Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

desmoinesregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 76 posts

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#31

Post by zdragnar »

danielecook wrote: post #16
danso wrote: post #2

Iowa is a great state. The college towns and Des Moines (the capital) are as fun and forward-thinking as any other state's college towns I've been to, and cost of living is hard to beat. Ironically, in the Related links for this article, there's a story titled, "Des Moines was just named the nation's unhappiest city for workers" [0]. When I was in Iowa, DM wasn't much fun despite being the biggest city in Iowa, but I…

Des Moines has a large network of skywalks connecting many of the buildings downtown. I think it’s actually a bad idea as far as urban planning is concerned. When you are in the skyways it feels a little bit like walking around a giant airport. They also draw up all the pedestrian traffic and make the city look deserted outside. Not sure if that has anything to do with it but I don’t think it helps.

So do Minneapolis and St. Paul. Let me tell you, they are an absolute blessing in the winter months. Heck, they're nice in the summer months too if you need to cut across a few blocks and don't want to walk amongst the traffic, or it's crazy humid out.

IMHO, I think they're really beneficial. MSP / STP will never be the urban utopia that everyone sees NYC or random European cities as in terms of walkability; we've gotten what, a foot of snow between two days in the last week? It's not unheard of for weeks of summer to break 90 or 100 degrees F.

Heck, the two cities are only a half million between them; the "metropolitan area" constitutes over EIGHT THOUSAND square miles for a grand total of a little over three million people. Traffic- cars, busses, and light rail- are all here to stay, and that means walking city streets is only as nice as you enjoy breathing exhaust fumes and the noise of tires.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#32

Post by DoreenMichele »

grahamburger wrote: post #10

Here's the whole list: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings

WA #6

CA #32

So glad I relocated. My kids and I constantly refer to being thrilled to have moved to civilization. It is nice to see somewhat objective data backing that up.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#33

Post by surf_n_terf »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #12
Yhippa wrote: post #3

Can Iowans confirm Iowa Is Great? Also interesting that the bottom 10 states are ones that voted Trump in the last election. Perhaps they figured he would help bring more prosperity to them.

Unhappy and desperate people are more vulnerable to bombastic promises and convenient scapegoats.

Or, perhaps, those states and the populations of those states have been overwhelmingly negatively effected by the economic and immigration policies of the previous 8 years of government.

But, you know, you can just call them racists and morons instead. That's the Liberal thing to do, of course.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#34

Post by bb88 »

ourmandave wrote: post #28
Yhippa wrote: post #3

Can Iowans confirm Iowa Is Great? Also interesting that the bottom 10 states are ones that voted Trump in the last election. Perhaps they figured he would help bring more prosperity to them.

Yes! Come to Iowa if you value your 2nd Admendment Rights. Currently they're in a race to surpass Florida as the most gun friendly state. Recently passed Stand Your Ground. https://www.nraila.org/articles/20170630/iowa-critical-self-... Adding the 2nd Amendment to the state constitution passed a subcommittee on Jan 26th. https://www.nraila.org/articles/20180126/iowa-right-to-keep-... Working on Courthouse Carry and S…

I can't tell if you're serious or not. lol.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#35

Post by hugh4life »

bb88 wrote: post #18

I moved away from Iowa, as have a lot of people over the years. The growth rate lately has been about .5% per year, and the population actually shrunk in the 1980's. [1] The weather sucks there. It's cold as fuck in the winter, and hot and humid as fuck in the summer. There's maybe 4 enjoyable weeks the entire year. The politics suck. Steve King is a US Rep from Iowa. For whatever reason Iowa keeps electing him in, a…

Iowa seems boring to me, but they feature an extreme amount of communities with the greatest income mobility(especially in the districts Steve King represents) in the country.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/i...

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#36

Post by ourmandave »

city41 wrote: post #5
danso wrote: post #2

Iowa is a great state. The college towns and Des Moines (the capital) are as fun and forward-thinking as any other state's college towns I've been to, and cost of living is hard to beat. Ironically, in the Related links for this article, there's a story titled, "Des Moines was just named the nation's unhappiest city for workers" [0]. When I was in Iowa, DM wasn't much fun despite being the biggest city in Iowa, but I…

I got my CS degree from the University of Iowa. Iowa City is a nice town. My parents have lived in Cedar Rapids for the past 20 years, so I've visited Iowa often. I wouldn't be opposed to moving there, but I also have no desire to make it a target destination. The tech landscape seems to largely be older, more conservative companies: Rockwell Collins, NCS Pearson, GoDaddy, John Deere, etc.

Met a lot of people from Chicago who either went to U of I or sent their kids. Nobody seems to want to stay though.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#37

Post by EpicEng »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #11
Dangeranger wrote: post #4

Here's how Iowa ranked in each category: - Infrastructure: 1st - Health care: 3rd - Opportunity: 4th - Education: 5th - Quality of life: 9th - Crime: 15th - Economy: 17th - Fiscal stability: 21st My gut feeling is that this report seriously undervalues Economy and Fiscal Stability categories. After all “It’s the economy stupid”.

I'm not sure. I'd rather be poor in a trailer in New Hampshire than rich in California.

Well I think you're about the only one with that opinion

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#38

Post by jonknee »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #14
_RPM wrote: post #9

Who wouldn’t want to live in the middle of a bunch of corn fields?

It's weird how people don't realize that the flyover states also have big, metropolitan cities. When I moved to Kentucky a friend of mine honestly asked me if people wore shoes there.

Iowa has no big metropolitan cities. The largest is Des Moines and it's only a little larger than 200,000 people.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#39

Post by peterangular »

vadimberman wrote: post #21

I guess the statistics that would matter more to the HN readers are not there, so I'll ask: what about the tech opportunities specifically?

Very slim, and entry pay for development jobs is outrageously low in my experience. If you're in tech, go for a coast.

Anecdotal evidence from an Iowa > Cali transplant that almost tripled his income within a couple of years after moving.

Re: Iowa ranks as the best state to live in America, U.S. News says

#40

Post by [deleted] »

SilasX wrote: post #13
bb88 wrote: post #8

Stop posting links with autoplay videos. Just stop it. You may think it's awesome, but it's not. When the autoplay videos start people hit the back button immediately and don't bother to read the article.

We’re doing a UI blacklist? Add “fixed floating headers/footers on mobile that make me feel like I’m looking at your sight through blinds”.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN