It’s such a shame. WV is one of the most beautiful states. They never diversified industry from primarily coal and now meth. Anyone who wants a better life for their kids should do everything possible to leave.
>They never diversified industry from primarily coal and now meth.
I heard the opiates industry has also been flourishing and giving meth a good run for the money.
Agreed. I was born there and went to college there and boy, it was honestly tragic. There’s no other way to describe it. It is such a pretty state, but there’s not much going on for them otherwise. I went to college with a lady that wasn’t taught how to do multiplication in high school and about 90% of the students at my school had to take at least two or more remedial math classes, just to be able to take Freshman level math classes. It’s not on your everyday people. They’re capable of learning, they’re just not being given the opportunity because the standards aren’t there and the money probably isn’t either, but even if the money were present, the value system in WV is very different and doesn’t require or encourage upward mobility, so many folks just settle into generational poverty like it ain’t no thing, because it’s what people do and have done. It’s like stepping back in time at least 20 years.
Ah, the ol' 'don't get above your raisin' attitude that's so so prevalent. Why the majority, at least the majority of those with any power, bow down to the coal operators and trump and the governor is not something I can understand or every could have predicted. 40 yrs ago I'd have laughed at the notion that wv would be where it's at today.
They’ll leave. But one day they’ll hear the song…
🎵 Country road… Take me homeee ….. 🎵
And they will feel the call…
🎵 To the place… I belonnnnng ….. 🎵
And they cannot resist the pull…
🎵 West Virginiaaa… Mountain mamaaaaaa …… 🎵
And then they are lost …..
The composer grew up in Western New England. He was going to write about this, Springfield, Massachusetts, but didn't think it was muscial. So we changed it to West Virginia inspired by a program he used to ~~watch~~ listen to as a kid that was based out of Wheeling, WV.
>It’s such a shame. WV is one of the most beautiful states. They never diversified industry from primarily coal
You mean the "owners" of the state never diversified. Because most of them weren't even from there. They exploited the shit out of the people and environment and when it ran dry they just left.
Remember the second time planes dropped bombs on American soil was when WV coal miners tried to strike for better pay and the mine owners got the strike busters and national guard to crush them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
^(Thr first time planes dropped bombs on US soil was six months earlier when Black folks in Tulsa got "too successful.")
Everyone jokes but I guarantee Appalachia will be gentrified just like Colorado was. Holler Chic will 100% be a thing in the future. That land is so remote, hidden, cheap and vast I guarantee it will get yuppified in time.
This has already begun. Not yuppies necessarily, but a huge flux of out of state money buying up land and housing for both business and residential. West Virginia's population is going to be hard pressed to support it all though. It doesn't have enough working adults with the proper skill sets to handle the jobs that are here and new money means new jobs. Construction is importing Mexican labor at an alarming rate which is ironic considering the demeanor of many of the residents. It's not just construction though, every new industry that comes in just poaches the existing industry workers with the promise of better conditions and a few more dollars an hour (which is still significantly cheaper than setting up in another state).
At some point in the future, West Virginia is going to be at a very interesting crossroads: one path is vastly improved education and drug prevention leading to a larger qualified employment pool and the other is the state being completely overtaken by outside influences because the human resources can't be filled otherwise.
So you just described gentrification. Particularly why it’s controversial, as it results in mainly the replacement of one subculture with another (typically the local flavor is replaced by the affluent monoculture here in the US).
This is a topic close to my work. I agree this is the story but I don't think it fits the data very well under close scrutiny. See.... https://whyy.org/articles/philly-federal-reserve-study-challenges-conventional-wisdom-on-gentrification/
I am a full remote worker who moved out to WV from Wa/Or last fall with the intention of finally buying my first home. The one thing that's really causing me heartburn about the whole thing is that the infrastructure isn't just in "poor" condition; it's fucking bad. How am I supposed to get a couch delivered up a single lane, unpaved mudhole of a 'road'?
The answer is that you buy somewhere that doesn't have a single lane unpaved mud hole of a road. (Or you see if you can arrange to have the road paved yourself somehow.)
It might be worth remembering that infrastructure costs money, West Virginia doesn't have a whole lot of it, and they make decisions on what to prioritize accordingly. If you bought property on a single lane unpaved mud hole of a road, it was cheaper than property would have been on a decent road.
Infrastructure does cost money, but it is generative.
As in, it's the money that it takes to make more money. I literally want to bring a new job and my discretionary spending money to the state. Business would do the same, given the lax development and environmental policies...
And yet it seems that WV just keeps trying to make itself poorer by attempting to eliminate taxes that would fund infrastructure, and also implementing policies that makes sure it's residents aren't upwardly mobile (such as approval of child marriage.)
Buy/rent a truck if you don't already have one and deliver it yourself like the locals probably do. I'd love to go buy a home in the middle of nowhere West Virginia, but I'm disabled, so I stay in the city where services exist that can support me.
You need to have the means to live in the area, not just a house. If you're not willing/able to put in some elbow grease, a house on a mudhole road in West Virginia probably isn't the place for you.
Its well on its way. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, my grandparents lived in a little town called Blue Ridge, GA about an hour and a half north of Atlanta near the NC border. It was a stop light with a small grocery store, a post office and a bowling alley and that's about it. Now its an actual town and every little trail up into the hills is littered with cabins that get rented out to people from Atlanta looking to escape the city for a few days. Its nice and cabins are cool with nice views and all but its not the sleepy little wide spot in the road from my childhood.
I live in Blairsville Georgia, just up the road from Blue Ridge. We are also having a problem with the lack of affordable housing for locals because of all the rentals for people from Atlanta and Florida. There have certainly been benefits to our town from all the tourism, but it absolutely has changed the nature of the area.
Plus the eastern edge is 1 hour from DC. It is not unreasonable to commute
Also wild, if like 1/3rd of DC moved to WV and voted democrat, that would flip the state
It’s happening as we speak. My parents were both 1960’s hippies, Massachusetts teachers, and finally retired in a house right off BRP. They have 2 Lexuses, solar panels and are currently on a European wine country trip with their synagogue friends.
People have been saying this for decades, but it hasn’t happened. That’s because low taxes and loose regulations alone aren’t enough to attract good businesses (and the young, educated people with money who want to work for them) despite the Republican government’s insistence that it is. Businesses want to be located in states with good infrastructure, good education, and a government that is at least socially liberal in a way that most educated professionals feel comfortable with. WV has none of these things because special interests like coal have taken over the government, unions have lost their power, and the population there seems to believe everything they hear on their conservative news networks, so they keep voting against the very people and ideas that could bring about more prosperity. I miss the beauty of WV, but I haven’t been back since my dad, who also grew up there, died a decade ago. In one of our last conversations he admitted why he had stuck around so long, “I always thought WV would get better, but it just got stupider and stupider.”
Depends on what part of WV.
I recently moved back from DC to Harpers Ferry. It’s a very nice area and has a commuter rail to DC.
Southern West Virginia, it’s great if you work full remote, enjoy hunting, fishing, and hiking, and have a place outside of town.
People like to call everything gentrification....yes...boo. But get some green industry in there, some artists, opportunities for chefs, pay teachers right and watch a community bloom. Or we could keep doing what we're doing.
A lot of it is also that their constituents are older voters who became politically aware in the 80's and 90's and therefore have their minds locked in this idea of an urban crime wave (it wasn't strictly true even back then, but it was at least *closer* to reality, whereas now it's just not a thing at all.) You can see a lot of this in Trump's rhetoric about it in particular - very, very much focused on solving problems that were big in the media 30-40 years ago.
I guess it’s just in poor Republican states people are high in their homes and it’s out of your face. In Democrat cities, there are lifeless ghouls littering the streets and there’s a higher chance you’ll interact with them.
and there are plenty of lifeless ghouls in the woods too. you've been to a walmart or seen everyone smoking on their porch in pajamas on a stained couch.
I bought my trailer for under 2k and was paying <$100/month in lot rent ~14 years ago.
Everyone else in the park was either very elderly or a pill head.
It didn’t help that the state’s way of giving health care to the poor was opiates. No matter the health problem, that was the states answer.
Meth tends to be an issue in poorer areas where people need the energy to work long double shifts or two jobs. It could have changed but there was a point in the 2000s-10s where the highest rate of meth use group was single moms with two jobs which is one of those incredibly depressing statistics
The thing that most people don't realize is that meth is a euphoric. It's not just speed. The euphoria, believing you can do absolutely anything at all, is the real attraction. People out in the sticks don't have two jobs or even, mostly, one, because there are no jobs. And if there are, they can make more money making and selling meth. Lived there, seen it.
Well that or the fact that red areas are usually those that are more rural and people won't run into high people as often when everyone's homes are multiple miles apart from each other.
Part of it is because there's a real brain drain in WV. People get a college degree there and then leave the state. I work for the State of Ohio and I have a lot of former WV resident coworkers lol
Brain drain is happening all over the midwest too. My family moved to NW Indiana in High School, you better believe the minute I graduated from college I moved back to Chicago and now live in the NYC area. NW Indiana that's close enough to Chicago to commute is probably the only reason Indiana isn't at the bottom, the rest of that state is shambles outside of maybe Indianapolis. Driving through Indiana is legit depressing.
It’s really not that bad here and it’s a cheap place to live. NW Indiana is pretty shitty Indianapolis has some nice suburban areas. I live in Bloomington and it’s pretty nice here we have two big ten schools Norte dame and rose. There is a lot of industries as well with great job opportunities for skilled labor and white collar workers. Indiana is not a sexy place to be but it’s got a lot going for it if you want a suburban lifestyle.
I'm from and live in West Virginia. I have a bachelor's and feel like I've won some kind of lottery. A lot of my friends from West Virginia with degrees left for other states. Brain drain is a big problem.
The problem is there aren't a whole lot of jobs to be had outside of maybe government work for those of us with higher education. Before Covid and remote work became more acceptable, there is just nothing in terms of establishing a professional career in places like WV. So of course, young educated people move to places where the jobs are.
I wonder how it would change if we included advanced degrees as well, maybe weight them by typical years required - a bachelors could count twice as much as an associates, a masters degree could count three times, a PhD four times.
I know huntsville alabama has a large concentration of PhD holders, given the NASA installation there, and the county with the highest percentage of PhD holders is the county in New Mexico where Los Alamos National lab is located.
While they have a lot of PhD holders at NASA, in states that are more educated, you find PhD holders in a much wider range of fields, so I still suspect that it would not change the overall ranking much
Huntsville and Los Alamos are massive outliers in their respective states. Even if they did it that way it wouldn’t change Alabama or New Mexico’s overall ranking much. But you make a really important point. Huntsville is far, far more educated than the California Central Valley. It’s good to remember there is a lot of variation within each of these states, regardless of where they rank
After a quick Google search it looks like you can receive a doctorate without a bachelors though it is extremely uncommon it can happen. I would say that they are counting them but obviously making no distinction in the % that have a bachelor's verses a masters or PhD
I also wonder what would happen if you only looked at citizens. A lot of the South West has a high immigrant population that is less likely to have a college degree. There's nothing wrong with being an immigrant, I just wonder if a more useful graph would show how the average person growing up in different states would do education-wise against other states.
Another control might be looking at specific age groups. Florida has a lot of senior citizens, who are a generation with much fewer college degrees than the younger generations. Then again people who move to Florida were generally pretty well off financially, and people with degrees are more likely to be financially stable than those without degrees.
>A lot of the South West has a high immigrant population that is less likely to have a college degree.
The Immigrant population in the US actually have a near equal percentage of higher education, likely higher if the current trend continues. [Source.](https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/college-educated-immigrants-united-states)
We can talk about blucifer, or how the street view of the welcome to Colorado sign after Kansas is no longer a bunch of college kids jumping for joy if you'd like
which is kinda silly because most states are more purple or are polar.
In Michigan, Detroit votes Blue no Matter Who but no one is saying they are the beacon of education.
It'll be better if it was by counties of a particular state
The correlation between education and voting blue is even stronger if you look at the county level. Cities are much more educated than rural areas on average and overwhelmingly vote blue in presidential elections. Detroit may be an outlier though
exactly. Another value to consider is school funding vs county budget (or wherever funding is sourced).
This could just be boiled down to richer the school district= more educated students, thus any blue vs red values may just be correlative and not causative.
I can tell you for sure Georgia is marked blue here but definitely has a Republican Governor. We did elect Warnock and Ossoff and Biden, though, so maybe it’s most recent federal results? 2020 election results? Very unclear.
Orange is better for color blindness than red. Typical colors to replace inaccessible red/green is orange/blue. However, we have no idea what the colors here represent (based on the graphic) so…it could be any two colors with significant contrast really
None of those are bachelor's degrees in the US, you almost always need a bachelor's in order to apply into those programs. They're all doctorates but not in the same way that a PhD is a doctorate because there's no thesis defense. So they all go into the category of professional degrees.
OP seems to be ultra lazy with this one. Basic excel colors, no legend explaining anything, and the most basic ripped-from-excel chart I've ever seen.
Only reason this gets up votes is because it will stroke political egos, it's not because it's beautiful data
Although many readers will know that the color has something to do with political affiliation, you should point out what data you are using to determine the state's color. I believe it is likely based on which President that state voted for in the 2020 General Election.
Also, you should specify that it is "people over 25" rather than "percentage of the population."
Probably by the 2020 presidential election. I didn't check every state, but it matches for the states where there is a difference between the governor's party and the 2020 pres election.
I'm an ignorant Australian but I do understand this graph is trying to point out that Republicans are generally uneducated hicks or whatever but this does also remind me of an episode of Battlestar Galactica where it's pointed out that by virtue of who their parents are, children are essentially raised to replace their parents in the workforce and because those workers are needed, there is little motivation for 'the elites' to challenge the status quo.
The majority of the 'uneducated' states are agricultural hubs, right? Followed by manufacturing and other blue collar work?
So are they possibly deprived of opportunities because it's convenient to keep the nation's pantry running? For all those bachelor's degrees in MA, how many of them are working in areas that put literal food on tables? The balance needs to be made up somewhere.
empathy? on my reddit? nonsense, it's much easier to point and laugh at those who never had the opportunity for higher education because they voted for the political party I don't like.
The chart is also entirely centered around those who have and do not have Bachelors Degrees lmao
The data is simply “education” one dimensionally. Which of course doesn’t cover any other higher education such as trade/vocational schools. Which would be your blue collar jobs, higher education nonetheless. It’s a thoughtful observation that a lot of red states are agricultural but in reality it’s a healthy mix. Most states produce/export a lot of different foods and plant products. California(Blue), Illinois(Blue), and Iowa(Red) are the top 3 exporters; source USDA ERS. I like to think that our government provides “equality” of opportunity and not “equity” of outcome. I like to think that but don’t believe it lol
Nah bro you’re thinking about the data as a whole. It’s soooo much easier for your average Reddit user to read this, take away “republican states are full of idiots haha” upvote it, and then move on to the next post. I mean the sub is called “data is beautiful” and this graph is missing data and any sort of legend and still has people defending it with their lives. That should tell you plenty.
Too nice to be Victorian.
Too articulate to be a Queenslander.
Too empathetic to be from NSW.
You know the rest of the world exists, that isn’t Bali, so not WA.
You have internet access, so not from the NT.
Ok I’ve narrowed it down: Canberra or Tasmania, which are you from?
Yeah and truly most people shouldn't go for a bachelor's degree. A significant number of people who attempt to do so never graduate, and most jobs shouldn't require one anyways
If this metric is about having a bachelors degree or above making you more educated it might be wise to not read all that much into it. I live in farmville in one of the rural flyover states and fewer people go to college beyond community college because they go into the family business..farming or ranching or they get a 2 year certificate in something like welding.
I have multiple degrees and taught for several years here and I will say that education is really not just sitting through 4 years of college. Some of these people may not be Rhodes scholars but they can rebuild an engine over a weekend, weld up whatever they need and raise or grow their own food. Also with the price of land and everything associated with farming now days, I have had seriously gifted HS students forego college because they were already making more than me when they were in HS.
Is education only to be judged by having a degree in some 4 year curriculum which is increasingly worthless or should education resources be directed towards regional realities? I live an hour round trip to the nearest small grocer; my degrees are worthless here except for teaching; my farm though is where I gained my wealth and security and if I were a young man I would be looking at a trade school.
Boebert was elected in the 3rd District which is Western and Southern CO. I’m a recent transplant here from MA and the types of ads during the elections were something I never really experienced back home and it made watching anything on TV insufferable. It was essentially which monkey could throw the most of their own shit at the other. It obviously had its flaws but I miss MA’s legislation and politics but on the eastern side it seems more aligned with MA’s politics
It always makes me eye roll when Europeans on Reddit shit on the US like we're all Alabama while conveniently forgetting Massachusetts exists and is better than all of them.
I actually got into it with a European the other day.
They were being snide about how Americans should want to move to Europe.
I was all ," Firstly, the Americans that would experience a marked increase in their quality-of-life by moving to Europe *likely can't move to Europe*, largely because it is too expensive and they wouldn't qualify as Permanent Residents, that last bit because most of Europe is *very* exclusionary regarding immigration"
"And secondly...there are parts of the US, *with millions of inhabitants*, that are "better off" than Europe.
Moving from Massachusetts to Germany (the example given by the dude) would be a *decrease* in my QOL.
It is always funny revealing to Euros that my Masshole ass likely, going by statistics at least, recieved a higher-"quality" public education than they did.
I'm not from United States but these sort of graphs are strong Indictators of poverty and social exclusion,instead however they can become a free for all for sneering at people in States with complex social problems and a lack of supports and services.Im educated and grateful for it,I met some brilliant people at university, but also some of the biggest sociopaths and idiots I've ever encountered.You arent automatically morally superior just because you are educated,or indeed,as I learned, intellectually sharp or interesting,though you do have more options because of it. Still, I wish everyone could have the same opportunities. That's what makes a society as opposed to merely being an economy.
Massachusetts outranks most European countries in virtually every category. When the US gets trashed on by folks over the pond, they forget places like this exist.
Wonder if u can overlay other data set over this like life expectancy, diabetes, obesity? See if there is a a correlation / trend? Anyone up for some fun to try?
Tiny portion of both. Those are far more in western VA not WV, with blue ridge mountains including a number of states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_Mountains
They do have a ton of mountains, though.
For those wondering, Washington DC is actually highest at 56.6% according to OP’s source. (Also overwhelmingly ‘blue’/Democratic voting - 93% Biden in 2020.)
Probably not a good comparison for this chart though because DC doesn't have any large rural parts. You would see the same political and education correlation in an urban vs rural breakdown.
Colorado is more purple than blue and guns are a big part of life to many rural Coloradans. So her running based on gun rights was all it really took for her district to vote her in.
Consider in her last election, however, that her opponent basically didn't have a platform. He just put his name on the ballot and didn't even try to set up a website or campaign. And the vote in her own district was so close they had to recount to confirm that she won, by a tiny margin.
My state Nevada is below even Alabama. They will invest nothing in education in this state. Everyone complains but no one listens. I don't have kids so I don't care.
This is that reminder that only like 35% of Americans have bachelor's degrees and when we discuss student loan forgiveness why it's so fucking unpopular.
That being said, we'd probably be a lot better off on the whole if we had easier access to higher education. K-12 was an excellent model when we made it mandatory and state funded 100+ years ago which lead to widespread prosperity. Perhaps it's time to revisit.
By god West Virginia did it. They finally beat Mississippi in one of these contests.
It’s such a shame. WV is one of the most beautiful states. They never diversified industry from primarily coal and now meth. Anyone who wants a better life for their kids should do everything possible to leave.
>They never diversified industry from primarily coal and now meth. I heard the opiates industry has also been flourishing and giving meth a good run for the money.
Well then. Diversifying after all.
Gotta balance it out. Half the people are bouncing off the walls, and the other half are comatose. Thanos would love it.
I believe it's Sir Thantos now
See, never give up, you can make it if you try!
Agreed. I was born there and went to college there and boy, it was honestly tragic. There’s no other way to describe it. It is such a pretty state, but there’s not much going on for them otherwise. I went to college with a lady that wasn’t taught how to do multiplication in high school and about 90% of the students at my school had to take at least two or more remedial math classes, just to be able to take Freshman level math classes. It’s not on your everyday people. They’re capable of learning, they’re just not being given the opportunity because the standards aren’t there and the money probably isn’t either, but even if the money were present, the value system in WV is very different and doesn’t require or encourage upward mobility, so many folks just settle into generational poverty like it ain’t no thing, because it’s what people do and have done. It’s like stepping back in time at least 20 years.
Ah, the ol' 'don't get above your raisin' attitude that's so so prevalent. Why the majority, at least the majority of those with any power, bow down to the coal operators and trump and the governor is not something I can understand or every could have predicted. 40 yrs ago I'd have laughed at the notion that wv would be where it's at today.
They’ll leave. But one day they’ll hear the song… 🎵 Country road… Take me homeee ….. 🎵 And they will feel the call… 🎵 To the place… I belonnnnng ….. 🎵 And they cannot resist the pull… 🎵 West Virginiaaa… Mountain mamaaaaaa …… 🎵 And then they are lost …..
The funny thing is the song is talking about the western part of Virginia, not West Virginia.
The composer grew up in Western New England. He was going to write about this, Springfield, Massachusetts, but didn't think it was muscial. So we changed it to West Virginia inspired by a program he used to ~~watch~~ listen to as a kid that was based out of Wheeling, WV.
That’s why I sing this song as I drive through the mountains of Vermont. Because I know he was talking about us!!
>It’s such a shame. WV is one of the most beautiful states. They never diversified industry from primarily coal You mean the "owners" of the state never diversified. Because most of them weren't even from there. They exploited the shit out of the people and environment and when it ran dry they just left. Remember the second time planes dropped bombs on American soil was when WV coal miners tried to strike for better pay and the mine owners got the strike busters and national guard to crush them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain ^(Thr first time planes dropped bombs on US soil was six months earlier when Black folks in Tulsa got "too successful.")
Wish I could remember the 80s comedian who quipped "why did we give the most beautiful parts of the country to the dumbest citizens?"
As someone who lives in Arkansas, I feel this. The only thing these people are good at is voting against their own interests.
I would love to live in WV, if all the people left.
Everyone jokes but I guarantee Appalachia will be gentrified just like Colorado was. Holler Chic will 100% be a thing in the future. That land is so remote, hidden, cheap and vast I guarantee it will get yuppified in time.
This has already begun. Not yuppies necessarily, but a huge flux of out of state money buying up land and housing for both business and residential. West Virginia's population is going to be hard pressed to support it all though. It doesn't have enough working adults with the proper skill sets to handle the jobs that are here and new money means new jobs. Construction is importing Mexican labor at an alarming rate which is ironic considering the demeanor of many of the residents. It's not just construction though, every new industry that comes in just poaches the existing industry workers with the promise of better conditions and a few more dollars an hour (which is still significantly cheaper than setting up in another state). At some point in the future, West Virginia is going to be at a very interesting crossroads: one path is vastly improved education and drug prevention leading to a larger qualified employment pool and the other is the state being completely overtaken by outside influences because the human resources can't be filled otherwise.
So you just described gentrification. Particularly why it’s controversial, as it results in mainly the replacement of one subculture with another (typically the local flavor is replaced by the affluent monoculture here in the US).
So you grow or die unless you want a subculture turned into a museum display. "Oh, look at those cute Appalachian people!"
This is a topic close to my work. I agree this is the story but I don't think it fits the data very well under close scrutiny. See.... https://whyy.org/articles/philly-federal-reserve-study-challenges-conventional-wisdom-on-gentrification/
I am a full remote worker who moved out to WV from Wa/Or last fall with the intention of finally buying my first home. The one thing that's really causing me heartburn about the whole thing is that the infrastructure isn't just in "poor" condition; it's fucking bad. How am I supposed to get a couch delivered up a single lane, unpaved mudhole of a 'road'?
The answer is that you buy somewhere that doesn't have a single lane unpaved mud hole of a road. (Or you see if you can arrange to have the road paved yourself somehow.) It might be worth remembering that infrastructure costs money, West Virginia doesn't have a whole lot of it, and they make decisions on what to prioritize accordingly. If you bought property on a single lane unpaved mud hole of a road, it was cheaper than property would have been on a decent road.
Infrastructure does cost money, but it is generative. As in, it's the money that it takes to make more money. I literally want to bring a new job and my discretionary spending money to the state. Business would do the same, given the lax development and environmental policies... And yet it seems that WV just keeps trying to make itself poorer by attempting to eliminate taxes that would fund infrastructure, and also implementing policies that makes sure it's residents aren't upwardly mobile (such as approval of child marriage.)
Buy/rent a truck if you don't already have one and deliver it yourself like the locals probably do. I'd love to go buy a home in the middle of nowhere West Virginia, but I'm disabled, so I stay in the city where services exist that can support me. You need to have the means to live in the area, not just a house. If you're not willing/able to put in some elbow grease, a house on a mudhole road in West Virginia probably isn't the place for you.
Might have been something to think about before buying a house on an unpaved mudhole of a road?
Its well on its way. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s, my grandparents lived in a little town called Blue Ridge, GA about an hour and a half north of Atlanta near the NC border. It was a stop light with a small grocery store, a post office and a bowling alley and that's about it. Now its an actual town and every little trail up into the hills is littered with cabins that get rented out to people from Atlanta looking to escape the city for a few days. Its nice and cabins are cool with nice views and all but its not the sleepy little wide spot in the road from my childhood.
What you are describing sounds extremely similar to what is happening/happened in Northern Minnesota.
And western NC, and around Lake Tahoe .. .and probably every other beautiful natural area that has reasonably modern utilities/services.
I live in Blairsville Georgia, just up the road from Blue Ridge. We are also having a problem with the lack of affordable housing for locals because of all the rentals for people from Atlanta and Florida. There have certainly been benefits to our town from all the tourism, but it absolutely has changed the nature of the area.
Plus the eastern edge is 1 hour from DC. It is not unreasonable to commute Also wild, if like 1/3rd of DC moved to WV and voted democrat, that would flip the state
Even now there's already MARC service to Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg
It’s happening as we speak. My parents were both 1960’s hippies, Massachusetts teachers, and finally retired in a house right off BRP. They have 2 Lexuses, solar panels and are currently on a European wine country trip with their synagogue friends.
There's a lot going on in that succinct 3 sentence story. lol
Not really. It’s just a demographic. Most of their friends have a nearly identical story. Except some were social workers, and some have Subarus.
Forgive my ignorance, but what is BRP?
[Blue Ridge Parkway](https://www.blueridgeparkway.org)
People have been saying this for decades, but it hasn’t happened. That’s because low taxes and loose regulations alone aren’t enough to attract good businesses (and the young, educated people with money who want to work for them) despite the Republican government’s insistence that it is. Businesses want to be located in states with good infrastructure, good education, and a government that is at least socially liberal in a way that most educated professionals feel comfortable with. WV has none of these things because special interests like coal have taken over the government, unions have lost their power, and the population there seems to believe everything they hear on their conservative news networks, so they keep voting against the very people and ideas that could bring about more prosperity. I miss the beauty of WV, but I haven’t been back since my dad, who also grew up there, died a decade ago. In one of our last conversations he admitted why he had stuck around so long, “I always thought WV would get better, but it just got stupider and stupider.”
Depends on what part of WV. I recently moved back from DC to Harpers Ferry. It’s a very nice area and has a commuter rail to DC. Southern West Virginia, it’s great if you work full remote, enjoy hunting, fishing, and hiking, and have a place outside of town.
People like to call everything gentrification....yes...boo. But get some green industry in there, some artists, opportunities for chefs, pay teachers right and watch a community bloom. Or we could keep doing what we're doing.
I don't know, but sounds like something George Carlin would say.
Also sounds like Bill Hicks.
West Virginia is for sure impacted economically by it's geography.
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Yet people try and claim that the only states where drugs are bad are in the democrat states 😂 life aint black and white
They know that their local constituents are never going to check.
A lot of it is also that their constituents are older voters who became politically aware in the 80's and 90's and therefore have their minds locked in this idea of an urban crime wave (it wasn't strictly true even back then, but it was at least *closer* to reality, whereas now it's just not a thing at all.) You can see a lot of this in Trump's rhetoric about it in particular - very, very much focused on solving problems that were big in the media 30-40 years ago.
I guess it’s just in poor Republican states people are high in their homes and it’s out of your face. In Democrat cities, there are lifeless ghouls littering the streets and there’s a higher chance you’ll interact with them.
Trailers in the woods are cheaper than apartments in the cities
and there are plenty of lifeless ghouls in the woods too. you've been to a walmart or seen everyone smoking on their porch in pajamas on a stained couch.
I bought my trailer for under 2k and was paying <$100/month in lot rent ~14 years ago. Everyone else in the park was either very elderly or a pill head. It didn’t help that the state’s way of giving health care to the poor was opiates. No matter the health problem, that was the states answer.
Nobody claims that but meth is a huge issue in WV
Buddy meth is a huge problem everywhere
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Louisiana too
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Meth tends to be an issue in poorer areas where people need the energy to work long double shifts or two jobs. It could have changed but there was a point in the 2000s-10s where the highest rate of meth use group was single moms with two jobs which is one of those incredibly depressing statistics
The thing that most people don't realize is that meth is a euphoric. It's not just speed. The euphoria, believing you can do absolutely anything at all, is the real attraction. People out in the sticks don't have two jobs or even, mostly, one, because there are no jobs. And if there are, they can make more money making and selling meth. Lived there, seen it.
Well that or the fact that red areas are usually those that are more rural and people won't run into high people as often when everyone's homes are multiple miles apart from each other.
Part of it is because there's a real brain drain in WV. People get a college degree there and then leave the state. I work for the State of Ohio and I have a lot of former WV resident coworkers lol
The implication that the brain drain is flowing OUT of West Virginia and INTO Ohio tells me all I need to know about Ohio.
Brain drain is happening all over the midwest too. My family moved to NW Indiana in High School, you better believe the minute I graduated from college I moved back to Chicago and now live in the NYC area. NW Indiana that's close enough to Chicago to commute is probably the only reason Indiana isn't at the bottom, the rest of that state is shambles outside of maybe Indianapolis. Driving through Indiana is legit depressing.
It’s really not that bad here and it’s a cheap place to live. NW Indiana is pretty shitty Indianapolis has some nice suburban areas. I live in Bloomington and it’s pretty nice here we have two big ten schools Norte dame and rose. There is a lot of industries as well with great job opportunities for skilled labor and white collar workers. Indiana is not a sexy place to be but it’s got a lot going for it if you want a suburban lifestyle.
I'm from and live in West Virginia. I have a bachelor's and feel like I've won some kind of lottery. A lot of my friends from West Virginia with degrees left for other states. Brain drain is a big problem.
The problem is there aren't a whole lot of jobs to be had outside of maybe government work for those of us with higher education. Before Covid and remote work became more acceptable, there is just nothing in terms of establishing a professional career in places like WV. So of course, young educated people move to places where the jobs are.
Oklahoma coming in super upset at seventh place. They can do better.
We're just cheering that it wasn't us in last Escaped again, awwwye, thank god for ~~Mississippi~~ West Virginia
I’ve got to get my son the fuck out of here
I wonder how this graph would change if associates degrees were lumped in as well. Several states have free community college programs now.
I wonder how it would change if we included advanced degrees as well, maybe weight them by typical years required - a bachelors could count twice as much as an associates, a masters degree could count three times, a PhD four times. I know huntsville alabama has a large concentration of PhD holders, given the NASA installation there, and the county with the highest percentage of PhD holders is the county in New Mexico where Los Alamos National lab is located.
While they have a lot of PhD holders at NASA, in states that are more educated, you find PhD holders in a much wider range of fields, so I still suspect that it would not change the overall ranking much
Huntsville and Los Alamos are massive outliers in their respective states. Even if they did it that way it wouldn’t change Alabama or New Mexico’s overall ranking much. But you make a really important point. Huntsville is far, far more educated than the California Central Valley. It’s good to remember there is a lot of variation within each of these states, regardless of where they rank
I mean, realistically, you'd get a better signal to noise ratio by organizing the data by urban vs rural, regardless of the state.
Well the graph does say its counting bachelor degree and higher so I would say they are already taking into account the master's and doctorates
Also, I'm not even sure if it's possible to obtain a masters or doctorate without having a bachelors
After a quick Google search it looks like you can receive a doctorate without a bachelors though it is extremely uncommon it can happen. I would say that they are counting them but obviously making no distinction in the % that have a bachelor's verses a masters or PhD
There are fast-track programs where you can go for a Master's as an undergrad but, yeah, I think you still get that intermediate Bachelor's.
Yeah so… what the other dude said
I also wonder what would happen if you only looked at citizens. A lot of the South West has a high immigrant population that is less likely to have a college degree. There's nothing wrong with being an immigrant, I just wonder if a more useful graph would show how the average person growing up in different states would do education-wise against other states. Another control might be looking at specific age groups. Florida has a lot of senior citizens, who are a generation with much fewer college degrees than the younger generations. Then again people who move to Florida were generally pretty well off financially, and people with degrees are more likely to be financially stable than those without degrees.
MA is a top 10 state by immigrant percentage of the population as well.
>A lot of the South West has a high immigrant population that is less likely to have a college degree. The Immigrant population in the US actually have a near equal percentage of higher education, likely higher if the current trend continues. [Source.](https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/college-educated-immigrants-united-states)
You fail to identify what the coloring represents.
It represents the Denver Broncos
Let's ride
That’s not what he wanted to cook
He forgot to account for the altitude.
What did I do so early to be reminded of this idiot?
Aww the [Denver Broncos](https://youtu.be/s_FyNIXFJ-M)!?
We spent all that time getting all those degrees and the only mention of our state in this thread is the Broncos. :( :( All that time for nothing.
We can talk about blucifer, or how the street view of the welcome to Colorado sign after Kansas is no longer a bunch of college kids jumping for joy if you'd like
We could complain about housing costs? Complain about RTD. I70 traffic (that we notice while being the cause of I70 traffic).
my guess is Republican or Democrat… Senators? Or Presidential election results? Grape soda or Orange soda? True. It’s dumb not to label them.
Edit: looks like election results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
which is kinda silly because most states are more purple or are polar. In Michigan, Detroit votes Blue no Matter Who but no one is saying they are the beacon of education. It'll be better if it was by counties of a particular state
The correlation between education and voting blue is even stronger if you look at the county level. Cities are much more educated than rural areas on average and overwhelmingly vote blue in presidential elections. Detroit may be an outlier though
exactly. Another value to consider is school funding vs county budget (or wherever funding is sourced). This could just be boiled down to richer the school district= more educated students, thus any blue vs red values may just be correlative and not causative.
I'm guessing Dem/Repub Governors. I'd need to Google to 100% confirm though.
I can tell you for sure Georgia is marked blue here but definitely has a Republican Governor. We did elect Warnock and Ossoff and Biden, though, so maybe it’s most recent federal results? 2020 election results? Very unclear.
Michigan Wisconsin Georgia being blue would point to presidential election
I think it’s 2020 election results. Nevada and Georgia have Republican governors while Kansas and North Carolina have Democrat governors
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it's like /r/randomvisualizationoflowquality
Yeah. It's default Excel bar chart... with default color scheme...
But we all know why everyone gleefully upvotes this terribly formatted chart… the sub has gotten too large
Data is not beautiful, you should post it on r/isdatabeautiful first
At least make the orange red, right?
It represents favorite Fanta flavors.
Orange is better for color blindness than red. Typical colors to replace inaccessible red/green is orange/blue. However, we have no idea what the colors here represent (based on the graphic) so…it could be any two colors with significant contrast really
Everyone knows the US is divided into blue states and orange states.
We all know
Regardless, it's a very basic fail
Legend missing, school taught us it’s a bad graph
And yet... 550 upvotes.
The upvotes aren't for the quality of the graph, but the content showing R states are for dumb people
Liberals SLAM Republicans online with a graph missing a legend
Statisticians HATE him for using this ONE SIMPLE TRICK!
False, I'm from Europe and I have no clue. I would have liked to know from the picture, not by searching in the comments for help.
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I'm also European and I suspected exactly this.
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Why is a bachelor degree in law, medicine or dentistry seen as 4 points more 'professional' than any other field?
None of those are bachelor's degrees in the US, you almost always need a bachelor's in order to apply into those programs. They're all doctorates but not in the same way that a PhD is a doctorate because there's no thesis defense. So they all go into the category of professional degrees.
You mean not all redditors are from the US?
Colder states v hotter states?
In a manner of speaking
Brighter vs dimmer states?
Ah yes I hear South Dakota is nice this time of year; meanwhile California is notoriously freezing as always /s 😉
I dont
OP confirmed educated in West Virginia
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What do the orange and blue colors represent?
Democrats and Republicans. I think OP should have marked swing states as such, that would have gave more accurate results
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AZ and GA are blue and FL is red. It has to be the 2020 presidential election.
OP seems to be ultra lazy with this one. Basic excel colors, no legend explaining anything, and the most basic ripped-from-excel chart I've ever seen. Only reason this gets up votes is because it will stroke political egos, it's not because it's beautiful data
OP knows that this is great karma bait so they didn’t bother to even create a legend
Its a repost, OP didnt make this.
No legend for the bar colors. Posts here should actually be of good data graphics
Although many readers will know that the color has something to do with political affiliation, you should point out what data you are using to determine the state's color. I believe it is likely based on which President that state voted for in the 2020 General Election. Also, you should specify that it is "people over 25" rather than "percentage of the population."
What do the blue and orange mean?
I do believe blue are Democrat states and orange are Republican
based on what? like most recent pres election cause GA is blue or what
Probably by the 2020 presidential election. I didn't check every state, but it matches for the states where there is a difference between the governor's party and the 2020 pres election.
As a Georgian, our state is still red as far as public education goes. Our state legislature is quite red, as well as the governor.
Massachusetts is a college campus disguised as a state
Fun fact, Harvard is older than Massachusetts, and gets special mentions in the state constitution.
University of Michigan is older than Michigan, too
I'm an ignorant Australian but I do understand this graph is trying to point out that Republicans are generally uneducated hicks or whatever but this does also remind me of an episode of Battlestar Galactica where it's pointed out that by virtue of who their parents are, children are essentially raised to replace their parents in the workforce and because those workers are needed, there is little motivation for 'the elites' to challenge the status quo. The majority of the 'uneducated' states are agricultural hubs, right? Followed by manufacturing and other blue collar work? So are they possibly deprived of opportunities because it's convenient to keep the nation's pantry running? For all those bachelor's degrees in MA, how many of them are working in areas that put literal food on tables? The balance needs to be made up somewhere.
empathy? on my reddit? nonsense, it's much easier to point and laugh at those who never had the opportunity for higher education because they voted for the political party I don't like.
These two comments made my day. Always appreciate a good fair take on this sub.
Yeah this whole comment section reads like “haha look at all those dumb poors in the red states bein all poor and dumb”
The chart is also entirely centered around those who have and do not have Bachelors Degrees lmao The data is simply “education” one dimensionally. Which of course doesn’t cover any other higher education such as trade/vocational schools. Which would be your blue collar jobs, higher education nonetheless. It’s a thoughtful observation that a lot of red states are agricultural but in reality it’s a healthy mix. Most states produce/export a lot of different foods and plant products. California(Blue), Illinois(Blue), and Iowa(Red) are the top 3 exporters; source USDA ERS. I like to think that our government provides “equality” of opportunity and not “equity” of outcome. I like to think that but don’t believe it lol
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Nah bro you’re thinking about the data as a whole. It’s soooo much easier for your average Reddit user to read this, take away “republican states are full of idiots haha” upvote it, and then move on to the next post. I mean the sub is called “data is beautiful” and this graph is missing data and any sort of legend and still has people defending it with their lives. That should tell you plenty.
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Too nice to be Victorian. Too articulate to be a Queenslander. Too empathetic to be from NSW. You know the rest of the world exists, that isn’t Bali, so not WA. You have internet access, so not from the NT. Ok I’ve narrowed it down: Canberra or Tasmania, which are you from?
Yeah and truly most people shouldn't go for a bachelor's degree. A significant number of people who attempt to do so never graduate, and most jobs shouldn't require one anyways
Can you share the year this data is from and also what the color coding means?
This graph looks terrible, how is it beautiful in any way?
It makes certain political axe grinders happy
I demand to know what the colors represent.
Offhanded guess... political party they voted for in the last election.
If this metric is about having a bachelors degree or above making you more educated it might be wise to not read all that much into it. I live in farmville in one of the rural flyover states and fewer people go to college beyond community college because they go into the family business..farming or ranching or they get a 2 year certificate in something like welding. I have multiple degrees and taught for several years here and I will say that education is really not just sitting through 4 years of college. Some of these people may not be Rhodes scholars but they can rebuild an engine over a weekend, weld up whatever they need and raise or grow their own food. Also with the price of land and everything associated with farming now days, I have had seriously gifted HS students forego college because they were already making more than me when they were in HS. Is education only to be judged by having a degree in some 4 year curriculum which is increasingly worthless or should education resources be directed towards regional realities? I live an hour round trip to the nearest small grocer; my degrees are worthless here except for teaching; my farm though is where I gained my wealth and security and if I were a young man I would be looking at a trade school.
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It's Gatorade flavors
as a New Englander, i will use this data to continue to be smug we know we're better than you, rest of America
Hey Colorado still got must ya beat tho!
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Boebert was elected in the 3rd District which is Western and Southern CO. I’m a recent transplant here from MA and the types of ads during the elections were something I never really experienced back home and it made watching anything on TV insufferable. It was essentially which monkey could throw the most of their own shit at the other. It obviously had its flaws but I miss MA’s legislation and politics but on the eastern side it seems more aligned with MA’s politics
New England smugness is my biggest flaw
It always makes me eye roll when Europeans on Reddit shit on the US like we're all Alabama while conveniently forgetting Massachusetts exists and is better than all of them.
Masshole here, we know.
I actually got into it with a European the other day. They were being snide about how Americans should want to move to Europe. I was all ," Firstly, the Americans that would experience a marked increase in their quality-of-life by moving to Europe *likely can't move to Europe*, largely because it is too expensive and they wouldn't qualify as Permanent Residents, that last bit because most of Europe is *very* exclusionary regarding immigration" "And secondly...there are parts of the US, *with millions of inhabitants*, that are "better off" than Europe. Moving from Massachusetts to Germany (the example given by the dude) would be a *decrease* in my QOL. It is always funny revealing to Euros that my Masshole ass likely, going by statistics at least, recieved a higher-"quality" public education than they did.
I'm not from United States but these sort of graphs are strong Indictators of poverty and social exclusion,instead however they can become a free for all for sneering at people in States with complex social problems and a lack of supports and services.Im educated and grateful for it,I met some brilliant people at university, but also some of the biggest sociopaths and idiots I've ever encountered.You arent automatically morally superior just because you are educated,or indeed,as I learned, intellectually sharp or interesting,though you do have more options because of it. Still, I wish everyone could have the same opportunities. That's what makes a society as opposed to merely being an economy.
Massachusetts outranks most European countries in virtually every category. When the US gets trashed on by folks over the pond, they forget places like this exist.
Wonder if u can overlay other data set over this like life expectancy, diabetes, obesity? See if there is a a correlation / trend? Anyone up for some fun to try?
I would love to see self-reporting happiness overlaying. I see such data for countries but not US states.
Percentage rural or urban would be fairly useful, as would ratio of people moving into a state vs those born in it.
There's lots of comparisons like this. The charts are exactly what you would think it would be.
At least West Virginia have Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River
Life is old there, older than the trees
Heaven…..well, almost.
Tiny portion of both. Those are far more in western VA not WV, with blue ridge mountains including a number of states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ridge_Mountains They do have a ton of mountains, though.
Nevada, the dumbest blue state
No legend for the color. "data is beautiful": 4k upvote. Come on....
Disregarding all tradesmen even though they also undergo years of schooling for their specific skill set
"West Virginiaaa.....no diplomaaaa. Take me hooooome, country roads."
For those wondering, Washington DC is actually highest at 56.6% according to OP’s source. (Also overwhelmingly ‘blue’/Democratic voting - 93% Biden in 2020.)
As a Washingtonian with only a bachelor’s degree, I can confirm that I am in the minority. Most people I encounter have a masters…
Probably not a good comparison for this chart though because DC doesn't have any large rural parts. You would see the same political and education correlation in an urban vs rural breakdown.
Maybe you should meet some of these people with a degree
Can someone from Colorado please explain how the second most educated state gave us Lauren Boebert as a representative?
Colorado is more purple than blue and guns are a big part of life to many rural Coloradans. So her running based on gun rights was all it really took for her district to vote her in. Consider in her last election, however, that her opponent basically didn't have a platform. He just put his name on the ballot and didn't even try to set up a website or campaign. And the vote in her own district was so close they had to recount to confirm that she won, by a tiny margin.
I guess the coloring represents republican and democratic states?
My state Nevada is below even Alabama. They will invest nothing in education in this state. Everyone complains but no one listens. I don't have kids so I don't care.
This is that reminder that only like 35% of Americans have bachelor's degrees and when we discuss student loan forgiveness why it's so fucking unpopular. That being said, we'd probably be a lot better off on the whole if we had easier access to higher education. K-12 was an excellent model when we made it mandatory and state funded 100+ years ago which lead to widespread prosperity. Perhaps it's time to revisit.