They clearly aren’t asking the right people. Maybe the researchers weren’t allowed into the penthouse suites of the Wall Street oligarchs. I believe they are the happiest motherfuckers on the planet. NYC is supposed to be the booming. It’s the financial capital of the world. Why so glum? Maybe it’s because 99% of the people in the NY metro area are nothing more than serfs, beholden to the lords of the manor living in 5th Avenue penthouses during the week and the Hamptons on the weekend.
It looks like my fine state of PA and Indiana take the cake for unhappiest states. I’m sure my new governor Tom Wolf will make us much happier with a dramatic increase in taxes. It seems I might be considered rich in his eyes.
I think the lesson is that high taxes, awful traffic, declining manufacturing base, unions, and cold make people unhappy. Go South young men and women.
16 oz soda limits will do that to ya.
Dixieland is Blue dots from one end to the other. Coincidence? I think not.
I find it amusing the South is the happiest in the country. I agree with this map.
People put on happy faces in public and wind up in psychiatrist offices. Where psychiatrists attempt to take them out of on box and put them in another box.
All because people spend their whole fucking lives trying to comport to social norms and then complaining in private “they don’t like it”
Fuck off.
Steady Mark. Take a deep breath, slowly make your way to the medicine cabinet and take your medication. It’s gonna be alright.
I might also suggest moving south.
In addition to their self-professed unhappiness, the Big Apple will probably be freezing its collective butt off this winter. The University of Florida is located in Gainesville. Gator country. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a pretty coed.
Being from PA – the poll seems right. Erie Pa – a shit hole – corner Chinese joint is ‘fine dining’.
Wilkes-Barre / Scranton / Hazelton / Reading / Allentown (where I was born in 1949) all shit holes.
Jersey City – hell the complete northern half of NJ is the crotch of the universe.
Then there is Gary and Detroit – an Afro breeding ground.
I understand Gary, IN but South Bend? Axel will have to weigh in on that one… maybe they surveyed that area after a Notre Dame loss.
Obviously weather’s a factor, but it looks like congestion trumps weather. Is that big red dot Dallas, or are people in Abilene just a dour bunch? The Bay Area looks miserable except Oakland, where the FSA is gloriously content. Boston is miserable, but out on Cape Cod (which is small towns) they’re happy. California’s Inland Empire gets depressed by spending 4 hours every day on the highway. DC’s moderately congested, but that’s offset by the joy of skimming off of everyone else’s money. I’m a little surprised that Atlanta doesn’t have a red dot, since they have a reputation for bad traffic, but at least (like Texas) they build roads instead of trying to force people to ride trains. It looks like happiness is inversely related to reliance on public transportation. And then there’s Duluth, MN. It could be -20F in April and they’d still be happier than shit. They’re like Laplanders. In fact, most of them are Laplanders. Or Finnlanders.
Hey, I’ve lived in both Bossier City and Alexandria LA, two of the top five happiest cities. Talk about redneck country. Gun racks and Confederate flags all over. Whoooeee.
It was my first taste of living in the deep South. Very friendly people, for the most part. Really laid-back folks with a “live and let live” attitude. But don’t let that fool you. They’re sneaky savvy, and they’ll size you up in less than 10 minutes of conversation. I enjoyed the experience.
Since 5 of the 10 happiest towns are in Louisiana, being represented by Mary Landrieu must be a font of joy.
Erie definitely.
After living for 6 months just east of Erie, in NY, I think a lack of sunshine has a lot to do with the mood in an area.
Sun doesn’t shine from November until the lake freezes over.
Then the lake thaws in the spring and it gets cloudy again.
Not to mention dealing with the heavy lake effect snow bands prevalent in the area.
WTF, Louisana has six of the happiest cities in the U.S !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Swampy, floods, huricanes humid weather, huge bugs, mosquitoes, alligators, 100 lb. cat fish, chemical plants and refineries everywhere, corrupt everything, and they are happy. I guess I must find a new way of being happy.
Denmark was once noted as happiest country. A resident said it’s not so much “happiness” as contentment. People given to contentment will be content almost anywhere. People desperately seeking happiness are not easily content.
I’ve been to Denmark a few times in my life. I could be content there. It’s very laid back and peaceful.
I lived in Lafayette for 5 years and I’m pretty sure the happiness is the food and the beautiful girls. Spent some time in Denmark and it is a wonderful place too. But my happy place is in the north Georgia mountains.
St. Joseph MO is number 2? Man that doesn’t surprise me, that place is depressing. Last I knew the median household income there was 20 grand a year.
Its a former manufacturing AND cattle town. Both major employers started to crater and then the town just sort of….dissolved. Its like one big suburb surrounding a central “highway” that has nothing but empty strip malls and fast food franchises.
I’ve got friends up that way, and pretty much all of them were forced to get jobs in KC because St. Joe blows.
Erie, PA sucks balls.
Would it have anything to do with the south also being the bible belt. Could it have anything to do with godless pagans being under the wrath of GOD.ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.,you godless pagans are not even aware of what’s happened to you but you know for sure you’re miserable.Go figure.
That’s my comment anonymous . How did you steal my comment?Damn you godless pagans.
Red vs. Blue dots looks to be weather/Sunlight related.
Indiana is one of those places it’s good to be FROM. I was born there and got out when I was 18. What a bunch of narrow-minded MFers and it’s cold as hell in Winter.
The cluster of red dots in the east and north east = High population density and rust belt.
If you equate money with being happy. The whole damn country has problems. I once considered st. Joseph, It looked to have nice parks and walkways. Yes, i could see a certain problem with a lack of job’s.
Really, people are happy in Yuma AZ.? I did see a lot of rv trailers there and those people looked happy. Maybe because they can leave when it get’s hot outside.
“Why So GLUM In NYC?” That’s easy. Mile after mile of CONCRETE. No nature. People who literally don’t know where a hamburger comes from. It’s a CONCRETE JUNGLE.
“Really, people are happy in Yuma AZ.? I did see a lot of rv trailers there and those people looked happy. Maybe because they can leave when it get’s hot outside.”
—-yahsure
Don’t know what to say. Been to Yuma several times. Nice folks, but not wealthy by any means. Tons of RVs in RV parks as you said. Locals know that “winter” is boom time for business, summer not so much.
Yuma is a sizeable town out in the middle of NOWHERE with the Colorado River flowing on its western edge. Massive numbers of legal Mexican workers in the farm fields north of the city. I don’t get it. But I guess it works.
And that’s all that matters.
They’re still depressed in NYC about losing their War Against Rats.
Ummm, pagans aren’t Godless, bunchamoaroons, it means they have many Gods, yanno, like the Greeks.
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That red dot in the heart of Tejas isnt Dallas. Abilene would be my guess. And there is absolutely nothing to do there. Dallas is a bit further east and about 80 miles from those toothless inbred boomers in OkieFolkieHomo.
The urban areas in the North and mid-West are crumbling, disease and drug infested hot beds of crime, corruption, and liberalism run rampant. If you’re not one of the one percent faux nobility then those areas are truly a hell on earth. Those in power there have narrow little minds that think small, act small and live in fear. When the mayor of NYC can spend tax dollars to mandate the amount of soda pop a citizen can buy while choosing to ignore laws he doesn’t happen to fancy, then you know you’re dealing with a dysfunctional monstrosity.
Any wonder why folks there are so miserable, eh?
WTF? The happiest people in Arizona live in the Grand Canyon and in a real desert next to Mexico?
Maybe its the no water and no jobs that makes the Grand Canyon area such a happy place.Or the Sedona power Charkra thing. On future map’s,the area is still there. Yuma is ok if you like to play on the sand dunes on the CA. side. The snowbirds have figured out it kicks butt on cold winters in the snow.
I think about moving somewhere else, But bugs and tornados are a turn off. It also seems a lot more free here. Maybe its being so far away from Washington DC.
Folks up north seriously need to be taking some vitamin D. Cheap stuff, tiny pills, and hello– we didn’t evolve to be living in buildings AND have it be overcast a third of the year or more.
Some of my ancestors drank reindeer piss. Some drank Guinness, others schnaps. My people didn’t evolve to live anywhere south of the 45th parallel. I went to the Keys once in April and almost melted. I like 93F days but not for 6 straight months.
I’ll go with C. – Mexicans working in the fields: that is an internalized role, probably in the family for generations and since it is hard work, there is not much competition for positions. Mexican nationals from the countryside grow up working in these conditions. Like Cuban ballplayers, their work is all the schooling they have. They cut their teeth on hard work.
Univision crews must have had a slow week, they were out in the fields in Moorpark and Santa Maria interviewing the workers. They had three women on that I bothered to listen to, one said, it’s hard work but it feeds my family. The crew could have come up to the AV but maybe that’s next. And Yuma is sure to follow.
My grandparents preceded the Okies coming to California after a volcanic eruption and ash near their home town made farming impossible. I say preceded because my mom was born in Colorado back in 1929, a few years before the dustbowl migration. They followed the harvests as far north as Washington, they got their photo in a newspaper in Utah, one of my uncles was born in Fort Worth, and the only things I know of their travails are snippets of my granny’s recollection. She heard black men singing up in Washington, they had horrible singing voices that scared her. She said of all the crops, beets were the hardest to harvest.