Why I trust U-Haul more than U.S. News
U.S. News says North Carolina is only the 13th best state in the country. Tell that to the moving trucks.
North Carolina is the best state in the country.
I know this, and you presumably know it, too. Otherwise, subscribing to a newsletter called Longleaf Politics was an odd decision.
But apparently the U.S. News & World Report disagrees. Its new “Best States” ranking puts North Carolina at No. 13, behind Utah, both Dakotas, Nebraska and — most offensively — Minnesota.
The U.S. News states list does not carry anything close to the cultural weight of its university rankings, which helped reshape admissions and university behavior across the country. This one mostly produces a few scattered social-media graphics.
But since I dove deep on the CNBC rankings that put North Carolina at No. 2 for business, I figured I’d look at this one as well.
On the whole, U.S. News tried to rank virtually everything and discovered that the things easiest to count become the things that count most.
As such, the ranking suffers less from political bias than database bias. If there is a convenient federal data set f…