12 ms·

I'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 > $800

I'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 ago
No 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 ago
  In 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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Where do the extra billions come from?
    - epistasis 5y ago
      If people's rent went to producing more housing and paying for the labor and materials of that housing, and we simultaneously invested in the trades to make sure there was consistent and good pay and that there was enough labor, there would be more than enough money. If we try to take money from income taxes, it won't work. We need to stop transferring wealth to unproductive rentiers (landlords), and instead transfer it to labor which will produce what we need. The reason this doesn't happen is that the rentiers control the zoning boards.
    - baby 5y ago
      Can we pay more taxes please? I’m serious.
      - CamperBob2 5y ago
        Yes, in many jurisdictions voluntary contributions are accepted. I assume you've already explored this option?
        baby 5y ago
        I am not interested as I don’t think voluntary contributions can change anything. This argument goes both ways: why not lowering taxes since people can just donate instead? The next thing you know you don’t have hospitals, roads, police, firemen, army, education, healthcare, oops
        refurb 5y ago
        The relevant phrase is “put your money where your mouth is”.
        baby 5y ago
        Yes, which is in funding organizations and movements that aim at educating people (like you) about the benefits of social programs and taxes.
      - 5y ago
- epistasis 5y ago
  We definitely need to produce healthy incentives and non-market rate housing, and IMHO housing is a human right (as the UN declared and the US signed on to last century). However, this is not the primary problem in California. The primary problem is that the wealthy are doing all they can to make sure that housing prices rise as much as possible. And because of the 5x leverage that a mortgage with a 20% down payment earns, any small shortage of housing greatly amplifies prices even further, accelerating asset price inflation for the landed class, giving them even greater gains. So we have two structural problems 1) the one you mention where wages are not enough to produce or maintain housing, and 2) those with the resources to build housing for themselves are not allowed to use those resources for more housing, instead transferring all wealth to the landed class instead of productive uses. If we don't solve 2), we will never have enough resources done 1) because the landlords will still take all the money of the working class.
  - medium_burrito 5y ago
    I'm going to disagree the wealthy care very much. This is a giant political can which we are basically kicking down the road. The problem is middle class America has their entire net worth in the property, and it must appreciate. If that goes down, the entire middle class evaporates. China has the same problem except 100x worse. Canada and Australia too, to a lesser degree. What happens when the music stops? edit: mispellings, possibly due to poorly aged scotch
    - epistasis 5y ago
      I'm not sure what you mean by "the wealthy care very much." But perhaps it has something to do with the definition of "wealthy." I would say that anybody who owns a house free-and-clear in California, or another high-cost location such as Beijing of Vancouver, as "wealthy." But I also separate out this sort of wealth from, say, stocks or highly liquid wealth in a bank account. Land, and even structures themselves in a supply constrained location, act as a far more insidious form of capital than dollars or stocks. They are used to extract rents from people, just as monopolies are used to extract wealth, or capitalists with a monopsony on labor can extract the excess value of labor, far more than capital interest would normally demand. There's a solution to this, capture the excess value that real estate commands and redistribute it, either through taxation, or modified forms of limited ownership. This has two effects, the primary one being that it eliminates the motive to use housing as an appreciating asset. People can still use their homes as a store of value, meaning that they can put work into their homes to improve them to their liking, and not have it all taken away. But they do not take the value that comes merely from excluding people from access to the area, the increase in land values. (Though in places where there is not change in land use allowed, the homes themselves start to behave as land does, commanding excess rents merely due to the inability to let more people have access to an area.) The secondary effect is that these socially created land rents get distributed to all of society, who generate the value, rather than the person who is speculating. There are two end games to the bubble in land prices that we are currently seeing. A slow deflation, or a sudden pop. However, since so much of our wealth is predicated on housing values, and since so many of our banks are dependent on high valuations, there will always be a strong enough political coalition in the US to stop a pop. We need to build a coalition that prevents the growth of the bubble, committing it to steady deflation.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > state-sponsored, ugly, tall affordable apartment blocks will save from misery those who need it the most You might want to read the history of Chicago's ugly, tall, public housing projects. Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, Henry Horner Homes, etc. That they've all been torn down will give you a clue how it ended. In short, they were horrible shitholes.
linguae 5y ago
I'm a lifelong Californian whose lived in Santa Cruz County for nearly nine out of the past 11 years, and as someone who wants to become a CS professor at a teaching university one day, I feel the exact same way. I love California and I don't want to leave the state. However, the housing prices signal to me that if I want to buy a house, I need to have a very high income and maintain it during the length of a 30-year mortgage. Professors are paid well compared to the average Californian, but professors' salaries are generally not enough to afford to purchase a place in the Bay Area or much of Southern California without involving mega-commutes from exurbia (and, thanks to the WFH boom, these exurbs have gone up in price dramatically). There's still some parts of the Central Valley that are affordable for professors and that are too far for Bay Area/Los Angeles mega-commuters, but the nature of academic hiring means that there's no guarantee a position at a place like UC Merced or Fresno State would open when it's time for me to apply for assistant professor jobs. If I can't find a place in the next few years that is affordable on an $80,000/year salary in California, then I have to move. I'd like to move to a place where a 3-bedroom house in a safe neighborhood costs no more than $400,000, and where there is a diverse population. Ideally I'd like to live in a place that doesn't get too cold in the winter; I'd rather deal with very hot summers (I grew up in Sacramento where it regularly gets above 100 in the summer) than to deal with cold winters.
- CameronNemo 5y ago
  You could try Houston!
  - bob1029 5y ago
    Be prepared to offer 10% over listing price. Just bought a house in this market last week. Texas realtors are the real heroes of 2021. I can't imagine having to deliver bad news to 20+ people for every house that touches the market.
- gautamcgoel 5y ago
  I grew up in Atlanta and highly recommend it.
J253 5y ago
I know that CA (LA, SF, SD) housing has always been expensive but it seems like in the past 20 years or so it’s become cumbersomely so. Unless you rode up on the wave of raising house prices through those years (presumably, mostly boomers, or you’re already ultra-wealthy) buying a decent single family home is out of the question. But with the boomer generation approaching EOL (sorry, a bit macabre) does anyone think prices will have to cool a bit as supply slowly starts to trickle up a bit? Or will that just attract other wealthy people from elsewhere into the market? The current price trend can’t possibly keep up at its current pace or no one will be able to buy…
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  That should help slow the rise, but since populations rise, I wouldn’t expect a big change. Only if nimbys were to kick off en masse and prop 13 were reformed.
  - ruined 5y ago
    populations don't always rise, and the boomers have implemented policy and stuck around long enough to kneecap the next generations and prevent younger people from starting families. america has dropped below replacement birth rate in the past few years, despite younger parents actually wanting to have more children
    - tootahe45 5y ago
      As long as living standards are lower elsewhere, you can just get replacements from other countries. You spend less this way as well and don't have to raise and educate people. You can also call people racists if they don't like it.
      - ruined 5y ago
        i support open immigration but current policy just gives us the worst of both worlds. having children is financially impossible, moving here is legally impossible, so of course the only demographics doing it are either extremely rich or (mostly) extremely desperate. there's just a lot of suffering involved, which doesn't encourage positive outcomes in either set of folks. great world we've made
jshen 5y ago
One thing to keep in mind about CA, once you buy that $800k house, your real estate taxes are more or less locked at that price and won’t rise as the value increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
- ohazi 5y ago
  i.e. the original sin that gave us this problem in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to have the older, wealthier, luckier, "I got here early, therefore I'm set for life" generation pay $300/year, while the couple in their thirties who moved in two years ago, have a new baby, and can barely afford the mortgage and daycare despite both parents working in tech have to pay nearly $15,000/year. I know the original argument for prop 13 was about how awful it was for poor little old ladies to lose their houses, but that is by far not the common case, and this level of inequality, stealing from the young to give to the old, is completely insane. One way or another, this has to end.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).
    - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
      In other jurisdictions the solution is to allow the retired homeowner to defer property taxes, to be paid out of the eventual proceeds of a sale.
      - defterGoose 5y ago
        A sane, rational solution to a huge, massive problem? We wouldn't want any of those screwing up our politics, would we? /s But really, Prop 13 is among the most ham-fisted damaging legislation you could possibly point to...
thisCtx 5y ago
To be fair the gerontocracy is pretty much saying that to all millennials in the US. They invested all those years ago and we damn well best recognize their sacrifice with eternal servitude, and be thankful our buying power is deflated to prop up theirs!
jayd16 5y ago
Look at Davis CA or 20 minutes away from half the UCs really. North of San Diego is cheap is peaceful. Most places do not have the endless urban sprawl of the bay or LA.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> on top of that, the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. I think you are either too optimistic in what a professor can earn in California, or you are missing that taxes are marginal. I know a CS professor at UCLA who just makes around $120k, so single filer California taxes would pay just be around 6.5%. If you throw in a spouse with an additional $80k of income, you’ll hit 6%. To pay an effective 10% rate in California, a single filer would have to make $700k/year and a married couple would need to make more than a million. A school like UCLA deals with their faculty not making enough to buy a house in LA (or especially Westwood) by giving them access to special kinds of loans.
- nullc 5y ago
  Clearly the state just wants to make sure that any prospective college professors can distinguish marginal tax rate from effective tax rate. :P
- gautamcgoel 5y ago
  Thanks for this comment. I must have misread at what income the 9% rate kicks in. Is your friend an assistant prof, or does he/she have tenure?
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    It is 9.3% on income after $58k until $300k (single filing), but the first $58k is taxed at a lower rate, so you never get anywhere near an effective 9% rate. That’s just the way marginal rates work, Republicans throw out the top tax rate to argue that California is high taxed, but it turns out the taxes are very progressive (the first $100k is taxed very lightly). He should have tenure. The UC system doesn’t pay that great, and there is also a lot of competition for faculty positions. Your best bet is to make some money on the side , legally of course, advising some company, but even that has a lot of restrictions.
    - refurb 5y ago
      I mean yeah, it’s marginal, but $45k-58k is taxed at 8%, then $33k-$46k is taxed at 6%. Those aren’t low rates compared to other states, especially considering the COL.
periheli0n 5y ago
Things really have changed when housing cost is a greater problem than getting tenure.
prostoalex 5y ago
CA tax system is mainly set up for retirees - high tax rates for current income, low tax rates for long-term property ownership. Someone who no longer works for W-2 income, but lives off social security, pension or investment portfolio would flourish in CA. It's interesting how AZ and FL get the reputation of being great places for retirement, even though their tax system highly encourages current income and penalizes home ownership through higher property taxes.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  Actually these states maximize the taxes they can extract, some from active people and some from retirees. Taxes are no longer just a way to sustain the society, but a war game between the states and the citizens.
- NeverFade 5y ago
  California taxes investment income as ordinary income, and California's taxation of ordinary income is the highest in the nation. So California isn't a great place for retirees. It is among the worst and far inferior to Florida.

collaborative 5y ago

No 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 ago
In 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 ago
The 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 ago
  Where do the extra billions come from?
  - epistasis 5y ago
    If people's rent went to producing more housing and paying for the labor and materials of that housing, and we simultaneously invested in the trades to make sure there was consistent and good pay and that there was enough labor, there would be more than enough money. If we try to take money from income taxes, it won't work. We need to stop transferring wealth to unproductive rentiers (landlords), and instead transfer it to labor which will produce what we need. The reason this doesn't happen is that the rentiers control the zoning boards.
  - baby 5y ago
    Can we pay more taxes please? I’m serious.
    - CamperBob2 5y ago
      Yes, in many jurisdictions voluntary contributions are accepted. I assume you've already explored this option?
      - baby 5y ago
        I am not interested as I don’t think voluntary contributions can change anything. This argument goes both ways: why not lowering taxes since people can just donate instead? The next thing you know you don’t have hospitals, roads, police, firemen, army, education, healthcare, oops
        refurb 5y ago
        The relevant phrase is “put your money where your mouth is”.
        baby 5y ago
        Yes, which is in funding organizations and movements that aim at educating people (like you) about the benefits of social programs and taxes.
    - 5y ago
epistasis 5y ago
We definitely need to produce healthy incentives and non-market rate housing, and IMHO housing is a human right (as the UN declared and the US signed on to last century). However, this is not the primary problem in California. The primary problem is that the wealthy are doing all they can to make sure that housing prices rise as much as possible. And because of the 5x leverage that a mortgage with a 20% down payment earns, any small shortage of housing greatly amplifies prices even further, accelerating asset price inflation for the landed class, giving them even greater gains. So we have two structural problems 1) the one you mention where wages are not enough to produce or maintain housing, and 2) those with the resources to build housing for themselves are not allowed to use those resources for more housing, instead transferring all wealth to the landed class instead of productive uses. If we don't solve 2), we will never have enough resources done 1) because the landlords will still take all the money of the working class.
- medium_burrito 5y ago
  I'm going to disagree the wealthy care very much. This is a giant political can which we are basically kicking down the road. The problem is middle class America has their entire net worth in the property, and it must appreciate. If that goes down, the entire middle class evaporates. China has the same problem except 100x worse. Canada and Australia too, to a lesser degree. What happens when the music stops? edit: mispellings, possibly due to poorly aged scotch
  - epistasis 5y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "the wealthy care very much." But perhaps it has something to do with the definition of "wealthy." I would say that anybody who owns a house free-and-clear in California, or another high-cost location such as Beijing of Vancouver, as "wealthy." But I also separate out this sort of wealth from, say, stocks or highly liquid wealth in a bank account. Land, and even structures themselves in a supply constrained location, act as a far more insidious form of capital than dollars or stocks. They are used to extract rents from people, just as monopolies are used to extract wealth, or capitalists with a monopsony on labor can extract the excess value of labor, far more than capital interest would normally demand. There's a solution to this, capture the excess value that real estate commands and redistribute it, either through taxation, or modified forms of limited ownership. This has two effects, the primary one being that it eliminates the motive to use housing as an appreciating asset. People can still use their homes as a store of value, meaning that they can put work into their homes to improve them to their liking, and not have it all taken away. But they do not take the value that comes merely from excluding people from access to the area, the increase in land values. (Though in places where there is not change in land use allowed, the homes themselves start to behave as land does, commanding excess rents merely due to the inability to let more people have access to an area.) The secondary effect is that these socially created land rents get distributed to all of society, who generate the value, rather than the person who is speculating. There are two end games to the bubble in land prices that we are currently seeing. A slow deflation, or a sudden pop. However, since so much of our wealth is predicated on housing values, and since so many of our banks are dependent on high valuations, there will always be a strong enough political coalition in the US to stop a pop. We need to build a coalition that prevents the growth of the bubble, committing it to steady deflation.
throwawayboise 5y ago
> state-sponsored, ugly, tall affordable apartment blocks will save from misery those who need it the most You might want to read the history of Chicago's ugly, tall, public housing projects. Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, Henry Horner Homes, etc. That they've all been torn down will give you a clue how it ended. In short, they were horrible shitholes.

linguae 5y ago

I'm a lifelong Californian whose lived in Santa Cruz County for nearly nine out of the past 11 years, and as someone who wants to become a CS professor at a teaching university one day, I feel the exact same way. I love California and I don't want to leave the state. However, the housing prices signal to me that if I want to buy a house, I need to have a very high income and maintain it during the length of a 30-year mortgage. Professors are paid well compared to the average Californian, but professors' salaries are generally not enough to afford to purchase a place in the Bay Area or much of Southern California without involving mega-commutes from exurbia (and, thanks to the WFH boom, these exurbs have gone up in price dramatically). There's still some parts of the Central Valley that are affordable for professors and that are too far for Bay Area/Los Angeles mega-commuters, but the nature of academic hiring means that there's no guarantee a position at a place like UC Merced or Fresno State would open when it's time for me to apply for assistant professor jobs. If I can't find a place in the next few years that is affordable on an $80,000/year salary in California, then I have to move. I'd like to move to a place where a 3-bedroom house in a safe neighborhood costs no more than $400,000, and where there is a diverse population. Ideally I'd like to live in a place that doesn't get too cold in the winter; I'd rather deal with very hot summers (I grew up in Sacramento where it regularly gets above 100 in the summer) than to deal with cold winters.

CameronNemo 5y ago
You could try Houston!
- bob1029 5y ago
  Be prepared to offer 10% over listing price. Just bought a house in this market last week. Texas realtors are the real heroes of 2021. I can't imagine having to deliver bad news to 20+ people for every house that touches the market.
gautamcgoel 5y ago
I grew up in Atlanta and highly recommend it.

J253 5y ago

I know that CA (LA, SF, SD) housing has always been expensive but it seems like in the past 20 years or so it’s become cumbersomely so. Unless you rode up on the wave of raising house prices through those years (presumably, mostly boomers, or you’re already ultra-wealthy) buying a decent single family home is out of the question. But with the boomer generation approaching EOL (sorry, a bit macabre) does anyone think prices will have to cool a bit as supply slowly starts to trickle up a bit? Or will that just attract other wealthy people from elsewhere into the market? The current price trend can’t possibly keep up at its current pace or no one will be able to buy…

mixmastamyk 5y ago
That should help slow the rise, but since populations rise, I wouldn’t expect a big change. Only if nimbys were to kick off en masse and prop 13 were reformed.
- ruined 5y ago
  populations don't always rise, and the boomers have implemented policy and stuck around long enough to kneecap the next generations and prevent younger people from starting families. america has dropped below replacement birth rate in the past few years, despite younger parents actually wanting to have more children
  - tootahe45 5y ago
    As long as living standards are lower elsewhere, you can just get replacements from other countries. You spend less this way as well and don't have to raise and educate people. You can also call people racists if they don't like it.
    - ruined 5y ago
      i support open immigration but current policy just gives us the worst of both worlds. having children is financially impossible, moving here is legally impossible, so of course the only demographics doing it are either extremely rich or (mostly) extremely desperate. there's just a lot of suffering involved, which doesn't encourage positive outcomes in either set of folks. great world we've made

jshen 5y ago

One thing to keep in mind about CA, once you buy that $800k house, your real estate taxes are more or less locked at that price and won’t rise as the value increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

ohazi 5y ago
i.e. the original sin that gave us this problem in the first place. It makes absolutely no sense to have the older, wealthier, luckier, "I got here early, therefore I'm set for life" generation pay $300/year, while the couple in their thirties who moved in two years ago, have a new baby, and can barely afford the mortgage and daycare despite both parents working in tech have to pay nearly $15,000/year. I know the original argument for prop 13 was about how awful it was for poor little old ladies to lose their houses, but that is by far not the common case, and this level of inequality, stealing from the young to give to the old, is completely insane. One way or another, this has to end.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  I've never seen a good solution for this. If the taxes get locked in, then you get the "2 neighbors with near identical houses paying totally different amounts in taxes" problem. If the taxes are not locked in, then you get the retired lifelong home-owner (or renter) on a fixed income, unable to afford the increasing taxes (or rents).
  - seryoiupfurds 5y ago
    In other jurisdictions the solution is to allow the retired homeowner to defer property taxes, to be paid out of the eventual proceeds of a sale.
    - defterGoose 5y ago
      A sane, rational solution to a huge, massive problem? We wouldn't want any of those screwing up our politics, would we? /s But really, Prop 13 is among the most ham-fisted damaging legislation you could possibly point to...

thisCtx 5y ago

To be fair the gerontocracy is pretty much saying that to all millennials in the US. They invested all those years ago and we damn well best recognize their sacrifice with eternal servitude, and be thankful our buying power is deflated to prop up theirs!

jayd16 5y ago

Look at Davis CA or 20 minutes away from half the UCs really. North of San Diego is cheap is peaceful. Most places do not have the endless urban sprawl of the bay or LA.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> on top of that, the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. I think you are either too optimistic in what a professor can earn in California, or you are missing that taxes are marginal. I know a CS professor at UCLA who just makes around $120k, so single filer California taxes would pay just be around 6.5%. If you throw in a spouse with an additional $80k of income, you’ll hit 6%. To pay an effective 10% rate in California, a single filer would have to make $700k/year and a married couple would need to make more than a million. A school like UCLA deals with their faculty not making enough to buy a house in LA (or especially Westwood) by giving them access to special kinds of loans.

nullc 5y ago
Clearly the state just wants to make sure that any prospective college professors can distinguish marginal tax rate from effective tax rate. :P
gautamcgoel 5y ago
Thanks for this comment. I must have misread at what income the 9% rate kicks in. Is your friend an assistant prof, or does he/she have tenure?
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  It is 9.3% on income after $58k until $300k (single filing), but the first $58k is taxed at a lower rate, so you never get anywhere near an effective 9% rate. That’s just the way marginal rates work, Republicans throw out the top tax rate to argue that California is high taxed, but it turns out the taxes are very progressive (the first $100k is taxed very lightly). He should have tenure. The UC system doesn’t pay that great, and there is also a lot of competition for faculty positions. Your best bet is to make some money on the side , legally of course, advising some company, but even that has a lot of restrictions.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I mean yeah, it’s marginal, but $45k-58k is taxed at 8%, then $33k-$46k is taxed at 6%. Those aren’t low rates compared to other states, especially considering the COL.

periheli0n 5y ago

Things really have changed when housing cost is a greater problem than getting tenure.

prostoalex 5y ago

CA tax system is mainly set up for retirees - high tax rates for current income, low tax rates for long-term property ownership. Someone who no longer works for W-2 income, but lives off social security, pension or investment portfolio would flourish in CA. It's interesting how AZ and FL get the reputation of being great places for retirement, even though their tax system highly encourages current income and penalizes home ownership through higher property taxes.

AdrianB1 5y ago
Actually these states maximize the taxes they can extract, some from active people and some from retirees. Taxes are no longer just a way to sustain the society, but a war game between the states and the citizens.
NeverFade 5y ago
California taxes investment income as ordinary income, and California's taxation of ordinary income is the highest in the nation. So California isn't a great place for retirees. It is among the worst and far inferior to Florida.