This one comes from US News and World Report, also not known for balanced, objective journalism. It ranks Minnesota a laughable third best state. Eight domains are used for scoring–Crime and Corrections, Economy, Education, Fiscal Stability, Health Care, Infrastructure, Natural Environment, and Opportunity. As you might imagine, the woke creeps into several of these. Minnesota doesn’t score particularly high on any of these, Infrastructure is its best at 9th overall, which is itself a joke to anyone who drives on our roads or sees that multi-billion dollar light rail extension fiasco and the fact that people are afraid to ride the existing lines. Our worst is 24th in Economy, which also should be substantially lower for a state losing businesses and jobs and having one of the worst personal income growth records in the country.
71 metrics were used among these categories and they supposedly show how well the states serve their citizens. The categories are not weighted equally and supposedly the weighting is based on surveys, which is a poor way to do it. Education and Health Care get the highest weights, while Crime and Natural Environment get the lowest. I think most people are very concerned about their safety and protection from crime. Minnesota sucks at this.
When you look at individual metrics you see where some of the monkey business comes in. As you might expect, Opportunity is a prime source, with Equality being a sub-domain. I don’t have the heart to go into detail on each metric. As usual, many of the ones that really count aren’t even included. People want to be safe. They want to live where there is a growing economy and good jobs. They want affordable government, which means lower taxes and policies that don’t raise prices of electricity and other services. They want their kids to get a good education that prepares them for meaningful work. You get none of that in Minnesota. You can read the rankings and explore the methodology yourself here. (USNWR)
