reason for CNBC to come up with this ranking is for a larger project: creating a list of states that are the best for business. The thinking being that if you are going to open a business, you want to do it in a place where employees want to move to, not away from. Some of the criteria for their quality of life index make sense to me, such as crime level and air quality. Some, not so much, such as abortion access. And people are going to turn down a job in Arkansas because of "food insecurity"? If you've got a job, I don't think you're going to go hungry in Arkansas. Does anyone really believe that 19% of adults in Arkansas can't get enough food?

Transexual rights are another biggie for CNBC. Are there really a lot of people turning down jobs in Alabama or Tennessee because we aren't jazzed about sex-change operations on children? And people are going to turn down job offers that require moving to Utah, because of the low minimum wage there? Who on Earth moves to a whole other state for a minimum-wage job?

The moral of the story is, whenever you see a headline about some ranking of the states, it's a good idea to look into just what criteria they are using to compile that list. Over the years, I have seen numerous rankings of the states on education, using some valid criteria and other criteria I consider invalid. Looking at grade point average on standardized tests? Legit. Looking at high school graduation rates and the cost of going to a state college? Legit. But often, these studies also look at the spending per student, as if higher spending automatically results in better education, which is a preposterous notion. High spending is the opposite of good. A parking spot in downtown Nashville or Chicago is much more costly than a parking spot in Cookeville, TN or Moorhead, MN. That doesn't mean it's a higher quality parking spot. Nobody ever says, "Yes, my apartment in Manhattan was incredibly expensive, but it was so much larger and more luxurious than my apartment in Duluth."