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Comment by mrtranscendence | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: they would be moving from the state with the highest median household income to the state with the lowest. I suppose this would only make Maryland richer by that metric.

Personally, I’d rather cut my own foot off with a rusty steak knife than live in West Virginia, which has basically nothing going for it except some decent wilderness. It doesn’t help that I have relatives there who love the confederate flag and decorate the back of their truck with a few iron crosses. Maybe they’d fit in among the residents of western Maryland.

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Western Maryland has a pretty low cost of living. I live in the Baltimore/DC area and have co-workers who live in Frederick because they could get a large house for cheap (and 3 the counties being discussed in the article are to the west of Frederick).

If the counties were able to succeed and join WV, I wonder how many Marylanders would move out there for the low taxes.

The Post had a cover story a few years ago on people moving to cheaper cities in the region. I still love living in the District, even though it's not cheap.

My genetic grandfather live in West Virginia, i'd say it is way more diverse than you think it is. I depends where you go though. People who live there are great, i thought at the time i met the only true left candidate in the US (It was before Bernie was a thing).

Back-to-land'er hippies communities are a joy to frequent: they play music every time they're not hiking, brewing, building their home or tending their garden. They also tried to do their own festival. If you want to met some of them, you have to try producer markets and talk to the guys there, or just go to a bar where music is played and talk to the musicians.

You can also participate in a home brew contest, you'll taste horrible stuff, pretty good stuff, and meet wonderful people..

I drove through rural West Virginia about 6 years ago. Along the road I spotted a broken down van, and I pulled over to see if they needed help. There were three of them, and they were each twice as big as me, and I’m 120kg. I gave a ride to one guy who barely fit in the passenger seat. We got to talking, and he was a retired coal miner. Super friendly. About 30km down the road, he asked me to drop him off at a tiny grocery store so he could walk around and find his preacher, who also happened to be the local tow truck driver.

All the wealth in Maryland is concentrated around DC, so western Marylanders probably don't feel much connection at all to easterners. I'd imagine it is similar elsewhere - people in upstate NY probably feel a stronger connection to Vermonters than they do to NYC folk.

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