Humans, the curious, impatient creatures that they are, are always looking for some way to get ahead and figure out what is going to happen before it does. That is why the nation used to look at the Super Bowl winner to predict the winner of presidential elections and how the stock market will react. If we can find a way to know something before someone else we will use it.
As a nation we are also obsessed with figuring out who the best and worst of anything are. Forbes Magazine likes to put all sorts of lists about what is the best this, that, and the other thing and the requisite worst lists as well.
Recently they published their annual lists of the most miserable cities in America. Now the good people at Forbes Magazine are not prone to doing incomplete or haphazard work so rather than look for some quick, easy answers they utilized a very precise methodology that factored in things like unemployment over the last three years, how the local professional sports teams have done in recent seasons, commute times, and tax rates among other things.
As it turns out all they really had to do was look at the number of self storage facilities in the city.
Those that are not in the know will think, “Of course! No one likes those unsightly structures! The more self storage a city has the more miserable it must be!”
That could not be further from the truth.
In fact, all but one of the 20 cities that Forbes says are the most miserable in the country have less than the average number of self storage space per person. The national average is 7.35 square feet of self storage space per person. Miami, this year’s second most miserable city, has just half of that with a miniscule 3.67 square feet per of space per person!
The top ten miserable places actually fall well below the national average with 5.82 square feet of self storage per person!
The truth of the matter is that if you want to find out what cities are the best you just need to look for the number of self storage facilities (more the merrier). The ninth best place to live in the country has 13.25 square feet per person (Lincoln, Nebraska), close to double the national average! Folks in Huntsville, Alabama, are proud to be called the third best place to live by Forbes; their amount of self storage space per person is 10.33!
If that is not enough validation for someone to see that happiness is more self storage than take a look at the average amount of self storage space per person in the Forbes Magazine’s top ten best places to live—7.86 square feet (roughly a half foot higher than the national average).
Sources Used:
“Self Storage = Quality of Living.” SSA Globe; April 2011.
“America's Most Miserable Cities: Our Methodology.” Forbes.com; 02 February 2011.
“America's Most Miserable Cities.” Forbes.com; 02 February 2011.