To answer your question, no it is not the best place to live. Although living expenses are low, employment is high,and crime is non existent the weather and overall boringness of the state are way too much, if I wasn't in school and the hockey team here sucked I'd be suicidal. Winter here lasts from October to early April, from December through February we're lucky if the temperature gets above 0 and the sun never comes out and the snow never goes away. If you think Chicago is windy come up here, it's by far the windiest state in the nation and there's nothing to block the wind which also causes all that wonderful snow to blow around which makes seeing almost impossible. They don't plow the roads or use salt, they just throw some sand on top of the snow to "increase traction". People here are slow and yes they all talk like the movie Fargo which is funny for about 5 minutes. Like sth said it's flat and boring, haven't seen a hill since I got back up here after spring break, in fact the largest elevation change between Fargo and Winnipeg are the overpasses on Interstate 29 which runs North-South on the eastern edge of the state. But once spring hits you would think all is well, but you'd be dead wrong. All that snow that we were blessed with now melts and has to go somewhere so flooding is a huge problem. I'm sure you've heard about the flooding in recent years in both Fargo and Grand Forks, the Red River has peaked at over 50 feet in each of the last 3 years and is well on it's way there this year, in fact if any of you remember the Grand Forks flood of 1997 well it's predicted to be worse this year. So that cheap property you thought you bought was just negated by the huge price of flood insurance.
But yea other than that this place is great