There is a social meme going around about Mississippi being wealthier than Bordeaux, France [1] that relates to the “Mississippi Question" (the question is whether a country is poorer than Mississippi, which is used as a benchmark for low income and wealth within the U.S). Broadly speaking, it speaks to GDP and economic numbers being poor metrics for tracking happiness and quality of life [2] [3] [4]. Mississippi GDP per capita is higher than Spain, Italy, the UK, and France; where would you rather live as a human?
Edit: I do like that this uses time as a measure versus fiat; fiat can be gamed, time consumed to meet a need cannot.
Otherwise Oklahoma would be last in basically every single metric used to compare states. It was more true then than now. Mississippi made major changes to their education system and it has been paying off. I'm not to familiar with how they are doing on other metrics.