If you live in a red state, you probably consider yourself lucky. In most cases, doing so means you’ve got a baseline of freedom granted to you that many other Americans don’t have. Certainly, the fact that, by the numbers, people are flocking to Republican-led states testifies to the fact that blue bastions aren’t all they are cracked up to be.
No mind, though. CNBC is here to let you know what the “10 worst states to live in” are. Apparently, many of you are living in an oppressive third-world hellhole and just didn’t know it. Thankfully, our liberal betters are here to set the record straight.
So what are the states in question?
Coming in at number 10 is Florida, followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, Indiana, Missouri, Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.
Yes, according to these geniuses, one of the most popular destinations in the country is actually the worst state to live in.
What are the reasons given? Here’s what the “study” says about Tennessee.
Tennessee has enthusiastically passed laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, even if it has meant crossing the bounds of constitutionality — like a ban on drag shows where children are present, which a federal judge struck down in June. Or another law struck down by a federal judge in 2021 that would have required businesses to post a warning sign on restrooms where transgender people are allowed. But plenty of other laws have survived, like a transgender youth sports ban, and laws that provide religious exemptions allowing health care and child welfare professionals to deny service to transgender people.
Or how about Missouri?
The Show Me State is showing abortion opponents the way. In 2019, the state became the first to enact a so-called “trigger law,” which went into effect moments after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The law, one of the strictest in the nation, bans all abortions except in the case of a medical emergency, which the abortion provider must prove. Also, Missouri’s violent crime rate is among the nation’s highest.
Then there’s Texas.
How could 200,000 college educated workers moving to Texas each year possibly be wrong? It depends on how you look at it. With the nation’s highest percentage of people without health insurance and the second lowest number of primary care physicians per capita, all those new Texans are arriving to find a dismal health care system. Texas has the nation’s thirteenth-highest violent crime rate, and it ranks thirty seventh for licensed childcare facilities per capita.
The Lone Star State keeps hacking away at inclusiveness, with laws targeting the LGBTQ+ population, voting rights, and the nation’s strictest abortion ban. Yes, there are enormous economic opportunities in Texas, and it is attracting people from far and wide. But this state also has some Texas-sized issues when it comes to life, health and inclusion. And it is one of the reasons that the state fell out of the overall top five for the first time in the 16-year history of CNBC’s rankings.
Are you starting to see the disconnect? Apparently, people should choose what state they live in based on whether drag shows for children are legal or if they can get an abortion in the third trimester. Clearly, you should go live in New York or Illinois because those states are generically “inclusive” and have “voting rights.”
Of course, no sane person chooses where they live based on “LGBTQ rights” or the number of early voting days allotted, nor do they mark a nice city in Tennessee because Democrat-dominated Memphis is a dumpster fire. They choose where they live based on normal things like the cost of living, the availability of housing, and probably most importantly, being able to safely raise their family in a cultural sense.
CNBC’s list exposes the left’s political pathology. Too many Democrats suffer from a sickness whereby they judge everyone based on marginal, mostly irrelevant factors, latching on to nebulous concerns about “voting rights” that don’t even actually exist when you consider the facts on the ground. “Don’t move to Alabama because they don’t have in-person early voting,” they scream as regular people look at them cross-eyed.
There’s a reason Americans are fleeing blue states in record numbers to go live in red states. It’s because those red states provide freedom and opportunity along with a sense of normalcy for families. That isn’t changing no matter how many silly studies are put out.