Greetings from CA,
New poster here. I haven't signed up yet as I am still researching a small handful of state issues. One big one came up, though, and I haven't heard as much weight placed on it as I think maybe should be.
Basically the conversation went like this:
Her: "All those states are cold"
Me: "Yeah, I know. But some are better than others"
Her: "I just don't want a lot of snow. Definately nothing more than Cincinnati" (we lived there for a few years, left partly because of the weather)
Me: "If there's someplace not so miserable, would it be worth it to you to have some real freedom?"
Her: "Maybe"
So that's the deal. For some people (like my wife), the answer is maybe if the weather's tolerable, but definateley not if the weather's lousy. NH seems popular among posters but it is absolultely off limits for us (too much snow). The only eastern state that's under consideration at this point is DE. I haven't finished doing my homework about DE, so I'm not even sure if it will make the grade. That leaves us with the western states.
http://www.climatesource.com/cd11/snow_us.gifThis is an annual average snowfall map. I don't know exactly the ranges for each color but it looks like the greens are in the 20-30 inch range, give or take and the purples are up in the 60 or 70-90 or 100 range. You can figure out the rest from looking at it.
The bottom line is, ID is clearly the winner from a weather standpoint. Boise is in the good weather part of Idaho. It gets 20.5 inches of snow per year, a little under 12 inches of precip (rain, presumably), and has an average annual temp of over 50 degrees. That makes it the only city that we could qualify to live in (based on air travel issues with my job) that has less snowfall than Cincinnati. Yes, my wife is just that stubborn.
Does that mean MT is out? Maybe not. But Idaho definately has advantages from our perspective. There is a greater diversity of weather, which will appeal to a larger percentage of people (DE has no weather diversity). The geography is much more diverse, the elections are nearly 30% cheaper, the job growth is projected to be more than double of MT (doesn't make a difference to me since I'll keep my current job), is less dependant on Federal funds, and has a high percentage of voters who favor conservative and libertarian presidentail candidates. Of course, it also has that Canadian border which, combined with the weather issues, makes it a much stronger candidate than WY (IMO).
There's one other major disadvantage to NH as I see it. So far, I haven't seen this mentioned. The NH federal dollar received to taxed ratio is significantly less than 1. That means that NH gets back fewer federal dollars than it gives. While that seems good (less federally dependant), it could actually be a significant disadvantage. Imagine our federal representatives going to Washington to negotiate a no-tax for no-benefit exchange. They won't be well received if they're from NH because it's a bad deal for the federal government (they'll lose $.29 for every dollar in a complete exchange). On the other hand, if they're from ID, they make $.24 for every dollar in a complete exchange. While that's a cost to us, it would make it more likely that we'll be successful at completing negotiations for more economic autonomy. What about MT? Like ID, it's a good deal for the feds. Except, it's worse for us. Instead of losing only $.24 per dollar, we'll lose $.67 per dollar. That's cost that ultimately will affect our economy.
Okay, gotta run... Comments are, of course, welcome ;-)
V-