To reach that conclusion, the researchers over at personal finance website WalletHub weighed 47 factors of immorality and illicit behavior, including indicators such as theft, excessive drinking and per-capita firearms deaths. Each state was ranked across seven categories: anger and hatred, jealousy, excesses and vices, greed, lust, vanity and laziness.
It’s the second year in a row that Texas ranked behind the runner-up reprobate, California, and the big-daddy king of sin, Nevada. Florida and Louisiana came in fourth and fifth, respectively, while Idaho is apparently the morally purest of them all, coming in dead last.
We may have long favored teaching abstinence-only in schools, but Texas is also WalletHub’s most lustful state, which could make sense given it has one of the highest teen birth rates in the country. The Lone Star State ranks 12th in jealousy, marked by theft and fraud, and sixth in vanity, which can be measured in part by the number of beauty salons per capita.
WalletHub notes that although some states sin more than others, the whole country is on the hook for the expenses. Gambling costs the United States somewhere in the ballpark of $5 billion per year, but smoking is way worse for the economic health of the country, which hemorrhages more than $300 billion annually.
Some may claim that the devil made ‘em do it, but humans learn their vices and good behavior from one another, said Maryann Cusimano Love, an associate professor at the Catholic University of America. In addition to seeing a list of the naughtiest states, a ranking of the least polluted, most peaceful and most educated states could help to encourage virtuous conduct.
“We must better support ‘the little ones,’ the most vulnerable who are targeted and pushed into harm,” she said, according to WalletHub. “We must work together to fight sin.”
Of course, sin could be a pretty tough cookie to take down, especially if we can’t all agree on its definition. For instance, WalletHub partly based its excesses and vices rankings according to each state’s share of coffee drinkers and marijuana users. (Under that line of thinking, about half of Denton would be in the lake of fire.)
Texas likes to talk a big game when it comes to its religious credentials; we are home to some of the most mega-of-churches, after all. But sounds like a few of y’all need to schedule an appointment with your maker. Like, yesterday.
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