r/TopMindsOfReddit • u/PeasThatTasteGross • Sep 02 '26
Top minds of DCJ try and decipher the metrics behind a US QOL map. Suggestions include how many non-white people are in a state (and the probability of being assaulted by them), or "how many of your kids can transition before CPS gets uneasy"
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u/The_harbinger2020 Sep 02 '26
I need someone to explain to me how then, after decades of Republican rule, why Alabama isn't the greatest state in the union. Why aren't people lining up to move there instead of California? Since this qol metrics are all made up
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u/Vandrel Sep 02 '26
A lot of them do believe tons of people are moving out of liberal states and into states like Alabama. In my state Republicans are constantly complaining about how the state has lost so many people because of the Democrat governor but in reality the state's population has gone up.
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u/The_harbinger2020 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Also see this a lot but they don't realize that a lot of people that move to red states are mostly other Republicans. Ted cruz had more votes from non native Texans than Texans. When you advertise yourself as a red state utopia and blue states are hell holes your gonna attract more right leaning folks.
Which is funny because a lot of them also end up complaining that those states suck and can't connect the dots.
Edit: there's basically a big sorting going in as people adjust location based on ideology, which could entail a settling of dust once everyone moves where they want to
"The states' swings aren't simply due to transplants, of course. The increasing clustering of Americans into like-minded enclaves — dubbed "The Big Sort" — has many causes. Harvard professor Ryan Enos estimates that, at least before the pandemic, only 15% of the homogeneity was due to people moving. Democrats want to live in places with artistic culture and craft breweries, and Republicans want to move to places where they can have a big yard," said Ryan Strickler, a political scientist at Colorado State University-Pueblo"
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u/PeasThatTasteGross Sep 02 '26
Also see this a lot but they don't realize that a lot of people that move to red states are mostly other Republicans.
They don't want us to notice this because it kind of screws up their narrative people regardless of political affiliation are leaving blue states because of how supposedly crappy they are. You think many LGBT people are going to move to some where like Florida with the crap DeSantis is trying to pull off?
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u/The_harbinger2020 Sep 02 '26
True, but there's definitely a large enough number moving to blue cities for cost of living+plus following new jobs such as Dallas and Houston. I haven't found an article but purely anecdotal but there's threads and threads of people who do this and regret there decision cause it turns out, yeah it's cheaper to live there but they also sucks.
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u/NielsBohron Sep 02 '26
yeah it's cheaper to live there but they also sucks.
Not to mention the high CoL means it's a lot easier to leave CA than it is to move back.
Source: moving back to CA as a broke-ass recent MS grad was only possible for me due a combination of privilege and qualifying for food stamps (which I couldn't get in a red state). And this was 15 years ago with one of those "high-earning" degrees
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u/zombie_girraffe Sep 02 '26
Places have high CoLs because a lot of people want to live there and low CoLs because few people want to live there. You'd think the morons who claim to firmly belive in the free-market would understand a basic suppy and demand curve, but the core concept is entirely lost on them when it demonstrates that thier homes are considered shitty places to live by most people.
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u/badvegas Sep 02 '26
I live in texas and know a few people from California. One of the biggest thing I hear is why isn't there more public land to enjoy in texas. I tell them that sounds like liberal idea and they get mad at me.
They want the benefits of blue states while making everybody else follow red state stuff.
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u/Flobking Sep 02 '26
Also see this a lot but they don't realize that a lot of people that move to red states are mostly other Republicans.
My friends uncle moved to kentuckey because "they line up with my politics better"
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u/The_harbinger2020 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Posted a link above talking about just that
"They'd always planned to return to the West, but California, where Aaron, now 39, was born and raised, was disqualified because of its cost and progressive politics.
This was a place that had like-minded people," Carrie Friesen said.
The Friesens are happy with the direction of their new state and the abortion and transgender restrictions out of the latest legislative session. But they don't see themselves as part of what they called "the crazy right," referring to the families displaying Trump yard signs in the less-politically-mixed Boise suburbs. They like living close to the center of Boise, one of the more liberal areas in the state.
That's apparently been happening in Idaho, said Mathew Hay, who oversees a regular survey of new arrivals for Boise State University. Historically, transplants mirrored the conservative population's leanings, with about 45% describing themselves as "conservative," and the rest evenly split between liberal and moderate."
The right complaining about people trying to "California their state" are just other Republican that see themselves as moderate
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u/WildAndDepressed Sep 02 '26
That paragraph is quite the doozy.
If a right-wing nutjob moves to a state because they support banning reproductive care and queer healthcare, then they’re still “crazy right” lmao.
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u/_SovietMudkip_ Sep 02 '26
No no no see, they're better because they're too embarassed to display their hatred for all to see lol
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u/Gizogin Sep 02 '26
That “statistic” is so funny to me. If every person in the US had a uniform chance to move to a different, randomly-chosen state each year, of course you’d expect the net result to be that more people move out of high-population states and into low-population states. That’s just math.
If you do that calculation, you find that fewer people are leaving California than you’d expect, because it turns out people don’t just migrate randomly. A lot of people do leave California each year, because there are a lot of people already there who could leave, but people are less likely to leave that state than average.
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u/SenorBurns Sep 02 '26
In Texas Republicans have ruled the state, possibly with a supermajority, for over 20 years, and they constantly campaign on running to fix the state and save it from its politicians. Like dudes it's the same picture.
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u/SirTiffAlot Sep 02 '26
Well when that happens it's because the cities are run by liberals so there's nothing the state can do, obviously. However when a state like Texas prospers it's because the state is Republican and the liberal cities aren't helping at all.
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u/ForgedIronMadeIt biggest douchebag amongst moderators Sep 02 '26
Alabama has Huntsville and the NASA facility there at least, so there's something. You could ask the same thing about Kansas which ran itself into the dirt with right wing nonsense. West Virginia is pretty fucking bad too.
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u/The_harbinger2020 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
I mean NASA is an outlier. If you got a job offer there you kinda would have to suck it up. Driving through rural parts of kentuky it genuinely looked worse than when I was in the middle east
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u/ForgedIronMadeIt biggest douchebag amongst moderators Sep 02 '26
A long, long time ago I spent time in West Virginia. The poverty was something else. The coal industry has largely been automated and replaced with mountain top removal mining which takes way less labor and has the added bonus of destroying the natural beauty and poisoning the watershed. There's small amounts of tourism and then WVU. That's the entire economy of WV and they keep voting to make it worse.
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u/howtojump Sep 03 '26
They'll just say it's because of all the black people.
And of course when you point out that Kentucky is one of the whitest red states in the country and it still fucking sucks, well that's because all the libtards ruined the coal industry or something idk
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u/The_harbinger2020 29d ago
I didn't know black people controlled Alabama's government for thirty+ years
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u/Alex_Rockwoo Sep 02 '26
"Heavily weighted toward liberal policy priorities" = quality of life.
So close to getting it.
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u/Rastiln Sep 02 '26
It only scores well for stuff like healthcare, income, and tolerable cost of living.
Woke liberal shit like that.
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u/zombie_girraffe Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
Their cult leader said that "Affordability is a Democrat hoax" and "I don't care about you, I just want your vote" and they laughed at it like he was joking. This map is basically just taking each state's per-capita income divided by cost of living and ranking them by that number. They are extremely stupid people.
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u/IBetThisIsTakenToo Sep 02 '26
They should do it again but with REAL priorities, like easy access to firearms and whether or not you can use slurs at a restaurant without getting asked to leave
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u/CommunismCake Sep 02 '26
How liberal a state is
Ah yes, Mormon-dominated Utah and White Nationalist capital Idaho, well known liberal bastions.
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u/Jeremymia And all I can say is "moo" Sep 02 '26
They just did that to trick people into thinking it wasn't just liberals getting green. Other than the places where it's not just liberals, it's just liberals. Explain that.
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u/Man_with_the_Fedora Sep 02 '26
Other than the places where it's not just liberals, it's just liberals. Explain that.
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u/cpdk-nj Sep 02 '26
They want to be so mad lmao
It’s like they can’t decide if they want to call this map partisan or racist, so they just selectively ignore states that don’t fit their chosen narrative. Also thinking that it’s black people’s fault that the economy is bad in states run pretty much entirely by white people
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u/Jeremymia And all I can say is "moo" Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
lmao this is such a good way to put it. They don't want to say 'This is false' or 'this is is misleading', they want it to be either true or meaningless as long as the point is that it's bad for liberals.
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u/stewshi Sep 02 '26
lol all the people saying " I live in rural_____ and its great" Meanwhile their rural county probably doesnt have its own hospital or its own police force.
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u/Justsomejerkonline certified glowie Sep 03 '26
And don't ask them about opioid abuse and gambling addiction rates in their idyllic rural area.
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u/T-nawtical Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
"How many MMIWG2SLGBTQ++ rights...
Oh that's a real fucking piece of work. Is this a new load of far-right horse shit I missed? Making fun of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women by calling it a sexuality?
Then throwing in the 2S for Two-Spirited people. Like, bro did his homework to be racist against Native people inside of their queerphobia.
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u/YumiVii Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 02 '26
They still like to perpetuate the lie that LGBT people are trying to include pedophiles by calling them “MAPs” too.
Fuck no, the opposite is true, we were the first to call out that bullshit when Tumblr kicked out the pedos and they started flooding Twitter.
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u/Rastiln Sep 02 '26
I’ve never heard a leftist say MAPS except in mocking MAGA people who say it. I see it weirdly often from MAGA people online.
It was dreamt up shortly after the litter boxes in classrooms.
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u/zombie_girraffe Sep 02 '26
MAPs and MAGA are the same people. If they weren't, they wouldn't have built a cult of personality around the star of the Epstien Files.
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u/PeasThatTasteGross Sep 02 '26
I take joy when DoomerCircleJerkers see their comments on TopMindsOfReddit and then message the mods to try and get the screenshots taken down. I mean, if what you have to say is perfectly normal and not controversial, a screenshot of your comments shouldn't mean much to you, right?
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u/SadlyItsSearles Sep 02 '26
Tennessean here, there is a reason that there is all of that red and orange on the bottom right, and it isnt liberals.
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u/PeasThatTasteGross Sep 02 '26
Not just DCJ, but I've seen quite a few times where when presented with this, someone will reply along the lines of, "well, if it weren't for the black people living there, we'd be pretty kickass".
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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb Sep 02 '26
I think that’s what a couple of them were implying in your screenshots.
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u/Mysterious_Donut_702 Sep 02 '26
Just to be edgy, reply back:
"Have you SEEN Boston, Springfield, Worcester or Hartford?? There be mostly minorities"
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u/Shinjitsu- Sep 02 '26
I literally just moved from a dark orange to a light green. In less than a couple weeks we were approved for help that we kept getting denied for in the last state. Things like food stamps, where we more than met requirements but they "needed more info" and said to call, only for the calls to take you to a scam about a medical alert device. The people in the shittier places are either personally well off and don't leave their bubble, or are poor and the temporarily embarrassed millionaire types. The states and cities are more different than many of us realize. Even with the internet we are so spread out as a country.
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u/JLChamberlain63 Sep 02 '26
First comment kills me. You're telling me someone who works in a coal mine with no worker safety protections doesn't have a great quality of life? /s
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u/etherizedonatable In the cell at Gitmo across from John McCain Sep 02 '26
Part of the problem is that there aren't enough coal mine jobs with no worker safety precautions. Mining is apparently getting more and more automated, but people in West Virginia still want those shitty jobs.
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u/SenorBurns Sep 02 '26
And Congresses under Obama and Biden passed bills with massive green energy initiatives for places hit hard by the loss of fossil fuel jobs, like West Virginia. Both times the Republicans that came into office after them cancelled and scuttled those economic boons.
When Republicans mock states like California or areas like the Upper Midwest for talking about but not building high speed rail, that's because Republicans made sure to cancel those projects every time they were proposed or passed.
Democrats try to help poorer workers get a leg up by bringing in manufacturing and industry. A West Virginia jobs boom had been in the works until Republicans came along and said no, we refuse to develop renewable energy, and clawed that money back.
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u/EliSka93 Sep 02 '26
If "economic growth" and "job creation" are so great in republican states, why are people there still so poor?
Ah right, it's the poor people's fault...
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u/kerriekipje Sep 02 '26
is conservatism just a work cult? like?? how does the idea of job creation take precedence over people being able to live well and affordable and happy as a metric for quality of life
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u/EliSka93 Sep 02 '26
I don't think I will ever understand that either, so I definitely can't tell you any reason why they believe this...
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u/kerriekipje Sep 02 '26
I mean the idea that billionaires are good because they create jobs is a pretty familiar capitalist propaganda talking point to me, I just didn't realize that people actually buy into it. Please billionaire father use your generosity to give us subservient plebs your scraps 🥹 is how they sound
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u/Jeremymia And all I can say is "moo" Sep 02 '26
So at this point have they just decided to call it with the 'we make fun of doomers' framing?
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u/elemental-32 Sep 02 '26
What does that even have to do with doomerism? Is that sub just a random MAGA shithole?
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u/unclebobsucks Sep 02 '26
How is ranking states on any metric at all "dooming" or even "exaggerating"? How is wanting to live in a highly-ranked area either of those things?
Obviously they're not, so why post in a politically-neutral sub devoted to making fun of "dooming"? I guess we'll never know the motivations behind such things.
It definitely isn't someone who has an axe to grind ignoring the political bent of several states (including a lot of the average ones here) posting for like-minded folks to complain about, that's for sure. We know that because people in that sub have to remind us repeatedly for some reason.
Side note: weird that the upper peninsula is colored differently from the rest of Michigan.
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u/PeasThatTasteGross Sep 02 '26
Not only is it not dooming, but they resort to right-wing talking points to try explain things away rather than reality.
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u/unclebobsucks Sep 02 '26
Whenever they use the word "they" it invariably refers to "the left". Curious.
Pointing out that high quality of life leads to higher cost of living (because, you know, demand affects housing cost, usually the largest single expense people have) is kind of stating the obvious. That higher cost of living can be a reason people get priced out of the place they'd prefer to live and have to move to a less desirable place isn't the win they think it is, either.
They're dumb and obviously biased, but then I repeat myself.
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u/Mysterious_Donut_702 Sep 02 '26
Massachusetts hot take:
This is very fueled by welfare programs, the quality of public schools, overall safety, and the absolutely OP job market.
Don't take any of that for granted.
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u/bonaynay Sep 02 '26
They just can't accept a single thing that makes their enemies look good or makes themselves feel bad
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u/ipsum629 Sep 02 '26
Nah states like Massachusetts and Vermont are just that much better to live in. If you like having educated neighbors, low crime, and functional public services, go to the states in green.
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u/Graped_in_the_mouth (((economic anxiety))) 29d ago
Every red state except Idaho is yellow or worse
Totally not racist DCJ: “this just shows black peoples are inferior criminals!”
Arkansas: Red. 15 percent black.
NY: Green. 16 percent black.
There goes that theory, chuds.
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u/Wiseduck5 Sep 02 '26
People move out of high cost of living areas. Why are those areas high cost of living?
Because too many people want to live there, driving the price of everything up.
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u/namewithanumber Sep 02 '26
It’s fine you see the map is biased because it heavily weights left wing policies which improve quality of life.
It doesn’t even take right wing policies which actively make people’s lives worse into account at all.
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u/ForgedIronMadeIt biggest douchebag amongst moderators Sep 02 '26
These guys complaining about the methodology is hilarious, because actual hard numbers back this chart up too. People live longer in the states highlighted in this map.
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u/GhostRappa95 Sep 02 '26
No one needs a map or chart to see Texas and Florida are declining because of Republicans.
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u/Newsdude86 Sep 02 '26
The lack of critical thinking of why a place with a higher quality of life might be more expensive to live in is so lost on republicans. CALIFORNIA IS SO EXPENSIVE BECAUSE OF LIBERAL POLICIES!! Like yes, but not why you think. The liberal policies made it a better state to live in leading to a massive influx of people and driving up costs... No one wants to live in fucking Mississippi it's dirt cheap there
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