These results are pretty much exactly what you would expect -- people who are struggling aren't likely to be googling for luxury items -- and I would venture to guess that they would be fairly similar even if The Upshot used only income, or only education level, rather than a blend of six metrics, to determine "hard" and "easy" counties to live in.
What I find especially intriguing are some of the explanations Leonhardt posits, which presume a causal link and attempt to suggest what that cause is. That's part of the reason why I enjoy running Correlated.org -- it's fun to try to guess what the connection might be between two seemingly unrelated things.
But let's remember: Not all correlations entail a causal link. (I prefer that way of putting it over "Correlation does not imply causation," because correlation does imply causation ... it's just that it often wrongly implies it.)
There is evidence of the nation’s cultural divide in the results,
with “Zoolander” (a 2001 movie starring Ben Stiller) and Vengaboys
(a Dutch dance-pop band) popular in the easiest places and Kenneth
Nixon, of the rock band Framing Hanley, popular in the hardest
places."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zbi0XmGtMw
Are the easiest places to live in the TV advertising markets of Six Flags, by any chance?
Wilcox, Alabama...8% disability?
Is that entire county committing disability fraud? What's going on there?
nb-4l
If this is the #3 search term, the data must be thin. Anyone familiar with this dataset want to chime in? I have a similar camera that is used pretty often and I couldnot even recognize the name without a google search. Did I just get lucky by buying 2x nb-6l ? maybe the nb-4l is really a pain point? Maybe some users of the elph series have real issues with this thing?
"Dog Benadryl"
What if the only thing poor, unhealthy, superstitious regions really need is more hobbyist cameras?
> The rise of inequality over the last four decades has created two very different Americas, and life is a lot harder in one of them.
This would be a fascinating appendix for Charles Murray's book Coming Apart. If you liked this article, you might enjoy his quiz about which of these two Americas you are likely to live in: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/white-educated-and-wealt... (Edit: I scored 46 and the description is completely accurate: "A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents")