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California population declines for first time in more than a century
- gremlinsinc 5y agoWell...when fire's everywhere, I'd get out of dodge too... (I write this from Utah which also catches fire frequently...but what do I know, lol).
- epistasis 5y agoThis biggest problem is lack of housing. The people leaving are those with lower incomes and less education, whereas new arrivals have high education levels and high incomes. This is evidenced in the booming housing prices, which seemingly never stop accelerating despite being many multiples more of median income than other places. This is a planned process, Californians have consciously chosen to become exclusionary. Does great things for the housing values, which is easily leveraged into purchasing more real estate or pretty much anything else.
- Black101 5y agoso you left Utah?
- serf 5y ago>Well...when fire's everywhere, I'd get out of dodge too... most people in the U.S. just live where they were born[0]. everyone likes to frequently attribute some reason as to why California shouldn't be lived in, but the reality is that the average size of the family is dwindling[1] within the United States, and this pattern of growth has been expected for many decades. California is one of the first states to expose this trend due to high land values helping to facilitate out-of-the-ordinary social mobility out of the state, another well-predicted happening[2]. It's not fires, it's not earthquakes, it's not tsunamis, it's not social unrest -- It's natural population movement that coincides with social distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity. Whether or not one wants to associate these attributes to poor governance, well that's opinion. I tend to think this type of redistribution is inevitable and not necessarily a negative for quality-of-life across the board. [0]: https://www.northamerican.com/infographics/where-they-grew-up https://www.northamerican.com/infographics/where-they-grew-u... [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-of-a-family-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183657/average-size-of-a... [2]: https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-2.pdf https://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-2.pdf
- mrtweetyhack 5y agoCalifornia, land of the homeless and over-taxed. Spending will not go down even though companies are leaving the state.
- ffggvv 5y agoor govt solution: keep raising taxes and letting violent criminals out and allowing third world quality of life
- badRNG 5y ago> and letting violent criminals out Of all the problems we face, insufficiently low incarceration rates aren't one of them.
- treeman79 5y agoEven been assaulted? After a few times it gets old.
- ffggvv 5y agoso true!! we need to let more people out like this: https://mobile.twitter.com/DionLimTV/status/1390418462820814850 https://mobile.twitter.com/DionLimTV/status/1390418462820814... the stabber was being oppressed and just took out his oppression. we shouldn’t arrest him either. we just let him out for his previous violent crime
- kstrauser 5y agoI'm not sure how much I believe that. It seems likely that this census was incredibly compromised compared to past censuses, and the 0.4% decline is well within what I'd consider a plausible margin of error.
- prepend 5y agoIt seems very unlikely that this census is corrupted. It’s also a census so the margin of error is not within a plausible margin of error.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wavefunction 5y agoThe process was highly politicized and one party and the one in power while the census was administered stood to gain from sowing doubt, fear and confusion. I think the actual results gathering was handled normally but the idea of course was to depress census response rates.
- prepend 5y agoMotive isn’t evidence. I haven’t seen any serious criticism of data collection methods. Just doubting results based on “stood to gain” is silly unless there’s actual evidence. In what world would there be a conspiracy to reduce california population by 200k?
- Tostino 5y agoConsidering that is how congressional seats are apportioned, there is plenty of reason to fudge the numbers.
- windthrown 5y agoBut again, motive alone is empty. There is "plenty of reason" for me to do all kinds of terrible things that I consider abhorrent and would never act on.
- reidjs 5y agoFinally some good news for CA natives. It sucks not being able to afford to live where you grew up. Maybe this will ease the housing market a bit?
- tempestn 5y agoReminds me of, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-yogi-berra-turns-90-quotes-20150512-story.html https://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-yogi-berra...
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoI think the same thing whenever people talk about how it’s so expensive that nobody can afford it.
- rawtxapp 5y agoHousing prices are going through the roof pretty much all over the country/planet. That's what happens when it becomes an investment vehicle.
- Black101 5y agoI thought that it was a good idea to sell my house and rent for a few years when it tripled in value.... we'll see in 1.5 years if that was a good choice.
- redis_mlc 5y agoIt's not fire-related: - state income tax - real estate prices - threatened wealth tax and pursuit across state lines - family court system heavily stacked against men - policing and homeless issues in major cities - water supply issues (half of proposed projects stalled for decades.) It should be interesting to see how big the hole is in the state budgets over the next few years - could be breath-taking.
- raldi 5y agoParadise on Earth and home to the world’s brightest-future industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming from much less eco-friendly places.
- eganist 5y ago> Paradise on Earth and home to the nation’s fastest-growing industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming here from much less eco-friendly places. Are you in agreement with changing zoning laws to accommodate many more high rises e.g in norcal and around the bay? (I'm presuming your location from your bio. Correct me if I'm wrong) (I live near DC. DC itself has a height restriction that dates back to the building of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cairo, and I quite wish DC's height restrictions would change at the very least in its residential areas, but people are NIMBYing the heck out of that too)
- bombcar 5y agoI’m in favor of higher density and I’d have no problem tying it to practical mass transit - thus encouraging developers to work to expand mass transit so they can redevelop land to higher density.
- CameronNemo 5y agoUnfortunately countless coastal communities will happily watch their children flee so that they can keep their "beach bungalow vibe" or whatever other delusion they have. Meanwhile we will keep building huge roads and parking lots to accomodate their lifestyle.
- JPKab 5y agoMy father doesn't live in California, but he's one of those baby boomers that drives me crazy with this kind of crap. There are no jobs or industry anywhere near where we grew up but people like him make sure that stays a reality and then he has the nerve to complain about how I live so far away. He's the ultimate NIMBY. He and others like him all truly believe that as soon as their house was completed no further changes can ever allow to happen or else it will ruin the landscape. It's not just hypocritical it's outright selfish.
- unit_circle 5y agoThe people are fake, everything is on fire and the CHP is merciless
- 1cvmask 5y agoI can only comment on the Bay area which has plenty of land and lots of entrenched vested interests. Take a town like Atherton which is full of billionaires like Marc Andreesen who talk about how they want builders etc... But they are allergic when it is in their tony neighborhood of the zillionaires. The hypocrisy of the NIMBYs at full display: https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ https://a16z.com/2020/04/18/its-time-to-build/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California
- immichaelwang 5y agoWhat is the evidence that Marc Andreessen is a NIMBY other than he lives close to his office?
- RC_ITR 5y agoVote with your feet. At least send your property taxes to a town that allows for at least some multi-unit housing (Palo alto isn’t great but it’s better and right next door).
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoPalo Alto does not allow multi unit housing. There hasn't been a new apartment built in Palo Alto in like 40 years
- CheezeIt 5y agoA16Z’s interests are aligned against nimbyism, not with it, so it’s completely fallacious to treat Marc Andreesen and Atherton as synonymous entities.
- elevenoh 5y agoI think it's also fallacious to treat a VC firm's interests as synonymous to its cofounder's interests on an individual level.
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- nemo44x 5y agoSo I assume it’s “people that can move” which means this 200k likely represents a whole lot more in tax base. Miami has really been exploding with ex-SV talent from my anecdotal social feeds. Might as well as you’ll save tens/hundreds of thousands each year in taxes and not have to live with the dysfunctional political system in much of CA.
- cptskippy 5y agoI love someone from Florida calling California's political system dysfunctional.
- nemo44x 5y agoI’m not from there or live there (FL or CA) but from the outside looking in, CA is in crisis whether it knows it or not. It’s sick right now but I hope it can get better. FL seems happy.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago> FL seems happy. Not especially. Rents have tripled and available homes have dropped to ~0, due to a sudden influx of move-ins buying every sq inch of property. Meanwhile wages remain well below national average. Auto, housing and health insurance are each among the highest in the nation. Our homeless population has long been enormous and is getting ready to skyrocket. Excepting kids, socials services for the vulnerable are largely non-existent. We've spent more time in drought than out of it over the last 30 years. The 13th month of summer is the worst btw. Coastal beaches are routinely closed due to high bacteria counts. Past that it's probably like everywhere.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> FL seems happy. Happily full of voters that collect tons of government aid via Medicare, Social Security, and National Flood Insurance Program, and yet happy to decry government help for anyone else. Let me know when FL has parental leave or any half decent employment laws that help those at the bottom.
- xiphias2 5y agoCompanies moving to hybrid remote/office working will allow much more people to work at companies in California without paying the house prices there.
- egberts1 5y agoor the California state income tax
- mmmBacon 5y agoAs a resident of California, I would greatly prefer fewer people. Losing population isn’t necessarily something negative in my opinion.
- fennecfoxen 5y agoYour state’s unfunded pension obligations say otherwise. You’ll want help paying those.
- seibelj 5y agoGiven the recent bailout of private multi employer pension funds inside of a “COVID Relied Bill” makes me think the democrats will just bail it out.
- edoceo 5y agoshould the "democrats" have just let them fail? what would a different party have done? why did the party even matter?
- koolba 5y agoYes they should. Because the alternative is subsidizing the same bad behavior across the the entire nation and bankrupting our grandchildren before they’re even born.
- shkkmo 5y agoHow does letting those pensions go bankrupt help anything? If the funds go bankrupt, it isn't the executives who used financial shenanigans to bleed the funds dry that face consequences. It is the employees who had no role in the management of the pension funds that end up punished. If you want to actually stop that bad behavior, we need to massively overhaul how we address whitecollar crime in this country so that bad actors face real consequences.
- ibains 5y agoWe should be building Fabs in California, Cars in California, getting the smartest people in the world here, in solid numbers. Perhaps we’re in a global competition and we’ll not be the largest economy soon, perhaps we’re too busy with pronouns to notice. People pattern-matched that the house prices always went up, assumed it was an axiom, and that drove us into a recession. Gavin Newsom will observe that California always grows and people have been talking of leaving the state for years, they never do - axiom. Basically, physics (cause-effect) stops mattering if you pattern match history. Biggest threat to California is being taken over by the employee-bureaucracy class - that never has built anything. It is in their nature to pattern match so de effects of actions and treat them as axioms, and they miss the big picture, and they’re consistent as hell in it. And they vote very left.
- CameronNemo 5y agoDon't fabs require tons of water?
- markdown 5y agoBarely any compared to an orchard.
- ericbarrett 5y ago1.1 gallons (~4 L) per almond.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoCould be worse. Could be cows. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-04-13/cows-suck-up-more-of-california-s-water-than-almonds https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-04-13/cows-s...
- bcrosby95 5y agoYeah, I've always loved how almonds get a bad deal on the news, but they rarely mention meat.
- offtop5 5y agoThe other thing to remember is you generally expect population growth. Even if the decline isn't significant, it means theirs no growth. This is a good thing. California is a horrible horrible place for most working class people. You will never get ahead.
- epistasis 5y agoINHO, this is a terrible thing. The drop in population provides no benefit at all to those struggling to get along. Austerity measures never help those who are struggling. It's always a reallocation of resources from those with less to those with more. And California has embraced austerity in housing and land for almost half a century now. Under housing austerity, as the wealthier buy more and more of an ungrowing housing stock, those with more will have fewer people per house, driving a population decrease even as demand has not decreased at all, and has likely increased. I do agree that California is currently a raw deal for anybody not in a high-paying career. Without drastic change, life will eventually get too hard for the very wealthy as they can no longer find anybody to do things such as repairing their house. We are still a decade or more from that, but this news is a very bad sign of what's to come.
- offtop5 5y ago>I do agree that California is currently a raw deal for anybody not in a high-paying career. Even if you make 6 figures it's a horrible place. I was and essentially living paycheck to paycheck.
- reddog 5y agoI take your point but I’m skeptical. Has any place ever seen a decline in population lead to an increase in general prosperity?
- gautamcgoel 5y agoI'm a PhD student at Caltech. I'd love to stay in CA and become a prof at one of the world-renown universities in the state. The cost for a nice house is > $800K in all of the cities hosting these universities; on top of that, the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.
- collaborative 5y agoNo offense, but housing policy should focus on helping people at the bottom, which will eventually trickle up to the people at the top (where you are) Price control is an illusion and demand will outstrip supply for a long time But state-sponsored, ugly, tall affordable apartment blocks will save from misery those who need it the most (i.e. the homeless) and offer a surplus supply to perhaps not lower current prices for "nice houses" but at least contain them Bottom line, you're best off leaving CA because no matter what there won't be a solution for YOU in your lifetime. The sooner you do it the better (speaking from a similar experience)
- shuckles 5y agoIn reality, the solution to the housing crisis isn’t either/or. The same construction productivity improvements and building reforms are necessary to allow for productive investment for housing at all income levels.
- seryoiupfurds 5y agoThe state can invest billions of dollars into affordable housing, and simultaneously allow private developers to invest billions of their own dollars to meet demand from people at the top. Impeding the latter does nothing to help the former.
- Wolfenstein98k 5y agoWhere do the extra billions come from?
- epistasis 5y agoThere are several comments on this page from people who say they are in California and think this news is a good thing, and also seem to perversely think that it's not a terrible terrible sign for any native Californian who isn't already tremendously wealthy. This is probably my biggest complaint about California: there is this incredibly wrong strain of thought that keeping people out will somehow make everyone's lives here better. It does not, unless you are benefiting directly from how housing austerity drives up prices of housing and everything else.
- Thorrez 5y agoDoesn't people leaving reduce housing prices?
- shuckles 5y agoNo, because rich households are still migrating in. It's low and middle income households that are leaving.
- zucker42 5y agoPeople leaving may decrease housing prices but it also increases the cost of public services per capita. It also can lead abandoned areas as in Detroit. On the other hand modest growth accompanied by significant increases in the housing supply would also cause the COL to stagnate, but they increase the tax base and decrease the per capita cost of public services, especially if the resulting developments are dense and mixed use. What we don't want is CA to become a place that's inaccessible to middle class, working families, and the population to skew towards people who are too old to want to move. An exodus of working families just as infrastructure and pension liabilities come due is a recipe for economic disaster.
- the_optimist 5y agoHotel California is now the place you never check in. You're a visitor, like it or not. The established interests in California are hostile to the people who would live in it. Life is dirty, crowded, and economically inhospitable, and the future promises more of the same.
- johncozen 5y agoUsername doesn’t check out
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- OldHand2018 5y agoHe’s sailing away from California in the largest boat he can afford, thanks to the high cost of living: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist_(dinghy)
- smithmayowa 5y agoThis is so funny, Never heard of an optimist dinghy boat before until now.
- egberts1 5y agoKill off the aerospace industry, what’s next?
- collaborative 5y agoHere is a crazy idea: let's build big and ugly apartment blocks with tax money. The emphasis should be placed on the "ugly" bit. They should be a place where someone with taste would never want to live. They should still include all the basics (heating, plumbing etc) This will make it really hard for these places to become investment vehicles. The State could even just straight up sell them, no priority list needed. The final price would necessarily be low, and the people buying would do so because they need to, not because they need a place to park their money There could be a competition to "design the ugliest, fully functional tower". There are plenty of concepts readily available (brutalism, etc). Now that I think of it, I've already seen this. This is Gypsyism 101: Trash your neighborhood, cherish your home. At last we can all see that they were on to something *Please don't take offense at my Gypsy comment; I merely wish I was Gypsy myself, that's all
- arrty88 5y agoIt’s been done. See any standard nyc project or stuytown.
- ironmagma 5y agoSounds like a great way to build a neighborhood full of miserable people. What was the goal again?
- collaborative 5y agoThe goal was to put roofs over people's heads
- cozzyd 5y agoThis is presumably based on estimates from the ACS, which have severely undercounted population in many states. In August the official census estimates may say the opposite.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoThe state makes the estimate using its own records (birth certificates, death certificates, DL applications, etc)
- bgorman 5y agoThe crazy thing to me is just how ugly urban areas of California are. All around the bay it is just strip mall after strip mall and post-war cheap single family homes. Other than property values, for the vast majority of the San Francisco Bay area - zoning restrictions solve absolutely nothing. Allowing mixed use zoning around the bay would make the Bay area a much nicer. Likewise in Los Angeles, pretty much everything other than the beach cities and the hollywood hills are a complete eyesore and look like any random suburb on the west coast. Nothing of value would be lost if most parts of LA were demolished to build high rises.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y ago> Allowing mixed use zoning around the bay would make the Bay area a much nicer. Not just there.
- cagey 5y agoBorn in CA, lived in CA my whole life (-1 year) until end of 2020 (last 30-1 in San Jose, working in tech the whole time). Now reside in semi-rural AZ (working remotely for the same tech co as before I left CA). I might visit CA eventually, but aside from those few family and friends still there, I've not found myself missing it at all.
- aphextron 5y agoCalifornia is just at saturation level. There's just too many people for the small strip of coastal land that is inhabitable. All I could think while living there for 5 years was how damn cool it must have been in the 60's/70's with literally half as many people. The traffic, the crowds everywhere at all times, it's all just too much at this point. It's still an amazing paradise playground if you're a millionaire. But any normal person just trying to establish themselves can only tread water, nothing more.
- baby 5y agoHong Kong is laughing at you
- blendo 5y agoI try and imagine the state before the Sacramento, Feather, American, and San Joaquin rivers were dammed, and before 95% of the salmon runs were destroyed. With judicious planning, we could probably restore much of the original (aboriginal) ecosystems by 2200 or so, but I don’t see how we could do that with more than a few million people. Kids, get on it :-)
- zucker42 5y agoWhat's the evidence that CA's problems are caused by just too many people? Do you think the East Coast (from Boston to DC) is oversaturated?
- refurb 5y agoIndeed. Compare the Bay Area to say NYC and it’s not dense at all. SF is a few sq miles of high density surrounded by single family homes. Then expand that across the entire Bay Area.
- KirillPanov 5y ago> All I could think while living there for 5 years was how damn cool it must have been in the 60's/70's with literally half as many people. There are places that are, today, what California was in the 60's/70's. It's springtime, get out there and look for them. I found one and I love it here. Just don't waste your time asking the urbanist hipsters for directions... back in the 1970s they would've been trying to convince you anything outside of NYC was "provincial" -- including San Francisco. Perspective.
- aphextron 5y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46mO7jx3JEw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46mO7jx3JEw Some things never change
- greenyoda 5y agoArchived article with full text: https://archive.vn/8CAFn https://archive.vn/8CAFn
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y agoI want to be sympathetic but this is a direct result of how Californians vote and of how they view the role of government.
- dragonwriter 5y agoIts a direct result of of the pandemic; particularly its effect on international migration. Prior, California was growing, small net internal outmigration offset by net internation immigration.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y agoThe problems California faces have been decades in the making. But I am specifically commenting on “the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.”, which the OP was lamenting. I see that as a direct result of how Californians vote and how they fund their state government.
- epistasis 5y agoPrior to this, California was already expected to lose a congressional seat because the rest of the nation was growing far faster: https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265 https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265 California was not not keeping pace with deaths minus deaths plus immigration nationwide, there was nowhere near enough construction. When you add in that California was seeing amazing economic growth during this period, and could have houses people and provided them good jobs, all with better environmental impact than elsewhere in the country, Californian has not only done itself a massive disservice to its own people by pushing them out, it's done a massive disservice to the environment and the rest of the country.
- WarOnPrivacy 5y agoHere in Florida, non-wealthy renters have become victims of a hostile takeover, by out of state home buyers. The vast bulk of us simply can't compete with California cash on FL wages. Rental properties are being sold to move-ins, causing rents here to triple or more. The number of available rentals has dropped to ~0. Leases aren't being renewed and these people have nowhere to go. This is unprecedented.
- listless 5y agoSame is happening in TN, but for home buyers. If you’re a first time buyer looking in the < 300K range, forget it. You’ll get outbid 50K over asking with a cash offer. Resign yourself to renting if you can even find something. I have no idea what my kids are gonna do. They will never be able to afford a decent house at the current rate of growth.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- baby 5y agoAfter leaving SF for 6 months I came back here to see if the housing market is better. I’m here for a month in an Airbnb. I just visited a place that was 4600$/month, 2 tiny bedrooms and all the windows gave on the landlord’s patio. Not like a nice patio, some small space surrounded by buildings, and not like I could see them, I could literally open my window and walk in their patio. I just visited another place today at 5k/month with good location but not rent controlled (so they can pretty much double your rent at will) and the laundry isn’t even in unit. I still have to pay for a parking space. At least it’s not a “tandem” parking, which I’ve been offered a lot these weeks. If you don’t know what a tandem parking is: you have to coordinate with another person because one car always block the other. It’s usually 250$, or more. So right now I’m thinking, why do I want to spend so much to have the privilege to live in this city. It’s filled with homeless, it’s cold all year long, there’s a month of pollution every year due to the wild fires, and there isn’t that many things to do compared to a real city like new york. They don’t even have pedestrian streets or terrasses/patios/beer gardens (parklets are ridiculous). So now I’m really considering moving to san diego, or nyc, or somewhere else…
- pbuzbee 5y agoI feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It's still a great place to live if you're rich or if you bought property in a good location a long time ago, but if neither of those are true, you're going to have a huge uphill battle. Most people in my millennial friend groups, including me, have all talked about how we'd like to leave. We're mostly still here because our families are here and good jobs are easier to find. But each year, one by one I see people I know flee to other states.
- darig 5y agoWe're still in the stage of Chinese investments taking over the industries that pay the highest wages, while also buying all the real estate those industry workers will rent... attracting the best talent from all over America, and filling any gaps with H1-B visas for connected Chinese immigrants. It's a slow invasion and we're retreating. All hail Xi Jinping.
- digitaltrees 5y agoGood jobs are not easy to find in lots of places. Don’t underestimate the value of that.
- Lammy 5y agoTo me it feels like that’s why it’s expensive. Either that or it just very coincidentally started getting extremely expensive at the same time housing segregation and home-loan discrimination were banned federally (1968 and 1974 respectively. People ask “WTF happened in 1971?” (https://wtfhappenedin1971.com https://wtfhappenedin1971.com) like they never took a high school “american history” class.
- mjevans 5y agoThat wasn't covered in any of my public school classes. Offhand, none of the teachers for history ever covered past WW-II. None of the material in the books (I read ahead) covered anything during the 70s or beyond either... though the district I grew up in did have some really old books for the time (over a decade old, and no dedicated class for 'recent' history).
- kordlessagain 5y agoIt’s not going positive unless the fires decrease. Horrible watching it burn.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoIt's been a couple of decades since I lived in California and my parents moved out to Nevada five years ago so my current knowledge of the state is pretty much from media and online sources. Despite that, I have to wonder if the state has simply become too unwieldly and if it's time to give the idea of splitting it into multiple states some serious consideration. While I didn't like the "Six Californias" plan, some of the earlier plans to split the state into two states or perhaps three states seem more reasonable. There'd probably be some opposition from other states since adding more senators to the Senate dilutes every other state's relative power plus it's likely any way you split California is going to result in all of the new senators being Democrats. Nevertheless, it seems worth exploring, seriously this time. The "smaller" states would still be huge states but hopefully more manageable.
- briga 5y agoThe bureaucracy in California definitely feels excessive. Taxes are too high and don't seem to be helping solve the numerous social problems that California is facing. But politically is seems that one of the biggest issues hindering development is how different municipal governments can block and sabotage regional projects at the expense of the rest of the state (e.g. billionaires in Atherton preventing high speed rail "because it would be too noisy"). Is diving the state into even more political units the solution?
- casefields 5y ago3 states would work best. 1 NorCal which would be heavily blue. SoCal which would lean blueish-purple which Orange County and SD. Then you can carve out a Central Valley state which would be red. In effect we'd be adding 2 new senators for central/southern California, and it would be 1 red and 1 blue.
- orthoxerox 5y ago> 1 NorCal which would be heavily blue. Not if NorCal starts north of the bay. SF and friends can have their own state.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoIf you look at a California population graph over the last one hundred years, you see a huge growth in population, being at about parity with Texas in 1940. And now, that really long population boom has leveled off and started to even decline a bit, not a drastic drop. It sounds like maybe California has just reached it’s carrying capacity for the time being, why should we be worried about that?
- throwaway09223 5y agoWe should be aware because growth curves will change in all sorts of places, breaking various forward looking economic expectations.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoBut the curve for California seems really steady, I don’t think we will see any big surprises in the next ten years barring some kind of Katrina-scale natural disaster.
- zucker42 5y agoWhat's worrying is not the population drop by itself, but the widespread belief that it's caused by ridiculous housing prices that we're not effectively addressing.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoIf it’s just housing prices, then people leaving will reduce demand until an equilibrium is reached. Of course, that really isn’t happening because the big popular cities are still gaining people. I also don’t see how NYC scale density will improve things that much, it’s not like NYC is much more affordable than the Bay Area or LA.
- surfmike 5y agoOn Nextdoor you can see the settled Californians complaining about the traffic, crowding, and wanting to stop development. The housing crisis doesn’t register for them at all since they got theirs.
- miguelmota 5y agoMost people I know that grew up in Southern California want to live long-term in California. Most people I know that grew up in a different state and tried living in Southern California, end up hating it and leaving. If you’re used to Southern California you’re probably more likely to put up with it’s many problems because it’s home, there’s great food, plenty of things to do, and of course the amazing weather. If you’re an outsider, I can see why living in California seems absurd if you’re not used to the heavy traffic and high prices.
- jayd16 5y agoSounds good to me. Most of California's perceived problems are from rampant growth in the population centers. I doubt it will last though. Any improvements will simply beckon back more population, no?
- ww520 5y agoIt’s time to break up California. One size does not fit all. California is too big. Its government cannot tackle the problems it faces effectively. Break it up into 3, 4, 5 states.
- contrarian_5 5y agoi was born and raised in california. i left a year ago for the midwest. the situation in california is depressing. and im not talking about human poop or homeless people. im talking about jobs, culture and general lifestyle. california is filled with lots of very ugly urban wasteland. its filled with lots and lots of very disadvantaged people, hordes upon hordes of people who might not be homeless but are involved in crime and smoke meth and shoot up heroin. there is broken glass on every other sidewalk. its basically legal for people to steal things as long as its less than a thousand dollars, in that the penalty is so small that it might as well be legal. im just rattling off my lifes truth, my memories. but worst of all is the grey dread everywhere. people in california do not think for themselves. they are so career oriented and so entangled in the bureaucratic system of formal societal infrastructure that basic common sense is dying a brutal death and you can feel this when you are amidst it. i always felt anxious because its a society resting completely on its laurels. there is nothing propelling it forward besides the momentum created by the previous generation of single minded, abrasive intellectual mavericks who raged against convention and dogma. now california is the embodiment of convention and dogma. its largest companies have transitioned over the past ten years from pioneers to custodians of entrenched power and market dominance. i could feel this when i was a small boy growing up in the san francisco bay area. my peers seemed super petty and intellectually average. easily pulled into dogmatic, fuzzy ideas. most of them anyway. when i imagine the country now being the result of my generation growing up and using their dollars and tweets as their votes, it all lines up.
- shdh 5y agoSeems to me like you’re simply describing the average person.
- contrarian_5 5y agoif you measure accurately enough there is a lot of variation in those qualities from one person to the next.
- torgian 5y agoCali is beautiful, but unfortunately I can’t see myself living there in the future. I wish I could since it’s the state I grew up in, but unless I win the lottery or the equivalent, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Building more housing won’t help either; it’ll just get bought by Chinese investors.
- PaywallBuster 5y agoIs bankruptcy gonna save Cali and the Valley? They can finally reorganize and cut all the fat
- epistasis 5y agoWhat bankruptcy? That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard. California has a massive budget surplus, despite going through a pandemic. There's such a massive surplus that it is overflowing the rainy day fund. And due to spending limits set back in 1979, a bunch is being refunded: https://www.kqed.org/news/11872910/flush-with-cash-california-set-to-send-billions-in-rebates-to-taxpayers https://www.kqed.org/news/11872910/flush-with-cash-californi... You should think back to whatever source told you such a silly thing and remember to never believe them.
- neonological 5y agoMy tip for you is to stop using the word preposterous. You present a correct argument here but in my other thread you used the same garbage and offensive language were utterly wrong. You completely embarrassed yourself and had to run away from the conversation. My advice to you is to be more humble. You're so hellbent on finding people incorrectly pointing out that California is in an economic downturn that you "thought" that this was what I was doing and you ended up humiliating yourself. Then you weaseled your way out by saying it's not productive.
- epistasis 5y agoLol, I did not embarrass myself in that thread at all, but it was clearly not productive in the least!
- TheGigaChad 5y agoPeople enjoying the Lockdowns I reckon.
- rayiner 5y agoPeople who live on the coasts really don’t understand how much of the Millennial existential angst is due to inability to buy a house and live a typical life. My wife went to the University of Iowa, and her friends who stayed in state all bought houses years ago. (We’re in our mid-30s.) Meanwhile few of our friends from law school (many of whom are by now moving up the ranks in their profession, are still trying to get settled. We short-circuited the process, accepting a long commute and moving out to the suburbs of a satellite city near DC (Annapolis). Bought a house for less than 1/3 of what my colleagues are spending. Could make my mortgage payment if my wife quits her job, I change jobs, etc. We live around couples with young kids, just like us, with normal middle class jobs. It’s amazing. But thanks to the Fed printing money property values in the area are shooting up. The house next door, which is a bit smaller than hours, recently sold for double what we paid in 2016. I’m worried it’s going to destroy the neighborhood so only upper middle class people can live here. This must stop.
- tptacek 5y agoThis can only happen if the upper middle class people move away from somewhere else. There has to be some limit to how far away they'll commute to get access to suburban houses, right?
- rayiner 5y agoI had thought we were safe out here, a good hour and fifteen minutes from DC in traffic. But remote working has overturned those expectations.
- mikevm 5y agoIt's funny how people in this thread are complaining about housing costs, homelessness, high tax rates, etc... and no one actually wants to blame it on the liberal policies that have caused all these problems. People are leaving California to states likes Texas and Florida, in part due to better costs of living and lower taxes. Unfortunately, said people will try to turn those states into another California by pushing for the same policies that ended up making California unlivable.
- bicepjai 5y agoObjective arguments: 1. Texas has 29m people in 261k sq.m and cal has 39m people in 163 sq.m => land is obviously cheaper 2. CA is worlds 5th largest economy because of silicon valley, great schools, agriculture and hollywood. 3. Liberal policies are the reason for the economy. If CA can infect Texas, I see that as a progress. 4. It is natural people will move for better cost of living; one cannot see the end (is there an end?) when in middle of a self correcting process; No comments on Florida :)
- gumby 5y agoI can’t help but believe that California will again be the bellwether for the USA. In my time in the USA I have seen California signal major trends, from the neocon movement of Nixon/Reagan, tax protest, the rise of megachurches, growth of civil rights for some repressed groups (e.g. LGBTQ+), and so on. And this predates me — it’s a long term trend. Birth rates are dropping and there is a demographic bulge with the boomers. Instead of laughing at California as the WSJ likes to do, people should consider if it’s what the future holds where they are. Some of the trends discussed (huge separation between mean and median income, overt ecological shifts) are already widespread, and increasing, in the rest of the country.