The world is a big and diverse place. And though I have not traveled much of it at all, I have learned a couple things. People, specifically those in the US of A, either A: Love where they live and could not fathom living anywhere else. Or B: Hate the place they are at and want to move.
I grew up in small town, USA. Upper mid west. After high school I had an opportunity and moved to south Florida, specifically, and spent ten years there.
What a great and diverse place. certainly "southern" from a geographic standpoint, but not "southern" from a cultural standpoint. Lots of New Yorkers, New Englanders, second generation Cuban émigrés, folk from Latin America and the list goes on.
I knew a guy who would see news footage of folk from Buffalo, NY pushing each other's cars out of deep snow. I thought it was a great community effort, having come from the snow belt of Minnesota. He would say "Just look at them fuckin' assholes!" and add "They've all got their heads squarely up their asses!" He was quite fond of that expression and used it often. He has this theory that they spent more money on warm clothes than they would spend on anything else. And then refer to south FL as "Paradise"
Now I have had some good times, and certainly some great memories and good friends to this day from my 10 years down there, but I am surely not going to call it "Paradise."
By 2012 census figures from http://www.census.gov/, the population of what is really a tri county megalopolis (Miami-Dade county, Broward/Ft.Lauderdale, and Palm Beach) is 5,762,767 folk. That is over five million. Lots of pavement. Lots at a stand still too. Now let's say all those, what are they? Oh! "Fuckin' assholes..." decided to move on down to "paradise."
Using census.gov again and plugging in the entire population of NY state, I come up with 19,510,261 folk. Now what would happen if all 19.5 million of the folks with "Their heads squarely up their asses" moved on down to "paradise"......... I don't see the infrastructure holding up. But at least they won't have to shovel snow, right?
I have family in the upper Midwest, the desert southwest, out in California and in the Carolinas. Each one of them lives in their particular area for one reason or another. I don't feel they are "stupid" based on their personal geographic choice. :)
Recently, a friend of mine who was "born and raised" in eastern Maryland moved back there. He had spent his early teens to mid 20's in central Georgia, where he met a gal in collage also from MD, and they got married (though they probably had other interests in common too)
Oh my, you should have seen the commentary on that big social media site from all his GA buddies when he announced that he and his wife were moving! "Oh you'll freeze to death!" "Those winters will kill you!" Endearing to have one's friends not want you to leave, but to those Georgia boys, Maryland is no different than the arctic tundra of 100 years ago. Having to harpoon whales for oil and live on seal blubber, just horrible! Entertaining to read, but it shows how fearful some are of the "unknown.."
Being from the 45th parallel and well inland, I can assure you the winters at the 39th parallel and right near the coast are no where NEAR as harsh as the ones further north and inland.
The bottom line is people ought to live where they wanna live, and there is no "ideal" place to be. Some in cold climates yearn for retirement, so they can move down to Florida and live in a retirement mausoleum AHEM I mean condo, or down in Arizona, or south Texas in the winter. Well this Minnesotan native currently living down in Dixie is one guy that's going the opposite way when he retires!
