From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally:
- None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2]
- Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price.
- Some also left because of political and human environment: We have homeless encampments on our bike trails. We have fires caused by illegal cooking fires at these encampments. Petty crime is increasing, and state laws are only enabling this - people are sick of it.
1 - https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9149705-181/sonoma-county...
2 - https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2019/04/2...
I wonder if people considered voting the politicians who made these laws out. Judging from CA voting patterns, probably not. And then when it gets really bad, they move to another state and likely vote for the same policies that caused them to move in the first place.
Either way, interesting times.
Homelessness isn't as big of an issue here than it is in California (I expect in part because of the colder weather), but housing costs have definitely been affected.
[0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/
That combined with the fact that the garden I had was 100% legal locally until the state legalized recreational cannabis and the county went for the cash grab. What Sonoma County did to their small cannabis farmers is another huge reason people are heading elsewhere.
It left me in the position of leaving or having an illegal garden that was being robbed. I can tell you that I didn't move to Northern California to grow cannabis illegally and I didn't move to the woods to get robbed, so the choice to leave was tough but unambiguous.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
[2]https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-headquarters-homeless...
(Seriously, Prop 13 is awful policy.)
Yep - I lived there between 2015-2017 and this about sums it up.
> homeless encampments on our bike trails
These seem linked somehow...
The other category of “invisible” homeless - those living in cars and at friends places/garages will of course benefit if the average price of the housing drops
I don't expect that you intended it this way, but be aware that the way you've phrased the question is likely to offend --- homelessness is complex and most homeless folks aren't criminals.
Be careful about tossing around this kind of rhetoric. I heard the same story about a fire in my old neighborhood in LA. It turned out that the son of the head of Chamber of Commerce started it trying to firebomb an encampment.
https://ktla.com/2019/09/04/suspects-in-eagle-rock-brush-fir...
It's literally the cause of every fire in Riverside County so it is FAR from rhetoric, it is FACTUAL. It starts in the riverbottoms, from homeless cooking fires.
We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part because the most liberal parts of the state happen the also be the wealthiest, so they vote against it.
It's one of the few areas in California where the GOP and the Dems agree.
They only want to help poor people if it doesn't affect their property value.
We miss the city and our friends, but couldn't see ourselves there long term.
New York City is expensive, but there are areas of relative affordability that feel much more accessible, comfortable, and safer than the Bay Area.
Could you share which areas? I've been exploring NYC as well but have yet to stumble upon any areas that match what you described.
Lot's of factors:
- Cost of living
- Housing
- I am self employed (no state taxes)
- Attitude, entitlement, hypocrisy
- Petty crime rampant (drug use, break ins, theft, defecation)
- Extreme political climate in SF/CAThe only way prices figure into the equation is the quality. It's not that I couldn't afford a house in Mountain View, it's that, jobs and prices aside, I'd need to be convinced to move to Mountain View from, say, San Antonio. And I wouldn't move there, or to SF, from Seattle or Denver if the prices were the same - based strictly on the quality of life the way I see it... On top of that, of course, the prices are not the same.
Factors on why I did it:
- Housing costs #1. I got into a rent controlled 2 bedroom 1100 sqft duplex unit. It was ok, but the landlord sucked and the place was very unmaintained, and i was paying $2800 a month. No yard, no garage, tons of homeless around digging through my trash in the outskirts of Berkeley near trains and noise
- For the same price, I now live in a 2200 sq ft home with a yard, garages, in a nice area called Sammamish. In an area with lots trees, quiet, and a bit of occasional wildlife.
- Political climate was getting intense. Things were being taken to extremes, and I was honestly afraid for my safety if I accidentally interacted incorrectly with the wrong parties. Being in Berkeley didn't help, but it was most of the bay area.
- Washington is fairly liberal, but its balanced, and not extremist.
- Cost of Living in california is off the charts at this point. Between insurances, food, services, etc. things were going up and up.
- Washington has no State tax [Edit: I meant state income ta], while my pay was adjusted accordingly (i moved internally within my company as they have washington offices). I actually have more money at the end of the month. Quite a bit more. I paid down tons of debt just in the few months Ive been here. My grocery bill went down by 25%, my insurances were cut in half, Utilities are cheaper. I feel i have so much more breathing room. I have money to save, I am not living paycheck to paycheck anymore.
And to give context. I am a well paid senior software developer. I made and still make GOOD money. But my dollar goes sooooo much further up here, I am actually getting benefit from that good salary, instead of wondering where its all disappearing too and my debts not going down.
And I actually love everything else up here. I love the weather, I like rain, and the bit of snow we got just recently made me so happy. I see wildlife in my yard (deer and bobcats, and owls). Life is calmer, drivers are calmer. People actually seem like they care about their communities. My neighbors came out and said hi when we moved in and were friendly and welcoming. I didn't even know my neighbors in California.
And traffic, people are unhappy about traffic up here, and it can get almost as bad as California, but taking 30 mins to get 17 miles for work during rush hour, compared to 1-1.5hrs to go 10 miles across the bay bridge for work is vastly better.
California seems to be just unlivable if I want to work there. While I am lucky to be in a company that has good remote work culture, and so on now, most tech companies require you to live near the city the offices are in. And that affects things.
I am lucky I found a path out, and it still burned a lot of savings and bonuses to pay for the move. Even escaping was expensive.
Surely you mean income tax. Oregon is the state that lacks sales tax and makes up for it with an income tax.
Also, I'm not sure why your grocery bill would go down compared to California. Moving from LA to Bellevue, I noticed groceries cost more up here. Both states don't apply sales tax to groceries, at least.
It also costs a bit more to eat out here vs. LA, at least at the low end. Probably prices are cheaper in LA than the Bay Area, however.
Downtown Seattle is looking like SF/Bay Area in terms of crime and lack of police enforcement due to what/whom people vote for.
Can you explain this point a bit more? Are you talking about political tensions, e.g. Antifa beating you up if you dared wear a MAGA hat, or am I misunderstanding you.
What are the best solutions you've seen?
> They only want to help poor people if it doesn't affect their property value.
I'm sure there are some unsavory high net worth individuals who are happy to support policies keeping housing expensive just to keep assets inflated even if it means access to housing is harder for everyone.
But I'd guess for a lot of people it's more practical: when most of your net worth has become accidentally tied up in your home, some changes may mean you risk becoming one of the poor or homeless. Or visceral: you perceive risk, even though it isn't there (some folks fear a neighborhood light rail stop only to find their property values jump). Or just seeing your community change can be uncomfortable
And while I don't know if the solutions you're thinking of are of the "bring more supply online" kind... there's something weird with the issues in California if the story of net outflow is true. The fact that rents can jump over 60% in a decade while the demand pool is stable or shrinking means that this isn't an ordinary supply problem. Either the existing supply is being manipulated in some way, or some portions of the demand pool can offer a lot more than others pricing the rest out of the market. Solutions that are entirely focused on MOAR SUPPLY may be just as likely allow present dynamics to happen at a somewhat larger scale as they are to fix a macro problem.
SB 827 was pretty good. [0]
SB 50 was a good idea with a bad execution [1]
> if the story of net outflow is true.
The article says that California still saw a net inflow due to births and incoming foreign migrants.
> Either the existing supply is being manipulated in some way,
It is, via rent control, which has shown time and again to only help people who already have housing at the expense of those who don't already have it when it's enacted. It also helps wealthy people more than poor people by constraining rent raises even though they could afford market rates.
It is also manipulated by prop 13, which allows people to rent out properties they've owned for a long time at a profit when similar properties can not be. The natural market rate of rent is all inclusive of current costs including tax. But if your tax rate is artificially low, then that difference is increased profit for you, which encourages people not to sell their properties.
For example, I'd had my home for 10 years, and if I were to rent it out, my profit would be about $1,200 a month at current market rates. My property tax is artificially low by about $1,100 a month. So my entire profit would come from Prop 13. Why would I sell my house if I can rent it for profit only because of the lower tax rate?
> or some portions of the demand pool can offer a lot more than others pricing the rest out of the market.
Yes, there is a lot of foreign investment in California real estate which just sits empty. I get ads from agents that "specialize in finding Chinese buyers" which is code for "people who will pay more than asking and not care what condition the house is in".
[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people would want to protect themselves if they don't have any assurances that developers won't just build ugly tower blocks.
On the other hand, if people are opposing development that involves real architects developing aesthetically pleasing designs that respect the existing community, then it seems reasonable to me to criticize NIMBYism.
If developers want to build ugly tower blocks, and people would actually buy those blocks, why stop them? Just because I bought my house ten years ago doesn't give me the right to stop someone from building something "ugly". At least, it shouldn't.
It's important to remember that just because the law says, "you can now build a thing", that doesn't mean the thing will get built. First, the current property owner has to sell, and sell at a price that it makes sense to build the ugly thing. Then a developer has to want to take the risk of building the thing.
It turns out, making it legal to build things doesn't really mean they spring up instantly. It's a slow process that takes decades to play out.
In the 70s, a section of San Francisco that was zone single family only was rezoned to dual/triple/quads-allowed. Since the 70s, only a few of the single family have been torn down and replaced with quads.
We moved to a suburb of Houston, Texas about a year ago. Best decision ever.
In a nutshell:
Overall, quality of life has gone way up.
Taxes have gone down. Wages have gone up. Everything is cheaper, which means we all get to do more fun stuff.
On the negative side of the equation: The avocados are smaller here.
Are the kids school age? If so, what do you think of the public schools?
He said "Houston," so chances are the answer is yes.
People outside of Texas like to pretend that it's a solid red state. They conveniently don't bother to look at electoral maps and pretend that Austin doesn't exist so long as they can make jokes about where someone else lives.
I'm from Charlotte and I can honestly say that I grew up with more friends who had parents from New York than from NC. A lot of middle class people from upstate NY settled in Charlotte due to the economic opportunities and weather.
I'd wager that this migration really started about 30 years ago, and we're seeing the numbers increase even further due to network effects. For example, we've got a sizeable community of former Buffalo residents who gather over football games at restaurants that are run by other Buffalo natives.
For what it's worth, New Yorkers seem to be very culturally compatible with North Carolinians, we get along just fine. I feel like I've seen a bit less animosity for New Yorkers in NC than I saw for Californians in Seattle. There are jokes (ie, the town of Cary in the NC Triangle is sometimes said to stand for "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees"), but it never feels like genuine resentment.
I may just be biased though because buffalo-style pizza in particular has spoiled every other style of pizza for me. Please Buffalo peeps: keep coming here and sharing your food culture with us.
I've lived in and love both states. Every native Californian I've met on their home turf assumes that the entire state of Washington shares the same microclimate as Seattle. Most Washintonians rarely wash their cars relative to California's sparkly standards.
All of this is of course changing as more generations co-mingle, but the lore remains.
I seriously doubt any place can make a defensible claim to high morals anymore, but big houses as a stereotype for California? I think that applies way more to Idaho. Space is too expensive for most people to live in big houses in CA. If anything, they go to lower population density states like TX and the South to get the bigger houses available there.
The Wiki article on Californication has some dates that suggest it's been a known phenomenon since the 1940s! [0]
I do like my loose morals, though ;)
The difference even more than someone from Alexandria/D.C with south VA, (e.g Danville, Roanoke, Halifax County etc...).
But is it wrong to call people from upstate NY "New Yorkers" - or is that term only reserved for city people? If so, what are they called?
For a while, I would have said that they already sent you all the food culture they could. But I passed through Buffalo on a road trip a few months ago, and I gotta say, it's got a very hip vibe these days. Went to a great brewpub for dinner, and a local ice cream joint for dessert serving homemade ice cream.
They might be shipping you more food culture yet!
I just moved from Durham, NC back to New England after a year (Moved to NYC specifically, this is my first time in a truly large city)
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone in my age group (and in tech) would want to move to Durham/Raleigh from NYC, except for raising a family
The cost of living in these places New Englanders and Californians are flooding has been shooting through the roof faster than the standard of living, which is staying steady to dropping as gentrification and population growth causes very real problems with traffic, crime, and homelessness.
Ironically, the low taxes that draw people to most of these places are a result of conservative policies, the same of which lead to limited infrastructure spending and ability to handle all this growth.
-
Sure I pay 40% more for less space, but I don't need a car anymore, I can still go out to nature on the weekends, I can still go out to nature on the weekends, food scene on my surrounding few blocks is equivalent to the whole of Durham (and paradoxically cheaper, CoL calculators compare things like milk and bread, but when there's a restaurant on every corner, pricing is somewhat competitive), there so many activities, the list goes on.
Also the elephant in the room for all these low COL area conversations is savings. I can save the equivalent of my entire paycheck from Durham every month, and still live off what's left when subtracted from my NYC salary.
And while it's true NYC is more expensive, there's no rule that says one day when I'm retiring and trying to live off my savings I have to live in NYC.
A dollar is a dollar. If you take a pay hit based on lower COL, you're making a long-term sacrifice based on your current situation.
The things those young people seem to have in common: - Work low-skilled service industry jobs - Have involvement in the music or art scene - Are unhappy with standard of living available to them in "affordable" parts of bigger cities (ie, crime + pollution, not being able to afford a car for trips / gigging).
So that's one example of the type of young person who would prefer to move to Raleigh. I don't know if they're the type who will stay long-term, but there's definitely an appeal to a certain set of people. Highly paid techies who can work anywhere may not get much out of it. Personally, I just enjoy being here because I'm from NC and like the culture and my friends and family here. I might consider a bigger east-coast city in the future - but the west coast in general has completely lost its appeal.
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-paren...
I still remember walking into our co-working spot to pick up some mail and was told that I should leave the premisis becuase our bills were way past due and I could not have access to our mail. I was like uhh wow holy shit, he isn't paying you either. That was a surreal moment.
After the move and the shit show of the startup, our savings had basically evaporated. I had to get to work ASAP. I am very fortunate to have a support group of friends and family and was able to land a gig working on a Rails-based ecommerce site for a furniture company.
Fast forward to now and I am still a freelance consultant with usually 3-4 clients or projects happening simultaneously. I have done pretty well for myself, but the last year was one of the most stressful and chaotic years of my life. I am seriously struggling with my mental health.
Throughout the entire time we've been able to save a little more money, but all-in-all we are pissing away a tremendous amount of cash every month on our rent and other expenses that are a little higher here in CA. Moving here to Orange County was predicated on the killer salary from the new gig.
The current plan is to head back to Michigan. My wife's family is all there, so as far as a state to flee to it makes the most sense. Our rent will cut in half for what will be a far bigger property with a lot more breathing room. An idea we are tossing around is buying land and building our own home from scratch, which is something we could never even imagine doing here in California.
I think that I have a tougher time appreciating all the wonderful things our state has to offer. Having grown up here I just see all the traffic and density and lack of breathing room and want to head for the hills. It makes the higher living cost tougher to swallow. Plus, knowing we'll really never be able to afford the kind of property and home that we know we can have over in Michigan, it makes sense to get out of here without planting deep roots again.
Just my two cents.
And that's why so many people live in those WUI areas (wildland-urban interface) which is one of the factors why the amount of property damage (and human lives) has increased from fire risk over the years.
Doable in places like Joshua Tree or Quincy (NorCal).
Suffice to say I won't ever make this mistake again.
It’s not. For a family with $85,000 a year, getting rid of state tax could mean an extra several hundred dollars a month in income.
It could, if you could take the $85,000/year job with you. Pay for similar skills in the lower CoL states is also notably lower, though.
Well, no. At least California (about which I see a lot of these stories) is gaining residents. Yes, it has negative net interstate migration. But it has both positive net natural population growth and positive net total migration, because the positive net international migration more than offsets negative net interstate migration.
Given the racial dynamics of wealth and the fact that the interstate inmigration is wealthy and the interstate outmigration is less wealthy, probably not “white flight” as that is usually conceived.
I live in SF and wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people in SF move to LA.
Personally I would be more than happy moving to San Diego. In my opinion the best city on the west coast and relatively cheap for a coastal city.
My first instinct is to assume that well-off-ish retirees in Illinois and New York retire to Florida, while in California they just stay in California. (Though other possibilities exist: for example, California leavers could be in two groups for most of the exit states, and so happen to average incomes out more than for Illinois or New York.)
I also find it interesting that the income-destination pairs of leavers for those two states seems like they might indicate potential easy presumptions about general political and socioeconomic status compared to California. Curious if there's actual data backing supporting these obvious presumptions.
Per 1000 capita in the source state or the destination state?
Also that would overweight the low pop density states, assuming there's a baseline immigration rate, painting an entirely different picture with the Dakotas/Wyoming/etc.
perhaps put the arrow at the end, that way one can see which connection is a source and which one is a target
So 75,386 (taxpayers and dependents) moved from IL to FL and their average income was $135K.
That seems to imply that they all took their high paying jobs with them somehow.
That said, anecdotally, I do know a fair number of people who have left California and essentially no one who has moved there absent a work-related reason to live there. The state has things going for it but also a lot of negatives--especially CoL in a lot of places.
Illinois has a flat income tax; at $135k income you would only be beat by the states that have no income tax (like Florida). Most of the states on that list also have weather that is either terrible in the summer or terrible in the winter, so I doubt that weather is really a factor in people moving.
Edit for additional context, RxBar had no outside funding or venture capital, so that $600m went to the founders and maybe other early employees. https://www.inc.com/robbie-abed/this-chicago-startup-sold-it...
State 1850 1900 1950 2020
NY 3 7 17 19
IL 1 4.8 8.7 13
CA .1 1.5 10.5 39
TX .2 3 8 29
FL .1 0.5 2.7 21CA went up 3.71x and Florida did 7.77x.
Definitely grew compared to New york, but hardly sucking up people so fast
Only if everything you know about Texas you learned from cartoons.
That being said, it's pretty clear it's heading towards Seattle levels, which is quickly headed towards SF levels of societal issues.
As someone from the northeast, I'm intrigued!
Is that why net immigration to Texas is positive?
On what quality of life metrics does Texas rank poorly?
They should have discussed how WY makes it easier than most states to avoid being directly connected in any documentation of the shell corp. This makes it harder to track down the real owners in cases when they're being used illegally or sought for litigation.
Especially now that state income tax is no longer Federally deductible. I've found it very surprising that people on both the pro-tax and anti-tax sides don't make a bigger stink about that.
I think Republicans backed this plan hoping it would create pressure to decrease taxes in blue states. Instead, the double taxation has only incensed taxpayers like me.
An interesting thing we learned is that if we move out of the country for, say, 3 years, unless we set up our lives so we have no intention of remaining California residents, the state will continue to pursue us for income taxes even while overseas. Federal law has a different system which makes more sense -- a tax exemption while overseas.
Given that we expect to spend a substantial amount of time overseas in the future for personal reasons, I'm thinking we may need to move to a zero tax state in the US first, just to get out from under the sway of California.
I'm curious if anyone else on HN has experience with this.
If you move to say, Nevada, before moving to China or wherever, but you always intended to return to CA afterwards, then for state tax purposes you never stopped being a CA resident. So, for example, if you keep a storage locker with your furniture in Cupertino for when you return, you clearly never intended to permanently leave and so you're still a CA resident for tax purposes.
If you don't plan on coming back to CA after moving to China or wherever, you stop being a CA resident immediately and only owe state taxes for the part of the year you still lived in CA. And it's easy to show that you are no longer a CA resident, for example, by selling all of your CA-based property.
The biggest issue with CA and moving abroad temporarily is that CA doesn't have a foreign earned income exclusion or foreign tax credit. So you really don't want to be a CA resident if you need to move out of the USA.
Since I moved to Switzerland (and then China, ironically enough) from CA, it was something I had to look into...I wasn't sure if they would come back and say I was a CA resident even though I really had no ties there. In particular, if I wanted to vote, I could have in CA, but that would have been a bad mistake. On the other hand, I wasn't eligible to vote in any other state, so I spent 11 years not voting. When I finally left China, it was for a job in CA...which also gave me some pause as I didn't intend to return to CA in the first place.
When it comes to taxes, California has a serious stalker vibe.
Anyway, our current thinking is to establish residence in Nevada (probably in Tahoe) and then go to Europe from there. Thanks for the downvotes.
obviously you are welcome to skimp out on any one of these, but you'll have trouble convincing auditors you're a resident without it. note that NYC tax authorities have solicited location data for purposes of 183 day rule, etc.; i am not an expert in CA but precedent is there.
New York is supposed to be very aggressive too. So say you left New York and left items in storage, the state might say you never left.
Same with going to college or the military, you are still considered a resident of your last state since it's assumed your heading back home after college and during the summer breaks, unless you decide to live and stay where you go to college after instead of returning home then you'd need to take steps to change your domicile and move your stuff. One of the reasons you don't have to change your license after 30 or so days, same as someone on vacation since they intend to return home and not living where you are visiting.
I know digital nomads and full time RVers run into this issue, since you are technically homeless for living in a vehicle but still need a driver license and registration somewhere, but a few states are friendly to full time RVers, with South Dakota being the easiest to setup domicile where they only require you to rent a PMB and spend a night at a hotel or campground but all about intent. Some states won't help you unless multiple proofs or you get assistant from a homeless shelter. So if you retired buying a half a million dollar RV, the state considers you the same as a homeless person living on a park bench even if you don't consider yourself homeless.
So you should sell your house, take all your stuff but if you want to keep it in storage rent storage in your new state, update bank to the new state if it's a national bank - if it's a local only bank or credit union need to close your account, update your will for the new state, cancel or switch gym membership if a national gym (like planet fitness, change your home club to your new state) and other steps. Then estate taxes too. I know I was reading once some man who lived in NJ rented a locker in NY and New York decided he was a resident because of that. Then some places will claim you as resident based on where you purchase a grave plot. Seems like this stuff can be tricky, especially the richer you are. I know rich people with multiple homes, domicile issues seem big, but even people who live in RVs have to plan for this. For example recently President Trump declared Florida as his domicile instead of Florida since he owns properties in both states.
Most people only have one house, so that's both their domicile and residence. Then if you are famous, your family get to profit from your likeness when you die, so say you were Elvis, and courts ruled that's based on the state you were domiciled in. Tennessee for example is much more protective and allows family to profit the longest compared to other states, as remember reading someone died and family was trying to argue if they were really a Tennessee or California resident.
So domicile is based on both intent and action. Kinda interesting someone who lives in a RV has to understand and do the same legal steps as a multi-millionaire with multiple houses, but I guess they never considered people would live in RVs, or work remotely traveling. Probably Americans working and living overseas is a minority too, but some states like California don't want to let their residents go. I know someone in a RV group posted they left South Carolina to retire and RV full time seeing the country, and haven't been back to SC for over a year, and the state still wanted to tax them over 6,000 and they charge property taxes on vehicles. Then VA considers a RV a luxury and taxes them extra compared to cars even if your RV is your home. Then someone from Michigan didn't want to change states to one of the friendlier ones, so rented a mailbox and changed his license online, later to get a threatening letter from the DMV since they didn't consider it a valid address, leaving them the option of switching states or using a friend or relatives address. Then I guess after a full time RVer switches domicile, then legally they are just on a long vacation since SD says you have to return once every 5 years.
Today, at the age of 35, my position has completely reversed. If anything, with the advent of the remote workplace, I’d rather be in a low cost area such as the one I live in, and the “opportunities” I’m missing out on these days just don’t seem so attractive anymore.
Florida's Downsides: Homeless are more aggressive than in SF. Florida Man. Frequently 10% sales tax in most places due to lack of income tax. Higher property taxes if you're in a really progressive area. You're swapping out earthquakes for hurricanes. A lot of "Keeping up with the Jones'" mentality here. Not a great place for tech.
The sales tax is 6% to the state, and counties can increase it for their own purposes, up to a maximum of 8%. The average is 6.65%. At certain times in summer, school supplies and hurricane supplies are 0%. Grocery items are 0%.
I and my wife have 2 years of run away. Wait for my kid to finish the pre-school cycle, after which we are out of here.
We have already begun to look into alternatives and evaluating pro/cons and yes Texas comes as one of the top choices along with Colorado.
California would be great if it were filled with a mix of people from Texas, Wyoming, Oklahoma, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, and Kentucky. The laws would be very different. There would be much more freedom, including lower taxes.
Reports I've seen is that the state should see an increase in population in the 2020 census. Last time that happened would have been perhaps in the early nineties.
It shouldn't be too surprising: California and New York are in top 5 by population size.
ps - their use of "hemorrhaging" to describe movement of people feels inappropriate.
Business is full of otherwise wildly inappropriate phrases, like “drink the kool-aid” in reference to the mass suicide of nearly 1000 people in the Jonestown cult. I have no idea how that’s considered an appropriate phrase for any situation but I hear it constantly in office settings.
"Hemorrhaging" evokes memories of bleeding, indicating severe danger. I pay a lot of attention to metaphors after reading "Metaphors We Live By" (an excellent classic book).
I'm sorry, I don't see the problem. It's a completely apt metaphor for people buying into group-think, with disastrous results. The Jonestown tragedy is a perfect example of what happens when people don't question what they're told, and we should never forget it.
I know after the 2020 census Ohio is predicted to lose at least 1 house seat and lose some of the federal funds. Looks like Ohio is attracting more immigrants from other countries, than people from other states.
Really think it's a shame tech is so centralized in a handful of cities, but I do see things like warm weather and walkability attracting people. I'd love to live somewhere where I wouldn't be far from my office, places to eat and shop without needing a car. I figured maybe around where the domain in Austin would be a cool place to live maybe. Seems like it's cheap to live in Ohio but not much to do other than drinking, playing video games, bowling or doing drugs (Dayton was ranked top city for heroin overdoses) and not that many jobs in tech, and then even huge loss in manufacturing too.
I know people say Austin is the next Silicon Valley, but I feel like the cost of living for housing keeps going up, so sounds like going to have similar problems as in California. I'm surprised tech companies don't invest big in the midwest, Google could probably buy an entire city if they wanted to but not sure if they'd attract a lot of workers. But it's interesting to watch migration patterns, I guess tech is the new gold rush. Seems like sometimes you have to vote with your feet.
I was thinking Utah would be a nice place to live since the mountains are pretty, and was surprised to learn they have only a flat 5% tax rate, and no city income taxes either as I thought every state also had cities taxing people. While Ohio you have state, city, school district(some are done based on income as a %, while other districts use property taxes), and then if you own a business or self employed making enough (maybe you're a lawyer who decided to work independently grossing enough to qualify for paying it) there's a business activity tax. So I think a simpler tax structure would be nice. I kinda feel there should just be one tax only to simplify things, and let the cities or states argue over who gets what. Then some tax software won't even help with city taxes, I think Michigan that's the case since cities haven't standardized on things, I know there was a proposal in Ohio for the state to collect city taxes on the city behalf and redistribute them to the cities while charging the cities a service fee but the cities didn't like that idea. I know some cities go as high as 2.5% percent, I think it's a little insane some cities with less population and square miles of Utah needs to collect half of what the entire state of Utah collects, makes me feel like there's a lot of waste or people are paid too highly working for the city.
You already answered your own question:
> I could see how moving to Texas or Florida would be appealing, warmer so no winter blues, friendlier to businesses, less taxes and simpler tax structures and some cities have more tech than others too such as Austin.
> I do see things like warm weather and walkability attracting people.
People look for cheap when they can’t afford something. People in tech right now can afford to buy what they want, they don’t need cheap.
I would never buy property there, but I have to talk myself out of trying to get an apartment there all the time.
Migration numbers don’t lie, lots of folks love Florida, or at least like it enough to move and stay put.
A major reason for SV being where it is, is the climate. A number of studies have been done on this. The best place for high-quality entrepreneurship and general civilization-building is a Mediterranean climate. The Bay is not the only place with this property. Most of coastal California has the same climate. So why don't some VCs move to other places? How about Monterey? Orange County?
Note that this is based on birth country, not your current country.
The tech industry has metastasized, overthrown the culture, and drained the soul out of the place. The ethos and pathos of the tech industry have undergone a transformation from creation to extraction. We shot for the moon and got surveillance capitalism and the "gig economy" instead.
Now everybody here is "the right type of people". You can be whoever you want, so long as it's sustainable and organic.
Some other pluses: a huge concentration of culture, entertainment, dining. Regional transportation hubs to travel to other cities is relatively quick.
I’m honestly surprised that so many “forward thinking” people can spout off such nationalist bullshit with a straight face.
Cue all the complaints about the entrenched residents in their Prop 13 homes or rent-controlled units, building permits and red tape nightmares. Yes, there is a problem. You not making it and having to move away (after moving there 2 or 3 years ago) is not the problem. Look at it this way, the system is working for 80-90% of the long-term residents, and they're aware of the hardships for the disadvantaged among them. Why should they go out of their way to accomodate conservatives who want to undermine their tax-and-spend heaven?
As for the Democrats who leave CA and vote Democrat elsewhere, why not? They didn't get in early enough on this wealth train (OK, jokes about CAHSR will be tolerated), so they're going somewhere else, and trying to get it started there. CA is defined by excess of liberal values, elswhere by lack, so they're just trying to bring some moderation. They won't be very successful, and I will tell them not to go whining about the conservative values in their new home, so there.
California just is. It's the world's 4th largest economy by itself. For good or ill, it's home to so many internet companies (and other industries) that have made so much money in the internet revolution that it has skewed its cost-of-living and real-estate markets off the charts. It has made many of its residents fabulously weathly, both in relative and absolute terms, and they want to stay and enjoy it mostly the way it is. In SF/SV, it has redefined middle-class at around 300K combined income, and that money (at least what's not dedicated to housing) drives a lot of other sectors (public transit, restaurants, and other quality-of-life businesses). Yeah, I know, all those have issues and/or are overpriced, no need to comment to say that. It also leans very liberal in the coastal cities, meaning tolerance, compassion, social justice, sanctuary, etc. It seems like they still have a democracy, and since they're still the majority, they get to keep experimenting. It's not going anywhere, and it's not going to change much, and certainly not because of the whining. Deal with it.