Vermont makes History

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, and Kansas are all more rural than Vermont, and all are richer than Vermont.

If you are using GDP per capita this is true. By Human Development Index, however, Vermont is richer more developed (which at least TRIES to be a holistic quality of life measurement, even though it fails in several respects, unlike mere GDP, which only measures the amount of mammon that an area has) than every one of those states except Colorado and Minnesota. Maine, Pennsylvania, and Delaware have lower Human Development Indices than Vermont does.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, and Kansas are all more rural than Vermont, and all are richer than Vermont.

If you are using GDP per capita this is true. By Human Development Index, however, Vermont is richer more developed (which at least TRIES to be a holistic quality of life measurement, even though it fails in several respects, unlike mere GDP, which only measures the amount of mammon that an area has) than every one of those states except Colorado and Minnesota. Maine, Pennsylvania, and Delaware have lower Human Development Indices than Vermont does.

GDP was a measure created by Keynesian economists in order to make left-wing economic policies look superior (since all government spending is added to GDP, which is why the aforementioned "welfare states" are high).  Finding that even their own tailor-made measure makes their policies look bad, they have since been forced to come up with still more ridiculous measures in order to justify their positions.

I agree with you that GDP is faintly absurd (though probably for different reasons), but it only makes the policies look bad if one's chief concern is money. HDI is actually less ridiculous than GDP, since it takes into account at least some of the things (educational and health institutions) that make someplace actually worth living in.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Mississippi isn't poor by any reasonable or objective definition.  Vermont, however, is in fact the second-poorest state in the Northeast.

Goldmined.

I'm glad you admire my comic skills, and Mississippi is still richer than Greece.

No it isn't.

And we don't marry our cousins.

2010 GDP per capita, Greece: $28,100
2010 GDP per capita, Mississippi: $33,000

And wrong stereotype (that's Appalachia)..

Trust me dude. We're much better off than the sh**thole under the name "State of Mississippi".
Sometimes instead of looking numbers on your laptop screen, you must get out and experience the real world.

Mississippi is the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway, also known as the "Father of Capitalism". What is your state known for?

Ernest Hemingway was born in Illinois (are you maybe thinking of Faulkner?), was a writer of fiction, and Greece is not an American state. If you don't know what Greece is 'known for' there's something wrong with you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I agree with you that GDP is faintly absurd (though probably for different reasons), but it only makes the policies look bad if one's chief concern is money. HDI is actually less ridiculous than GDP, since it takes into account at least some of the things (educational and health institutions) that make someplace actually worth living in.

I'm not sure why that would be high for Vermont, then, since they have crappy schools and you don't exactly want to be in urgent need of open heart surgery over there.  I suspect the fact that Vermonters tend to have more healthy lifestyles (and therefore don't need to go to hospitals as often in the first place) is artificially boosting their numbers.  That's a cultural/geographical thing, not really related to government policy.

As a product of Vermont public schools up through fifth grade (private schools after that), I will grant you that the education system has major, major flaws. You may have a point regarding the lifestyle/cultural component (which I'd regard as a more 'real' measure of an area's wellbeing anyway, with government action or inaction being the artificial component by comparison), but remember that a part of that culture, at least nowadays, entails voting for the sort of people who are liable to enact single-payer health care.