Money’s “Best Places to Live” is Not the List I Want to See

Money Magazine came out with yet another list of the best places to live. The article describes wondrous places full of affordable housing and low unemployment. What may not be readily apparent is that the cheap houses and easy jobs exist mostly because nobody wants to live in these  dark, snowy regions of our nations belly button, housed next to mostly people forced to relocate by various witness protection programs.
If  there’s a truth revealed by these lists and their popularity, it’s this; even in today’s hyper-connected society, we really have very little idea of how where we live stacks up with other parts of the country that are not California wine country, or hurricane ravaged areas of N.O. If I thought about relocating from my local municipality to another one in another part of the country, i really would have no clue  as to how they compare.  
Seeing lists like this is mostly pointless, for most of us anyway, as we relocate  based on where the jobs are, and not to end up in a city that ended up on  some magazine’s list. So ultimately what I want to know, what all of us really need to know, isn’t a list of places that we need to move to, it’s a list of places that are to be moved away from, to be shunned, avoided like Chernobyl.  Yes, what we really need is a list of “The Worst Places to Live”. Money Magazine, are you listening?