>Mississippi's GDP per capita being similar to that of France, Italy or Spain is really hard to reconcile with the fact that many of us would love to live in the latter countries and couldn't be paid to move to Mississippi.

It seems to me that there are many people who say things like that about most of the less-populated states.

To be honest, I'm glad. After moving to SF from a small Midwestern city, I've realized that I couldn't be paid to live here. Even if we don't mention the extremely high cost of living in San Francisco, if we just consider the negative externalities:

- Garbage everywhere

- Constant noise

- Unbelievable homeless problem

- High crime rates

- Extreme clash of culture (I see anti-tech graffiti on my way to work every day; I regularly overhear pretentious "how could you not be in tech?" conversations)

- Infinite suburbia

- High rates of mental illness (not that mental illness is a bad thing, but I think it is at least somewhat telling about the environment)

I'd still rather live back home in the Midwest, even if we didn't talk about explicitly quantifiable costs of living. There is an entire America out there between the coasts that has absolutely none of the things I just listed.