Yeah sorry the issue that I run into frequently on this topic is "US bad because those poorer, more conservative states are terrible and if we just governed them like the utopia of New York City, we'd do much better in rankings", and while I think red states have their own failure modes - the stats show that at least some of them are doing just fine.

Sorry for being a bit reactionary there, sometimes a certain opinion is common enough that you respond like it's being stated due to similar comments being a prelude to it.