Great state with a giant tumor attached to us.

It's not a toomah

Soooooo, I’m red green color blind…..

Higher HDI than Massachusetts: Iceland, Norway, Switzerland.
Lower HDI than Massachusetts: everything else.

For people like me who needed to look it up
HDI = Human Development Index

It’s time we cut it out and build the wall

Massachsuetts Secede!

I'd be happy to affiliate with Iceland actually.

Now zoom in and it's all thanks to four square miles of the Boston and Cambridge area containing half the PHDs and MDs in America. I'm only half kidding. Kinda skews the stats. But plenty of places in Mass don't show any such major contrast with the surrounding region. So let's not congratulate ourselves too much when there's homeless addicts walking our streets too.

It’s almost like money is a factor..

Mass sits up there with New Jersey as being the most arrogant state

It's also not some happiness factor like people act like it is. Literally just means that we have a high level of development. We're still missing essential things like functional public transportation, especially when you look outside the 495 belt.

A metro area of over-educated upper middle to upper class douchebags hidden from the world within nepotistic institutions, who are going to live way too goddamn long.

I mean the money factor is a valid point- im gonna ignore the second part of your comment- but when my dad’s job got moved to North Carolina they let him keep his NH/MA salary because he was supporting a family up here and the cost of living is higher, and when you translate that into college prices… makes it a bit easier to have options for education

Until you actually see how expensive it is to love there and that their economy has been on edge for the last decade.

Ain't nobody here taking about Svalbard.

Connecticut isn’t that big

Lol unlike ours? It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world

Pretty easy to skew the stats when you've got one settlement worth measuring and if you're homeless, unemployed, or sick you get shipped back to the mainland. Or eaten by a polar bear, I suppose.

Yeah but the Redditors don’t see them. And if you are poor just move

Much more expensive than ours and much more tenuous also.

Move where?

When you only focus on the bad

Well, the good is that if you can party in Iceland, you can party pretty much anywhere. You have to be careful when you’re driving early in the morning because people are still rolling out of the bars at 8 A.M.

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>…especially when you look outside the 495 belt

Those are just fairytales. We all know there’s nothing outside 495.

You act like that’s a bad thing?

Not to be pedantic but the population of the entire country is like half that of Boston proper, not even considering Cambridge Somerville etc.

Yeah it’s about half. Misspoke

Given that there are exactly zero McDonalds in Iceland, a fact they are quite proud of, I'm not certain how you can make this assertion.

HDI: Human Development Index = good health/longevity, education/knowledge, and wealth/high standard of living.

Had to look it up.

“Over-educated” sounds like something an under educated person throws around to cope with being dumb

Nothin but trees anyways. But don’t bother to come and check. Us squirrels like to be left alone.

Emphasis on accessible education + lack of religion in political decisions + small/universal geographic area so most people can agree on how to spend major infrastructure $$$

But yes, money is also a factor for sure…but money only exists because there’s an environment for it to survive.

What would the alternative to being arrogant be from an entire state’s perspective? Do you think Mississippi has a reason to have arrogance over its education system? How about California over it’s ability to agree on infrastructure spend? What about all of those wonderful states where they do a prayer before town council meetings?

Massachusetts has the 12 largest economy in the country, 3rd largest per capita; that’s hardly an economy tethering on the edge.

The state also has some of the highest median incomes in the country, some of the highest credit ratings and one of the highest percentages of citizens with rainy day funds. The state as a whole also sends more money to the federal government than it receives so financially it’s not dependent on the federal government for funding.

It is expensive to live in the state, no one is going to argue with that fact. However the state’s economy is heathy and with all the investment in biotech and life sciences along with our world renowned hospitals and institutions of higher education there is plenty of room for continued growth.

new england should replace old england in the eu

You trying to tell me New Jersey folk don’t know they live in a polluted trash heap?

I was referencing the economy and cost of living in Iceland.

It’s in the subreddit rules: “We don’t talk about Svalbard”

thar be dragons outside 495

Yeah here in Holyoke it doesn't exactly resemble Switzerland

Can you cite the source of the HDI data? Or are you too developed to do that? Lol. Thanks in advance.

Gotcha my bad

Don't forget Svalbard

Svalbard is in Norway.

Really? Fascinating. And here I'm thinking it's a country I've never heard of, like Andorra

I'm a dragon now?! Cool!

There are homeless addicts walking every street in the world

Iceland is so odd. The people receive so much education, and then they get full-time jobs leading horseback tours or something.

Yep I live in a nice safe Massachusetts town A very nice young couple were begging outside the market-basket. They asked for money. I said I would buy her some food.

She said if I can just get five more bucks I’ll have enough to go to a restaurant and get out of this cold. It’s 25° in Massachusetts.

I gave her 10 bucks. Because I had it.

> Those are just fairytales. We all know there’s nothing outside 495.

Fall's colors, Winter's snow pack, & Summer's hiking trails say otherwise.

Implying that Switzerland and Norway don’t have their own issues. I just spent a few hours at the Zurich train station. South Station feels like a luxury resort by comparison.

What’s the problem with that?

The dragon is in all of us

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_Human_Development_Index

https://globaldatalab.org/shdi/shdi/?levels=1%2B4&interpolation=1&extrapolation=0&nearest_real=0

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>when you look outside the 495 belt.

There's an area outside the belt?

I would unironically and enthusiastically support New England independence.

There’s nothing wrong with it.

IF. If you have money. Show me that index by county and then watch the Jaws drop

Honestly, it sounds like a good deal.

Svalbard is owned by Norway

Just echoing the sentiments expressed in this sub towards people priced out

I've been to Andorra, it's sheep and duty free shopping in a mountain setting. I got some of their famous wool for my mom who then made a scarf for my sister. I saw the same wool for sale for less money in a local Massachusetts shop years later so as far as I am concerned the whole country is a tourist trap.

By the same token, we're probably significantly boosting the HDI of our surrounding states like NH, VT, ME, RI, etc. For example, pretty much anyone in Southern NH is within a few hours drive of top 5 best oncology centers on the planet.

Next door to Holyoke also agrees. Whenever I see these high stats for this state I think "those must be the places no one can afford to live".

That's really interesting. It's also interesting that they have their own language that's like a combination of French and Spanish. I've seen videos of people who have French and Spanish as their first language reacting to hearing it

Unlike MA which is very cheap to live in

Compared to where?

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Fair point

Sigh

Yall act like the entire state is a dump. Although the gov could do something to help around w the pollution we do have...

Honestly I don’t know I was being sarcastic

Are there regions of other countries which do, like the London or Tokyo areas?

Undereducated people aren’t dumb, they’re failed by the education system. Way to sound exactly like the overeducated douchebags you were trying to prove don’t exist

London is the only part of the UK with a higher HDI than Massachusetts

You didn't just buy the wool. You got the story to go with it. "I travelled all the way to Andorra, just to get the finest of wool for your scarf."feel free to spice it up a little, but that's the real value. Or something.

And we still deserve praise for what we have built here.

It’s just the northern bit. But the Jersey Turnpike makes it feel like it’s the whole state

You could probably say the same about Iceland, where 90% of the population lives in the greater Reykjavik area.

It's a very cool place. The things they're doing with geothermal energy are amazing.

I get what you are saying and I agree completely.

BUT, having lived in other states and traveled this country extensively....MA is way above its peers. New England and New York in general is so far ahead of the rest of the country. Even when things are bad they don't touch the rest of the country.

It's a sign of just how wealthy those areas are that they pull the average up that high, even with the poverty that exists in other communities in this state.

Surprisingly Connecticut is actually second in the nation for HDI. Who knew it wasn't just a highway to New York.

Na, im much happier scince moving to MA.

Please fill in the map for us if you venture there

It’s better if you just ignore them

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

A lot of them are dumb. Source: look at the rest of the USA

Why so they can freeze to death and thus decrease the surplus population?

If we didn't ignore them maybe there would be less of them.

I looked it up too before I saw your comment. I'm bringing down the commonwealth with my lack of education on this matter.

Good bot /s

The problem isn't education systems. The problem is the people not willing to be educated because they don't want help from "over educated" snobs. Even though it'll make all our lives better. They'd rather get their facts from Fox News or some YouTube nutjob.

Have you ever talked to someone that dropped out of highschool? That’s not why that happens and you know it

Yeah and plenty of educated people are dumb too have you looked at the government or corporate boards ever?

Dropping out of high school isn't an excuse to be extremely arrogant.

That money would be better spent if you donate it to a credible charity organization like a local soup kitchen

Now I want to go to Andorra and buy some of their famous wool at the place where the sheep actually live. I can order all kinds of wool online and at my LYS, but it’s not the same as buying it where it’s grown. I did that in Iona, Scotland. Afterwards, I went on a short hike and got to see a bunch of the sheep whose fleeces were actually in the yarn I bought, roaming around free on the island. It was heinously touristy, but is one of my favorite memories from that trip.

Hello from Dragonland

Ok? Dropouts know they dropped out and are undereducated they’re not arrogant about the fact they didn’t finish school. They have opinions though and it seems like that’s the part that you’re upset about but hate to break it to you, educated people talk about shit they have no expertise on all the time because that’s what people do. You’re literally just being a snob

The dragon is the friends we made along the way.

Hell yeah bro we already have all the same city names and everything.

Tbh? It sucks. But the northern bit isn't some radioactive waste dumb as many paint it out to be

Plus, it makes sense to put industry near the TP where it can easily export the goods along the NEC

Come on now, OP went to the "school of hard knocks!"

I never do anymore , since my car was keyed because I bought someone a meal instead of giving “just $5 so I can eat”.

A couple issues with “helping” them

• you’re only helping one person at a time and it may not go very far. An appropriate service can help that money go further to help more

• while there are way too many people that could use a hand, the most extroverted/aggressive pan handlers, with the most profitable locations, are likely to be a scammer. Donating to the appropriate service is more likely for your money to get to the truly needy, and you won’t skip out on someone quietly suffering

I do that too. I also buy people food and hand it to them.

That would be better than giving cash

Yeah cool, treat them as if they’re subhuman and therefore invisible. So classist. They are people just like you, and the vast majority of them aren’t addicts or mentally ill. Even if they were, though, people still have basic human needs to eat, for example, and have warm clothing in the winter.

The sole reason I carry cash around is so that I can give it to homeless people. If we knew each other in meatspace, I would not be friends with you.

And yet the HDI still doesn't give a rat's ass.

Showing this to my family when they ask me why I haven’t moved away from Massachusetts

r/RepublicofNE

Que in the comments from other Ameicans that it's only because weathly people live here.

⬆️You can tell when an uneducated person tries to discuss with educated people. You end up with rants and name calling, just like this one! ⬆️

We have good reasons to be arrogant

Lol I literally have a masters. It’s why I know you guys aren’t any smarter than people who don’t, because I’ve BEEN THERE. I didn’t call anyone names I told him he’s acting like a snob

Does the red line count as functional public transportation?

Two reasons, lots of colleges (and thus money), and a history of balanced politicians. Massachusetts has been blue since Nixon but has a long history of almost entirely “Republican” governors. Despite the party differences our legislators have always been more productive than most at handling issues fast.

Right, this comment is mostly just compliments

Ok 🤣

It's a baby fahkin' whale dude!

I just learned about Svalbard from a TikTok and now I am obsessed.

Bro if we could just fix fahkin Weymouth we’d be numbah one dude

I’ve got nothing to prove, asshole. You’re somehow bitter at Massachusetts for prioritizing an educated population and having a good public school system. The failure in other states to provide a decent education system is due to a lack of good governance. They’re failed by the elected officials they vote into office.

You do realize there's only a 0.05 difference in the HDI between MA and the US average, right? Even Mississippi is only at 0.87

This map isn't a problem for me the shades are way different. Also red green colorblind

Similar population sizes as well

You forgot about Massachusetts: it’s labeled yellow for Massachusetts

Not currently with the headways they’re running.

Eh, not really though. MA has the highest rate of college-educated adults in the US in general at 46%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_educational_attainment

That isn't just due to Boston and Cambridge, the state overall has a high level of educational attainment compared to most places in the world. And things like high incomes and longevity (the other things measured by HDI) tend to be positively correlated with educational attainment.

Obviously there is variation between places in MA, but that is true everywhere.

What was wrong with the Zurich train station?

Well, and it's part of Norway, so I'm not sure why people are singling it out as if it is its own country.

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It always surprises me how "meh" salaries are in the UK. It's a great place to live in many ways, but I suspect the reason it doesn't do that well on HDI is because median incomes there aren't actually that high.

For reference, UK median household income is ~$47,000 annually as compared to ~$71,000 annually in the US.

Yeah, every discrete location has a floor and a ceiling. The HDI is saying that Mass has a higher ceiling than the rest of country, but I'd also argue that Mass's floor is higher than most of the country's floors as well.

I mean, aside from the temperature in winter, I'd rather be homeless in MA than in like, Mississippi.

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Exactly. MA certainly has pockets of extreme wealth and education. But the median in MA is also higher than median elsewhere in the US, it's not just those pockets dragging everything else up.

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himynameisceciliaandiliveonsvalbardanislandclosetothenorthpole

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It's actually mildly more interesting than that - basically, the Svalbard Treaty did recognize Norway's sovereignty over it but there are a few limitations, and unlike mainland Norway, any citizen of a signatory country is permitted to live and conduct business on Svalbard, but nobody (not even Norwegians) are allowed permanent residency.

Jaws wont drop. Massachusetts is still far and away ahead of every other state. If you're poor in Massachusetts you still have access to top tier public schools with statewide accountability standards, you have health insurance and access to health care, and you have access to jobs.

If you're poor in other states you have nothing and no options.

Google for this paper for several county level maps, which show that even the worst counties in Mass are ahead of most of the counties in the south when we talk about literacy and food insecurity and poverty: "Determining the Development Status of United States Counties Based on Comparative and Spatial Analyses of Multivariate Criteria Using Geographic Information Systems" Lauren B. Wheeler & Eric C. Pappas

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I wasn't referring to other states. Simply the enormous disparity between wealthy towns that are among the most affluent in the world and loaded with nimbys who torpedo every chance at equity legislation versus the rest of the state. Access to health care, bare bones minimum health care versus actual health care the rest of the civilized world provides. Education, lol we're a college state obviously and how much does it cost and how many can afford it. MA versus other blue states it's all the same. I couldn't possibly care less about the Red welfare states.

I'm from Canada – Vancouver, specifically. I've been in Massachusetts 10 years now. And the quality of life here is definitely not nearly as high as where I'm from. I know this is mostly anecdotal but if someone told me that only three countries in the world had a higher HDI than Massachusetts I would absolutely NOT believe them.

that’s really interesting i didn’t know that!

i’d imagine the free healthcare and access to advanced education offset it to some degree.

suck it new hampshire. right wing shitbirds.

They certainly do, but I will note that both these income figures are pre-tax. So the taxes to pay for those things would come out of the income as well.

I certainly agree that paying higher taxes for public healthcare and university education is a good and cheaper trade-off than the US approach though.

But I found towns on there. Do they just go there for a few months out of the year? Do people live there in shifts?

Yeah. Show this to mfs in west Springfield lol

No, residents do live there year-round, but there's a somewhat famous saying that "it's illegal to die on Svalbard." The truth behind this is that the medical facilities on Svalbard are very, very limited, basically just a clinic. So if you are healthy and capable of caring for yourself, you can stay indefinitely, but otherwise you have to leave. I thought there was also a maximum age, above which you have to leave, but I can't find anything about that now.

Most people stay on average 7 years and tend to be younger. It's a place where a lot of people move during a time in their lives where they're looking for a new start or to escape their old life.

The way I understood it is you can effectively live there permanently as long as you can prove you have the means to support yourself. If you have no income for a certain period (I don't recall how long), you can be forcibly evicted from the island.

Well, they do have a volcano in their back pocket.

If you're just comparing to Newton and Wesley, then of course they're going to be lower. But if you look at the data or read the report or see the maps, you'll see every area of our state has a generally high quality of life.

And I'm not referring to colleges. If Massachusetts were a country our school system would be top 5-10 in the world, and that's based on statewide test scores and analysis.

Multiple volcanoes.
And glaciers.
Even a volcano with a glacier on top of it.

Interesting. From the pictures I've seen, the scenery looks beautiful, but I would miss civilization too much.

I recently read a book on 17th century American colonies and MA was already head and shoulders off the charts for a frontier area in terms of life expectancy and education - indeed higher than almost anywhere in the world at a time when the other colonies had negative natural population growth, extremely short life expectancy, etc. The college educated proportion and over 80 population were staggering for the period.

i’m not sure how you feel about Michael Moore but his documentary “sicko” has some interesting analysis of the tax/expenses analysis between the US and i believe it was the UK. i also think tax payers get an itemized statement of exactly how their tax money is allocated, which i think would be pretty eye opening for most Americans, especially those so concerned with “entitlement programs”.

We are a very self-sufficient region that has a great living standard, great education, great health system and more. If it weren't for a lot of the smaller states that hold more say on things at a federal level than us (Wyoming, the Dakotas, Arkansas, Idaho....etc) we'd probably be fighting Norway for best place to live honestly. But these other states hold us back at a federal level in a lot of problems. Such as gun solutions, student relief, and other elements we would have if they didn't represent us as much as they do.

I’m not mad that our state has a decent education system (if you live in an area that can afford one) I’m mad that it’s FULL of oh so enlightened dipshits like you who absolutely know about voter suppression, gerrymandering, and corruption, and then turn around and say shit like “they’re failed by the people they vote into office.” As if people are inherently stupid for living a certain area and children don’t deserve an opportunity for education because IN YOUR MIND they voted wrong or something. Like they asked to live in a corrupt state that doesn’t believe in public education.

CT is 0.002 less than MA in HDI

Because we are ignorant massholes I guess. TIL

True. Living here in Springfield in western MA, with all the beggars and drug addicts, it sure doesn't feel like there's a high HDI here.

Guess that thought I had to move to Switzerland, was a good one..

💪💪💪💪💪

You need to stay away from Mason Square! ;)

“The real wool was the friends you made along the way”

SUCK IT, WORLD