Comparison
Washington, D.C. vs Tennessee
They differ most on prosperity — Washington, D.C. leads by 69 points. What the average person in the state actually earns.
No defensible weighting reverses this ordering
The 8 pillars are averaged equally, which is declared rather than tuned. 20,000 other weightings were drawn and the whole table re-ranked under each; restricted to the ones a person could defend — every pillar between 6.25% and 25% of the total — Washington, D.C. ranks between 6 and 33 and Tennessee between 8 and 28. Washington, D.C. finishes above Tennessee in every one of those 20,000 weightings — not one reverses it — so on this pair the ordering is a result rather than an artefact of the equal weighting.
875 of the 1,275 possible pairings of these 51 jurisdictions are reversed by some defensible weighting. Most comparisons a reader can build on this site do not have a defensible ordering, and the ones that do are worth more than the rank beside them.
Pillar by pillar, widest divergence first
- 10031Prosperity69 apart — Washington, D.C. 100, Tennessee 31
- 465Housing permits and prices61 apart — Washington, D.C. 4, Tennessee 65
- 6418Openness46 apart — Washington, D.C. 64, Tennessee 18
- 4264Starting up22 apart — Washington, D.C. 42, Tennessee 64
- 4457Labour market13 apart — Washington, D.C. 44, Tennessee 57
- 100100Fiscal standinglevel — Washington, D.C. 100, Tennessee 100
- 55—Population healthnot comparable — Washington, D.C. 55, Tennessee no score
- —69Productive basenot comparable — Washington, D.C. no score, Tennessee 69
Tax structure
Washington, D.C.
Individual income tax levied
Corporate income tax levied
Tennessee
Individual income tax levied
Corporate income tax levied
Census Bureau, Annual Survey of State Government Tax Collections. Where a state levies no such tax the survey records it, and so does this — the absence is a fact, not a gap.