Majority of the nation’s ‘happiest’ cities are in California
 

Dude! Of course!

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/maj...res-where/amp/

Cowabunga!!! :cool:

I think that secret been out awhile judging by the population and real estate prices.....

Love the state, it has it all.

Angry, disgusting "conservatives" have moved to TX and ID. Good riddance.

Another of those meaningless comparisons based on metrics, in this case primarily income level. :rolleyes:

BTW cities are inanimate and don't have feelings. :cool:

That atmo-river hit you yet, Chicks?

Yep. Did manage to walk the dog today, but probably not for rest of week. Snow pack looking better every day!

As happy as the folks in California might be, the happiest folks on the planet are in Denmark.

Lately, it's been Finland, followed by Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway. What's notable is that the public policies that result in this degree of happiness are abhorred by Republicans.

Speaking of Denmark... Seaside Hotel on PBS is a pretty decent 9-season Danish show about the working and privileged classes in the leadup to and aftermath of WWII, if you're at all interested in period dramas.

https://www.pbs.org/show/seaside-hotel/

I'm an adoptee recently reunified with four of my half siblings after a separation of just short of 75 years. Anyway, I have a half brother who is a researcher and college professor in Sweden. Previously lived in Belgium and Denmark. During a four day visit with us, I picked his brain about living in the EU and Sweden. I specifically asked him about the higher taxes, but also issues of cost of healthcare, cost of education, maternity leave, gun control, and women's reproductive rights. His very basic answer was this...

Yes...our taxes are higher. Do we care? No we don't. Why? Because basically, we don't have to worry about any of that other stuff that Americans chronically worry and complain about...its all covered.

Wow! Congrats on finding your sibs, Alan. Even at this stage of 75 years, that's really cool.

Glad to read you were able to find and get to know them.

My Wife's Father was adopted and never was able to find his twin Sister or birth Parents. Not really wanting to try at all...


Did not like talking about them. Much preferred talking of the family who adopted him.

Just say bridges burned.....:(


Wife is of mixed views on with DNA and us being tested what is or if's with her Dads biological family.:eek:

Well...interesting and very different from my experience. It's all anonymous here on the web, and the parents and adults of my childhood years are all dead, so I dont have to worry about hurting anybody's feelings.

My adoptive parents shared nothing about my origins, they feigned ignorance and there was the exteme privacy of the adoption systems. It was a lie, of course...I found out after my mom's death in 2006 that I was adopted by them because they believed my adoptive dad was also my biological father throu an affair he had with my birth mother. My adoptive mom was quite the martyr...after she died an aunt disclosed that she once said, "I wasn't going to let my husband's son go to an orphanage." In her papers I found the papers from my open adoption, along with a news clipping from The Chigago Sun July 1945, where my older half brother and sister were picked up by child protective services when our mother, pregnant with me at the time, didn’t come back to pick them up from the babysitter. So...I had names, but I was unable to track them down, until I got an Ancestry match to my niece in 2018.

Why couldn't I find them? Even though it was a rare open adoption? Our mother gave us all away, gave away all her children, the same week in March of 1946, my brother and sister were 5 and 4 years old, I was four months. They went to the same family, I went to the alleged bio-father and his wife. Since we have re-connected, my sister has said several times..."It's a mini-series."

I finally did the DNA in 2018 just to determine if I was half Jewish, turns out I'm half Irish (Leahy for christ's sake) and half mixed western European. The family was the wonderful benefit of the DNA. We've loved each other since the day we made phone contact. There's no history to screw it up, there's no reason not to love each other.

The three of us are pissed off though. Pissed off at those we call "the adults". The adults, who when we were children, and there were plenty of them, knew exactly what my name was and exactly where I was, where I went to school, and where I lived. None of them said a word. Our mother's entire family knew it. My sister's dad's family (we had three different dads, of course) all knew it. Our mother died in 1988. She had reconnected with my brother and sister, in the 1960's and never said a word to them. I found the evidence in 2006, but I couldn't find them, their last names changed when they were adopted. My sibs didn't know until 2018 when my niece from the DNA called her dad and said, "Daddy, you have a younger brother." My adoptive parents knew...it was a goddamn open adoption. They knew exactly where my mother was, her name, and that she had two more boys, two more half-brothers, who we can't find. We are mightily pissed off sometimes.

Sorry this is so off topic and so long.

Glad the contact has been rewarding for you, Ike.

I am adopted. My adoptive family is very loving. Never had strong interest in finding what I did not regard as my 'true parents,' but was given an Ancestry membership one day and did identify my biological father. He was deceased. There are half-siblings, and just one of their descendants was a member on Ancestry, but he did not respond to a couple of messages. So that has been that. Got birth records from state, but mother's ID was redacted on them. Haven't done anything since.

I've also stayed away from the HS class reunions. The hell with the past, I say.

We don't do the class reunion stuff either.

It's always good to hear from someone who's adoption experience was a good one. My childhood was not all that bad really. But it became pretty clear to me later in life that it was much different from my younger brother's experience...he was their bio kid. I was obviously a constant reminder of my dad's infidelity to both my parents, which turned out to be a repetitive problem for my dad.

I was also able to get my original birth certificate...but here in Illinois, nothing is redacted. One other interesting tidbit, "father" is listed on my birth certificate as my older sister's father. He was not my bio-father, my sister and I are half siblings. Our mom had yet another boyfriend while he was on a US Navy mine sweeper in Europe, when I was conceived. He obviously knew he wasn't my father, but he allowed his name to be put on the B/C and he signed all the adoption papers as the "father." And he walked out on our irresponsible mother as soon as the three of us were placed for adoption. He had more than enough of her by that time. I want to say he was a decent sort, but his daugher ended up adopted as well, and she had to track him down when she was in her 20's...so decent in some ways, not all that much in other ways.

Mini-series.

My childhood might make one of the 'after-school specials' with the right writer. 7th and 8th grade were sort of sticky. But can't see a mini-series in it.... No adoption-related drama at any rate I wouldn't say.

The 10 most expensive U.S. states to retire in — California didn’t make the list
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/19/most...retire-in.html

Sorry to expose yet another Reich-wing myth...

Not much "myth-busting" going on there, Chickie. All blue states on that list.

Meanwhile, California is just south of nice blue states Hawaii and Mass as the most expensive places to live. Unsurprisingly, the top five states that folks are moving out of are mostly nice and blue:

New York

Illinois

Hawaii

California

Louisiana

While those (mostly blue) states (and mine, Maryland) are indeed relatively expensive to live in, the upside is that once you get into the real estate market in those states you have an asset that will continue to appreciate unlike those in deep red states where nobody wants to live and work (if gainful employment even exists in those states (e.g., Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia)).

In other words, states that are cheap to live in are often cheap because fewer people want to spend their working years there because of shitty job prospects, lousy schools and fewer cultural amenities. After spending a life building a nest egg in these blue states with their plentiful high-paying jobs, appreciating real estate, good education and cultural amenities, retirees often want to move to places that are cheaper because they no longer need a job or good schools for their kids and they want to cash out their hefty nest eggs that they built in blue states.

Anecdotally, I know plenty of people who have moved to places like Florida due to lower taxes and warmer weather, but none of them moved there during their working years. People that move during their careers move for advancement/opportunity and that advancement is generally more available in blue states than red states (look at the average income and education levels in blue states vs red states (it ain't even close)). Go to the economically vibrant blue cities and states and you'll find that a significant percentage of people you meet come from elsewhere and came for the opportunities while in red cities and states, you find a large percentage of people are locals who don't have the experience or education to make it in a more vibrant economy are are effectively trapped in the home states.

Although the greatest red state of them all, Texas, puts this analysis right on its head. :cool:

Yes and no. The state is indeed red. The economic engines and cultural centers are all Democratic cities/counties.

I do so enjoy pointing out your self serving misstatements and then watch you try to spin out of them. :cool:

It's hardly a misstatement to point out the most expensive areas of the country also happen to be the economic engines, educational leaders and cultural centers of the country (and also predominately Democratic).

Leave it to someone who lives in what many of its residents comically believe to be the center of the universe, the DFW metroplex, to challenge that notion.

Nice work. Who fuckin' cares.

Not red forever. Cruz only beat O'Rourke by 3 percentage points in 2018. Yeah...O'Rourke lost to Abbott by 11 points in 2022, but that's only because even Texas Democrats were already tired of proven loser Beto O'Rourke. Get some really top quality candidates for statewide elections and we shall see just how red Texas still is...if it's actually red at all.

Think Texas has a cheaper tax burden than California? Think again.
https://fortune.com/2023/03/23/state...ax-burden/amp/

Oh, those pesky facts! Always getting in the way of a good argument. : rolleyes:

To the best of my knowledge there is no center of the universe. :cool:

In this country it's Manhattan, DC and LA residents who think what you are misclaiming about me. You live in the DC area IIRC.

The distant exurbs, far outside the beltway. I bowhunt behind the house, my gun club is 10 minutes away as are over 100 miles of hiking and mountain-biking trails. For whatever reason, my many trips to the DFW Metroplex always left me with the impression that folks there far overestimated the region's importance/influence outside its borders. NY, LA and DC have some justification for feeling that way. DFW doesn't.:cool: Maybe it's just my animus towards the Cowboys (though I despise Dan Snyder's team every bit as much, if not more).

Have resided in East Dallas since '80 and have never met the types you're referencing, other than the arrogant that exist everywhere. So, it is probably you and your supercilious attitude toward those who don't perceive things the way you do. :cool:

Which reminds me of a saying: Can't see the forest for the trees.

I lived in San Antonio for 3 years and have traveled extensively across the state of Texas for decades from Texarkana to El Paso from Corpus Christi to Amarillo and from Laredo to Wichita Falls and I never experienced the "center of the universe mentality" anywhere other than the DFW Metroplex.