Stay out of Pennsylvania until you learn how to drive. Oh and clean the needles off of your beaches...

*Too many towns! It's tough keeping the streets in the different towns straight. In the Lehigh Valley, Pa., there were 3 cities, and you knew what was off the main streets, and there weren't multiple towns with the same street names! That's nutty! Not having the streets marked doesn't help!

*Prices are too high! My Easton apartment was $400/month, and was above a dentist's office. In NJ, my rent is $1000 and goes up 3% every year. And leases are for a full year. Whatever happened to monthly leases?

*Traffic. It's everywhere, and you can't get around it. This is bumper-to-bumper traffic that moves slooooowly.

*NJ cops are nasty! You're guaranteed a ticket if you get pulled over.

*In NJ, you can't fix your car on your apartment grounds, and you can't change your own oil either. Too many restrictions on everything.

*To be fair, the weather is nice, and warmer than in upstate NY (about 7 degrees warmer here). Nice scenery, nice selection of restaurants. Hey, it's near NYC, so there's going to be more selection. For taxes, you have to fill out only your state form (in Pa., there's the state and local tax form), which is easier.

Overall, too many negatives, I'm sorry!

I grew up in Burlington County, NJ. I’m 37 now, and have spent most of my adult life in the South (NC and TN). After learning the southern culture, dating, making friends, paying bills, exploring the outdoors, I feel like I am surrounded by unfortunate, pitiable people when I visit NJ. Coming back and seeing it again with a different perspective is really enlightening.

People in NJ grow up with a paranoia that is a necessary survival mechanism there. There is a trashy “I don’t take no shit from nobody” attitude even, as someone mentioned, in the affluent areas. This is inculcated during childhood and adolescence, because the parents are struggling to make ends meet, and feel like pincushions with all of the abuse from the government – taxes, fees, endlessly growing lists of laws and regulations.

Neighbors are often unfriendly to each other, because of “the chip.” This is a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ regard for strangers that festers in the souls of people who have been taken advantage of their entire lives by selfish, dishonest people and a corrupt government.

The property taxes in the suburbs of Nashville, Raleigh, Charlotte, and Atlanta are a third of what they are in most of NJ, AND your dollar buys you MUCH more in terms of house and land.

Ever been to the Outer Banks of NC? Much prettier and cleaner than anything in NJ, the water is warm enough to swim for a longer portion of the year, renting a vacation spot is much less than in the Jersey shore towns, no beach tags, people are polite, no parking meters and meter cops.

People mentioned NJ having four seasons. Ever spend a year in TN or NC? It snows every year here. The foliage in the fall is famous around the country. Springtime is glorious, and when it comes, it is robust. The fish are bigger and more plentiful and bite more often, and are less likely to contain chemicals that can harm you.

I know most of you Yankees are anti-gun and don’t care, but do you realize how restricted personal freedoms are in NJ regarding gun ownership? I bought a rifle in Bass Pro Shop in the South without even showing my driver’s license, and gun crime there is, guess what? LOWER.

There is a noticeable difference in the behavior of drivers between the two regions. People in NJ speed more, tailgate more, run more red lights, and risk the lives and property of others more. That is undebatable. When I moved to the South, my auto insurance (same company and coverage policy) dropped 50%. My salary was the same (engineer).

TN has NO state income tax, yet somehow manages to construct roads and bridges without traffic jamming toll booths.

The South has less drugs in the schools, less violence, yes lower salaries on average, but MUCH lower cost of living that FAR outweighs the salary difference.

My main reasons for hating NJ are cultural. The way people treat each other is revolting. The disrespect, the “attitude” that people are raised with believing it is a virtue.

I feel a disdain for people who are willing to put up with so much abuse from a shameless government. A successful family in NJ can easily give half a million dollars to their local government in property taxes over 30 years. Why do they put up with that? Do they think it is like that everywhere?

Try to be a landlord in NJ, or start a business, or get a hunting license if you have never had one. Then go try to do those things in a free state. They are like two different countries.

And after being away from it for years and listening to the sweet voice of the southern lady, the accent in NJ is like nails on a chalkboard. Even in the southern counties of NJ.

Most of the people where I grew up in NJ claimed to belong to one church or another, but I never saw a culture where people took their faith seriously and applied it to their lives until I get out of that moral and spiritual sewer.

I wouldn’t live there if you tripled my salary, gave me a free house, and a million dollar relocation bonus. I mean that.

On my first day I was led to the Rolls Royce shop by the lead mech. I was dragging my new roll away tool box, full of new jet engine mech tools and ready to do what I enjoyed doing, went to school for and spent 4 years doing in the Navy.

As I entered the shop there was dead silence. All eyes were on me. The lead mech stopped me in the middle of the shop, on the Rolls/Royce emblem on the floor. In a loud voice he said, "So, where'd you get your experience?" I told him the Navy. He says, even louder, "In the Navy?, let me tell you something, you don't know f**king sh*t!" Well, this scene was repeated 2 more times in the next 2 days as another Navy vet and an Air Force vet came to the shop.

Similar incidents occurred in the other shops that week. One of my specialties in the Navy was testing jet engines. A test mech job opened in the shop and I put a bid in for it. The lead mech told me I would not go anywhere in that place as long as he was there. All of us new guys were given the most menial tasks in the place. Very few people spoke to us, either out of intimidation from the others or they didn't like us because we were outsiders.

During a conversion with a crew leader, I was asked how I liked it so far. I said I was looking elsewhere and hoped to leave soon. He said I would never find another job. This was around Christmas. I told him I wouldn't be there this time next year. He laughed.

7 months later I left for a new job with General Dynamics in Cape Canaveral, FL, launching satellites and spacecraft for NASA. As I was driving the U-Haul out of Jersey, I got on the CB and said, "Happiness is New Jersey in the rear view mirror." Someone came on and replied, "Yeah, well f*ck you, you son of a bitch."

On my first day at the Cape I was put with another tech who didn't say too much and was generally miserable. I said to him "You're from Jersey aren't you?" He said, "How the f*ck would you know?" Turns out he was from Vineland and also an ex Navy jet engine mech. I've known him for 18 years, one of the closest friends I have. Still, happiness is Jersey in the rear view.

If you find the what exit question offensive, figure out a better way for people to identify where they are from in NJ, which people who don't know anything about the state can understand. That is the real reason why people in michigan point on their hand where they are from - they don't want to say they are from some downtrodden town with a bad rap like detroit, or flint, etc.

If something is not done very soon, the benefits promised to all of the state workers, police, fire and teachers will drive everyone to bankruptcy.  Our politicians are, for the most part, corrupt and those that are not refuse to do anything about those that are corrupt.

Only in this state can we allow elected and appointed officials to hold dual jobs and collect grossly inflated pensions. Only in this state can we accept the fact that PA employees (some of them) are making over $200,000 per year due to overtime - anyone ever think about hiring additional employees?

New Jersey is a horrible place for a multitude of reasons. Collectively, we are arrogant, ignorant fools with an inflated self-importance that is clearly not seen in other parts of America. Collectively, we treat our minorities populations, our poor, and our children in a disgustingly failing manner. Collectively, we pride ourselves on things like The Sopranos, pollution, being "tough", and Bon Jovi - uggh.

Other regions of the country hate us (as I have seen out west, in the New England states, and in some southern states), and collectively we don't even realize it because our heads so far up our a**es it's disgusting. I am mortified to tell people I meet out of state I'm from here and I always apologize for it (I have found in some places out west that helps).

Other things pathetic about NJ:

1. Only place in the world where you have to pay for a beach badge (born, raised, and I still live at the Jersey Shore, and it's sad) 2. Only place where an attendant pumps your gas for you 3. Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Jim McGreevey 4. Toll booths on our two major highways 5. Suburban sprawl and the corrupt land developers who are allowed to destroy open space and over-populate the Jersey Shore area 6. Northern NJ tourists who destroy the Jersey Shore - and now are living here year round. 

Unless you get out in the Pine Barrens and really get down into South Jersey, there is far too much traffic. I work in civil engineering and do field work, including traffic counts, so I can tell you with fair certainty that the roads are too damn crowded. Even in the Pine Barrens on CR539 there is too much traffic at some times.

NJ as a state is far too liberal.  It's amazing how everyone in the country knows about our little state. We have to ask ourselves WHY. Our daughter goes to a college out of state and NO OTHER students are looked down upon except those from NJ. I used to be so proud to say I live in NJ. No more now.

And again our so called leaders don't care. They're making the money. I can't predict in how many years it will happen, but eventually NJ will be a complete total misfit state. Residents will either be wealthy or poor. The good middle class are leaving the state and we have to.  SAD and embarrassing.  Promises, promises from everyone and then their private laughs and parties behind closed doors.

How could Our last governor put a non-USA resident in charge of national security for our state?  Of course he already had filled his bank account and now wanted to fill his personal wishes/needs. What a joke. SAD because again most of the people in the state say poor McGreevey, and that people are being so mean because he came OUT. Oh my gosh. He had us in jeopardy.

It truly is a sad situation.  Look at Rutgers- they took away I think 6 varsity sports, academic classes and pumping big dollars into football. Where is NJ's integrity, morals - oh no one knows these words anymore.