Connecticut tied as 13th best state

Politico, the popular online political magazine, has just issued its state of the states appraisal, in conjunction with and contradiction of the president’s declaration last week that the union’s state is strong.

Not quite for all the states, including many of the Reddest, says the magazine, which used data from 14 sources like the Census Bureau, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank the states and the District of Columbia. Politico determined two states, Minnesota and New Hampshire, are tied for best and Connecticut is tied for 13th with Maryland.

The rankings, derived from what the magazine smilingly called “our highly scientific, incontrovertible ranking process,” was inspired by the great H.L. Mencken, who ranked the states in his “American Mercury” magazine in 1931. Some of the results are remarkably similar, indicating the states haven’t changed all that much in 84 years. This is especially true of what were then the Cotton States and now, the Red.

But before we look back, we’ll take a closer look at old number 13. Politico found Connecticut has the highest per capita income, $37,892, of all 50 states but is surpassed by the District of Columbia, with its good government jobs helping it reach a per capita income of $45,200. 

At the same time, this state has 10.2 percent of its residents living below the poverty level, too high for the state with the highest income but still the fourth lowest in the country. Neighbors like Massachusetts (11.4 percent) and New York, at 15.3 percent, are not doing as well. 

Eighty-nine percent of the state’s adults are at least high school graduates, but 20 states rank pretty well, with many over 70 percent. The homeowner rate in the state is 67.8 percent, but many are in the low 70s. You have a life expectancy of 80.8 years if you live in Connecticut, tying us for third best in the country, compared to life in Mississippi, which ends in 75 years. 

In addition to top-ranked Minnesota and New Hampshire, the survey found better living than Connecticut offers in Vermont, Utah, Colorado, Massachusetts, Iowa, Maine, Washington, New Jersey, Montana and Nebraska, in that order.

At the bottom were five former states of the Confederacy, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, also in that order.

When H.L. Mencken was doing the ranking and more colorful interpreting in 1931, he declared Massachusetts the best state in the 48, despite its unfortunate record as a censor of naughty books, and Connecticut second best. 

Mencken reported his findings based on tables, “selected for their apparent fairness,” that related to wealth, education and general culture, health and public order, not unlike Politico’s measurements. 

These tables, concluded Mencken, “seem to show clearly that the New England states lead the country on all counts, with the Pacific and Middle Western states following and the Cotton States at the bottom.” 

Politico’s 2015 rankings seem to show some similarities, with New England slipping a bit while midwestern and far western states were moving up and the old Confederacy not doing any better than it did in 1931, except from converting to unquestioning Democrats to unquestioning Republicans. 

Mencken had Connecticut second in wealth, fourth in education, fourth in health and sixth in what he called public order. (The South had a bit of a problem in the latter category because of its penchant for lynching.)

The bottom of Mencken’s list of 49, without Alaska and Hawaii back then, were Arkansas in 45th place, followed by Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, remarkably similar to Politico’s basement dwellers, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. 

When Mississippi was ranked 51st in Politico last year, its governor wrote a protesting letter, only to find the state in the same position again this year. Mencken noted in 1931 that, like today, it seems, “the Cotton Belt is the least advanced part of the United States and of all the Cotton States, Mississippi is the most unfortunate, lacking the coal and iron of Alabama, the oil of Texas and the trade of Louisiana and home to hordes of barbaric peasants, led by a government in the hands of office seekers of low character.” 

Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.