Most Miserable Cities in the US

[ThePhanastasio]

Business Insider's list of ten most miserable cities

Damn.

I live in Ashland, KY (part of #2; apparently #1 last year) and Charleston, WV is still pretty much "local." It is in our news viewing area, and I can get there in 45 minutes or so on the interstate.

People still seem happier here than any military base I've been on, though. Fort Bragg, NC especially. Interesting none of those made the list.

[Key]

I'm surprised Seattle isn't on there since almost everybody who lives here is constantly complaining about the weather. I personally never really had a problem with the rain to sun to rain to sun to rain thing. I like it.

[Engine]

Originally Posted by Ki

I'm surprised Seattle isn't on there since almost everybody who lives here is constantly complaining about the weather. I personally never really had a problem with the rain to sun to rain to sun to rain thing. I like it.

Seattle's not going to show up on a "most miserable" list made by Business Insider anytime soon. It's about business and technology value, not the weather.

[Key]

Originally Posted by Engine

Seattle's not going to show up on a "most miserable" list made by Business Insider anytime soon. It's about business and technology value, not the weather.

Considering Seattle is the home of some of the more successful businesses as well as being a great place to start a small business, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

Also... Coolest Small Businesses In Seattle - Business Insider

You were saying?

[Engine]

Originally Posted by Ki

Considering Seattle is the home of some of the more successful businesses as well as being a great place to start a small business, this doesn't make a lot of sense.

Also... Coolest Small Businesses In Seattle - Business Insider

You were saying?

Umm.. I was saying that Seattle is a well known hub of business and industry?

[djchameleon]

Seattle does get listed for the weather on other lists but yeah not a business oriented article.

Especially since you guys just got 15 dollar min. wage vote passed recently.

Edit:

Actually the index for that article uses these criteria: Life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

Still Seattle isn't that bad.

[Psy-Fi]

Janis Joplin was born in town No.4, Beaumont-Port Arthur, Texas. As I recall, she never had any kind words for her hometown.

An excerpt from "Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin" by Alice Echols...

"What's happening never happens there" was how Janis summed up life in her hometown. Port Arthur was so suffocating it felt as if it might suck the life right out of you, especially if you were a smart and curious girl like Janis. Dwarfed by oil refineries, chemical plants, and row after row of huge, squat oil-storage tanks, the town seemed like an afterthought to this vast industrial sprawl. At night when the burning flares from the refineries turned the sky "an eerie doomsday red" the place even looked like hell on earth. Then there was the smell, what some residents called "the smell of money." The whole "Golden Triangle” of Port Arthur, Orange, and Beaumont stank like a rotten egg. There was no way to avoid the fumes; in those days the plants simply blew all the gas out into the open air. At Lamar Tech, where Janis began college, the fumes from a nearby sulfur plant could become so noxious they'd melt the girls' nylons. After a day on campus, "you'd end up feeling like you'd eaten a book of matches." To Janis and her friends, the Golden Triangle was a smelly, stultifying, mosquito-ridden swamp—"a foot fungus" growing along the Texas-Louisiana border, wrote Molly Ivins. Even that organ of Establishment-think Business Week named Port Arthur one of the "ten ugliest towns on the planet."

[Mr. Charlie]

I wouldn't pay these kinda lists any mind. Happiness comes from within and cannot be gauged by external factors. The only way to know if people are happy is to ask them. The kinda data these lists use to reach their conclusions make life easier, not necessarily happier.

I've travelled a fair bit in my time and the happiest people I ever met were not in America or the UK or France or Germany or Israel or any other wealthy nation. The happiest people I ever met were poverty stricken individuals in Nigeria and in India and they had nothing, they lived in dead end s**thole villages with no healthcare, one of them had half a leg and was selling bananas at the sidde of the road, and yet there was more happiness in their eyes than I've seen in anyone.

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by Mr. Charlie

The happiest people I ever met were poverty stricken individuals in Nigeria and in India and they had nothing, they lived in dead end s**thole villages with no healthcare, one of them had half a leg and was selling bananas at the sidde of the road, and yet there was more happiness in their eyes than I've seen in anyone.

I think you're confusing their innocence of first world issues as a reason for them being happy and to be fair measuring happiness is not an easy thing to do.

The nearest I've seen concerning this and the one I'd most agree with, would be the reports over the years that say the happiest nations are normally the Scandinavian countries and the common factors here are a high standard of living, good disposable income, good working environment, excellent social security system, a clean environment, low crime and a liberal setting. In fact the only really negative factor that comes out of that area tends to revolve around the climate.

[Mr. Charlie]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

I think you're confusing their innocence of first world issues as a reason for them being happy and to be fair measuring happiness is not an easy thing to do.

The nearest I've seen concerning this and the one I'd most agree with, would be the reports over the years that say the happiest nations are normally the Scandinavian countries and the common factors here are a high standard of living, good disposable income, good working environment, excellent social security system, a clean environment, low crime and a liberal setting. In fact the only really negative factor that comes out of that area tends to revolve around the climate.

I'm not saying income, security, healthcare etc. don't improve life, nor am I saying poverty is a prime requisite for happiness, only that it is propogated and nourished from within.