Yes. This is the kind of grievance that the far right exploits in order to manipulate the masses to hate people they think have a higher social status than they do. Whenever I see the recurring “masshole” theme here, I cringe because the most important lesson of history is this kind of bullshit leads to dark places. When you press them to explain it, they can’t. MA did nothing to them, and if anything, they are ME’s most valuable ally. We don’t see all this hate for NH, which is full of hard right militia neo-Nazis. But what they don’t have in NH is a large prosperous city to resent.

Good jobs bring large populations of skilled people and, in turn, a higher CoL. People-y and expensive are things that Mainers dislike the most. Life is full of trade-offs. People in MA trade 12 hours of their day schlepping to and from their jobs, which they have to in order to afford their housing, and they have little to no free time. Mainers have all of the free time but less of the money. Nobody is actually happy. But I’ve never heard a MA person diss Mainers. They love ME, think of the people as really friendly, helpful, down to earth.