For centuries, philosophers from Socrates and Augustine to John Rawls have asked, “What is the good life?”
Now, CNBC has come up with the answer: Apparently, it is abortion, childcare, and voting without photo identification.
Who knew human flourishing aligned so perfectly with Democratic Party priorities?
CNBC’s pronouncement on what constitutes a good life comes as part of its annual “America’s Top States for Business” rankings, which do include some perfectly reasonable categories, such as “Infrastructure,” “Cost of Doing Business,” and “Workforce.”
Then there is CNBC’s “Quality of Life” category, which it decided to weigh even more heavily this year. According to veteran site-selection consultant Tom Stringer, more companies in the post-COVID era are moving to places where people already want to live.
“You’re seeing corporate industry chasing people now rather than people chasing jobs,” Stringer told CNBC.
Stringer may be right. Companies may indeed be following people to the places they want to live rather than expecting workers to follow jobs. But shouldn’t CNBC then have looked at where actual people are moving — and why?
That is not what it did. Instead, CNBC assembled a laundry list of Democratic Party cultural priorities and simply asserted that these are the reasons people prefer some states over others.
Take Arkansas, which CNBC ranked as the 10th-worst state in which to live. Arkansas’s crime? It has “among the weakest protections against discrimination, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.”
Fascinating. Does CNBC really think people consult the National Conference of State Legislatures’ anti-discrimination rankings before deciding where to move? And why, exactly, are Arkansas’s anti-discrimination laws supposedly so inadequate?
According to the NCSL website, Arkansas law protects against discrimination based on race or color, sex or gender, ancestry, and religion. Bluer states such as New Jersey also protect marital status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Apparently, CNBC thinks people are fleeing Arkansas for New Jersey because Arkansas does not force bakers to celebrate same-sex weddings.
Oklahoma lands on CNBC’s list of the worst states in which to live because it has a low minimum wage; Alabama, because it is a right-to-work state; Utah, because it has relatively few institutional childcare options; and Tennessee, because of a “bathroom law” requiring transgender people to use facilities designated for their sex at birth.
Again, how many families are leaving Tennessee because it does not permit men to use women’s bathrooms?
Almost none. In fact, contrary to CNBC’s ranking, Tennessee is one of the fastest-growing states in the country, with far more people moving in each year than moving out. Compare that with New Jersey, which CNBC ranks as the fourth-best state in which to live. New Jersey loses thousands of residents every year to red states such as Tennessee and Florida, which, according to CNBC, are terrible places to live.
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CNBC can keep defining the good life according to blue-state priorities. Americans are ranking the states themselves, with moving trucks. By that measure, Tennessee, Texas, and Oklahoma are winning, while New Jersey, New York, Illinois, and California are losing.
The woke editors at CNBC may rank the states, but Americans are deciding where life is actually better.