13 ms·

I 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 y

I 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 ago
We'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 ago
Good jobs are not easy to find in lots of places. Don’t underestimate the value of that.
Lammy 5y ago
To 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 ago
  That 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).
- avidiax 5y ago
  Is the answer that the US left the gold standard and switched to completely fiat currency? Or the US ended the trade embargo with China? Or Walt Disney World opened in Florida?
  - p1mrx 5y ago
    It was decimalisation all along!
  - Lammy 5y ago
    We outlawed segregation so all those people who wanted it immediately realized they were wrong, racism disappeared, and we all lived Happily Ever After. Or that’s the way the Disney version goes anyway.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    There are several other general policy changes and trends that are far more relevant to housing. With the passage of the Fair Housing Act, cities embarked upon thorough downzonings to prevent any new construction and "preserve neighborhood character" by not allowing more affordable forms of housing like townhomes and condos. Prior to the downzonings, zoning capacity was very free, there's a great graph of LA's zoned capacity versus population over time, and it starts decreasing from many many multiples of population, and as population rises it falls to barely more than population. This sort of extremely tight constraint on housing, allowing it only in very certain areas, and in particular only if there is no small subset of homeowners that oppose it, is a huge change from the past. You can also see similar evidence pretty much all over the Bay Area too. A six story apartment building in the Sunset may exist now, but could never be build now because of downzoning. You'll find lots of older duplexes in some parts of the Bay Area, similarly outlawed now. This sort of planning trend wasn't limited to California by any means, and the Levittowns of suburban development embraced a development style of having nearly all land "built out," a state of regulation so that nobody with slightly less money could move in because apartments or duplexes were allowed.
- specialist 5y ago
  In my 20s, I was stunned to learn that my city's founding fathers got rich by developing land stolen from immigrant Japanese farmers. In my 30s, I learned about sunset laws, another large factor explaining segregation. Growing up, it had been explained that racism was what other people did. Certainly not us. Everyone's the hero of their own story.
0x000000E2 5y ago
Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop people from building more housing your property value just keeps rising. Property costs are high because NIMBY blocking denser housing. Traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Homelessness is bad because houses are too expensive. Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted
- pbuzbee 5y ago
  I agree, I do think building more housing would help. However, my point is that I don't see that happening anytime soon. We've only seen light forms of the policy changes this would require, and many haven't even passed. There's a lot of opposition to these policy changes, and they have money on their side. And even when (if) they do change, it will take some time for them to have an effect. My age group is at the age of looking to put roots down and have children. For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better.
  - mavelikara 5y ago
    > For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better. But most of you don't leave because of family who live in CA - the very people who prevent any fixes to the situation, in the first place.
- jiggliemon 5y ago
  NIMBYism regarding more housing really only pertains to metropolitan/urban areas. How come the rest of the state can’t build housing consummate to the demand?
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    People want to live near jobs, services and amenities, and diversity of those can only be achieved at scale. You could build a million homes in the middle of nowhere and you’d wind up with a million empty houses.
sgustard 5y ago
All those problems get better as the population declines.
- jiggliemon 5y ago
  This is the biggest asshole response to real problems that I see Californians say all the time. Maybe I just know too many assholes – but there has to be a better answer to “people are fleeing California for legitimate reasons” than “good riddance.”
  - AdrianB1 5y ago
    Have you considered that it is not "good riddance", but an observation that as the population declines the housing problem is decreasing until it will go away? Population growth is a real problem, we are living in an finite system called planet Earth. With 1/4 of the world population everyone would live better - less pollution, 4 times more resources per capita, etc. Imagine California with 10-15 million inhabitants, no homeless people, enough water for everybody.
    - lazyjones 5y ago
      > Population growth is a real problem, we are living in an finite system called planet Earth. With 1/4 of the world population everyone would live better First half is true, second half ignorant. Your life is better because somewhere out there are half a dozen poor people mining resources and building goods for you, for a tiny fraction of your income.
      - kewrkewm53 5y ago
        That's only assuming that being able to buy cheap stuff actually makes people happier. I don't think it does.
        lazyjones 5y ago
        Nobody is talking about happiness and nobody could agree with everybody on what that means. The word here was "better" and cheap labor in poor countries objectively makes our lives better, because we can afford more goods (both needed and unneeded) with our incomes and expectations regarding working conditions.
lsiebert 5y ago
"But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these" Yeah, the thing is there are political and regulatory efforts to deal with these, but most people don't hear/read about them, unless they are super wonky. So the people who tend to get involved are the wealthy people who benefit financially from the outcome, and the occasional non profit. The latter is where you can actually make an impact for good. Check out https://cayimby.org/ https://cayimby.org/ and take part in their campaigns/petitions, and tell your friends to do so. They have a great track record in terms of housing bills, and an associated organization that is suing communities that are blocking affordable housing.
- newsclues 5y ago
  If you rely on nonprofits to solve homelessness, you are essentially allowing a nonprofit homelessness industry to exist and funding it with tax dollars.
  - canadianfella 5y ago
    What do you recommend?
  - throw123123123 5y ago
    Or charity
  - teachingassist 5y ago
    Agree. It's evident that the free market has failed to house people appropriately, and also evident that it would be cheaper and easier to solve homelessness with state-provided housing first solutions. Not taking this action is "allowing a homelessness industry to exist".
    - lsiebert 5y ago
      There are people working towards that (and doing so thoughtfully, not just to segregate poor folks into projects) https://eastbayforeveryone.org/socialhousing/ https://eastbayforeveryone.org/socialhousing/
Der_Einzige 5y ago
But the places like Oregon and Washington which are booming as a result of "California flight" have all of those same factors with marginally different weights associated to each individual problem. In particular, Oregon has a higher tax rate than California does for high (~120K+) earners as a result of a lack of sales tax and correspondingly absurdly high income taxes. Oregon is booming. Blue state politics is not what is driving people out of California.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  >Blue state politics is not what is driving people out of California It's certainly part of it (wealth tax, non-nuanced small-biz killing lockdown, signalling > results) though. Not all 'blue state politics measures/stances' overlap.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    "Wealth tax"? The people who are leaving California are not high wealth. The best wealth tax out there, a land tax, has been prohibited in the California constitution via proposition 13, and that tax would go a long way towards eliminating the rentierism that is pushing out people with lower incomes.
rdevsrex 5y ago
Exactly. I grew up in LA, and my parents bought a house for 50K in the 70s, but that same house today is ~700K. Just getting the down payment for a house that price would take a long time.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  But what was their income in the 70s?
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    More than 700/50x less
- mattmanser 5y ago
  $50,000 in 1970 is worth $350,000 in 2021 dollars. So in reality the house has doubled in price.
  - kubb 5y ago
    And I guess what we think are great salaries in the tech industry today, were salaries of a postman or a factory worker back then?
    - poloopolo 5y ago
      Of course, what has gone down is the real purchasing power of a dollar. Good thing we now have crypto but the transition will be a wild west
    - mattmanser 5y ago
      A small section of the total workforce has had a massive salary bump due to a severe shortage. Not sure what that's got to do with anything we're talking about.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  My grandparents bought their house on the SJC - Los Gatos border for $30k in 1968. It sold in 2019 for $1.4M. That's what piggyback second mortgages are for. There are also subsidized loans for first-time buyers in the US called FHA loans that allow 3.5% to 10% down payments.
29athrowaway 5y ago
And earthquakes.
akudha 5y ago
What states are your acquaintances fleeing to? If you leave CA, where do you plan to move to?
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  I moved to TN, anecdotally.
- cookiecaper 5y ago
  Utah is great, but don't come here. We want CA problems to stay in CA.
austincheney 5y ago
> But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. Based upon comments I have seen on HN California deliberately does not want to solve many of those problems. Expensive social polices cost more money which means higher taxes, which may or may not provide the intended result irrespective of increased price. As a better more precise example of that phenomenon look at the city of Austin which has many policies, funding concerns, and results comparable to large California cities despite being the capital of a large deep red state. Compare the Austin experience, in numbers, to other major metros in the same state.
- failwhaleshark 5y ago
  There is only one party, the Property party, with two wings: Democrat and Republican. - Gore Vidal California doesn't care about anyone who isn't rich. (I'm politically ambivalent and non-participatory.) It's the neoliberals (the Clinton lowercase democrats who emulated Republican laissez-faire social darwinism) who let CA become an unequal society and helped along by Reagan Republicans. (The progressives are the group who later became the "true liberals" after the neoliberals stole and bent the uppercase Liberal moniker.) PS: Heya ATX from I-35 and 5th. I moved to ATX from CIC/SJC/MTV in late 2020 because my mom couldn't financially live in Paradise anymore, or take the smoke and PSPS power outages. Unfortunately, all of the worst of Californians who made it terrible are moving here too. I prefer the original ATX hippie/bike mechanic/entrepreneur/tatted/skater/cool friendly people, not these kidult, a/anti-social, rude, fake, yuppie, ignorant, selfish ahole office jobber transplants who are clueless about what makes ATX culture or the plight of the tent city homeless under I-35. The yuppies I mentioned comprise most of my apt complex, and like stockbrokers, they take more meth and coke than the homeless do.. they bust out the hard drugs, and I leave. I tried being friendly with the neighbors, but they're not people I would be friends with or even want to be acquainted with... they're uncool like posers.
  - reducesuffering 5y ago
    > There is only one party, the Property party, with two wings: Democrat and Republican. - Gore Vidal So enlightening from a person who owned Italian and Hollywood Hills villas while saying this. 'Property for me, not for thee'
failwhaleshark 5y ago
Yep. Unless you have Prop 13 and can afford the cost-of-living and taxes, then GTFO. I was born there in the late 70's but left in 2020, mainly because most Californias were either out-of-touch (the 2% of the rich, sociopathic bastards who will hit-and-run anyone in their Bimmers) or angry-unfriendly ready to explode (90% of people). The middle-class in California is almost nothing but a slim segment of baby boomers and software developers. In addition, the SF Bay Area is, in a sense like Man Jose, full of dudes. Furthermore, the people who have migrated to the area pumped up real estate prices and displaced long-time residents. It's now (or was, pre-COVID) a place where people come to make tech money and leave, not put down roots; so most people come and go, and don't invest socially or in any community sense.
vmception 5y ago
You say that but I absolutely love gentrifying (aka signing literally any lease at someone else’s price when I move literally any where) and there are still tons of people who took a bus escaping Mormonstan or Missouri to shack up with From my perspective nothing has changed
tibiahurried 5y ago
I agree. The worse part is that at Federal level all tech bro are considered rich end up paying ton of taxes along with CA taxes, without any possibility to deduct anything because, you know, as long as you work in tech, you are rich by definition. I work in tech, I earn very good money, but can't afford to buy a home. I am planning to leave anyway, so at this point I don't really care much. But CA, along with its taxes, crazy regulations and nimby have made CA impossible to live for normal people. CA is for rich, period.
squaredisk 5y ago
> I feel like it's only going to get worse. Why is this a bad thing? Less crowd is good for everyone. Is it not?

darig 5y ago

We'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 ago

Good jobs are not easy to find in lots of places. Don’t underestimate the value of that.

Lammy 5y ago

To 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 ago
That 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).
avidiax 5y ago
Is the answer that the US left the gold standard and switched to completely fiat currency? Or the US ended the trade embargo with China? Or Walt Disney World opened in Florida?
- p1mrx 5y ago
  It was decimalisation all along!
- Lammy 5y ago
  We outlawed segregation so all those people who wanted it immediately realized they were wrong, racism disappeared, and we all lived Happily Ever After. Or that’s the way the Disney version goes anyway.
- epistasis 5y ago
  There are several other general policy changes and trends that are far more relevant to housing. With the passage of the Fair Housing Act, cities embarked upon thorough downzonings to prevent any new construction and "preserve neighborhood character" by not allowing more affordable forms of housing like townhomes and condos. Prior to the downzonings, zoning capacity was very free, there's a great graph of LA's zoned capacity versus population over time, and it starts decreasing from many many multiples of population, and as population rises it falls to barely more than population. This sort of extremely tight constraint on housing, allowing it only in very certain areas, and in particular only if there is no small subset of homeowners that oppose it, is a huge change from the past. You can also see similar evidence pretty much all over the Bay Area too. A six story apartment building in the Sunset may exist now, but could never be build now because of downzoning. You'll find lots of older duplexes in some parts of the Bay Area, similarly outlawed now. This sort of planning trend wasn't limited to California by any means, and the Levittowns of suburban development embraced a development style of having nearly all land "built out," a state of regulation so that nobody with slightly less money could move in because apartments or duplexes were allowed.
specialist 5y ago
In my 20s, I was stunned to learn that my city's founding fathers got rich by developing land stolen from immigrant Japanese farmers. In my 30s, I learned about sunset laws, another large factor explaining segregation. Growing up, it had been explained that racism was what other people did. Certainly not us. Everyone's the hero of their own story.

0x000000E2 5y ago

Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop people from building more housing your property value just keeps rising. Property costs are high because NIMBY blocking denser housing. Traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Homelessness is bad because houses are too expensive. Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted

pbuzbee 5y ago
I agree, I do think building more housing would help. However, my point is that I don't see that happening anytime soon. We've only seen light forms of the policy changes this would require, and many haven't even passed. There's a lot of opposition to these policy changes, and they have money on their side. And even when (if) they do change, it will take some time for them to have an effect. My age group is at the age of looking to put roots down and have children. For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better.
- mavelikara 5y ago
  > For many of us it makes more sense to leave than to wait 10-20 years and hope things get better. But most of you don't leave because of family who live in CA - the very people who prevent any fixes to the situation, in the first place.
jiggliemon 5y ago
NIMBYism regarding more housing really only pertains to metropolitan/urban areas. How come the rest of the state can’t build housing consummate to the demand?
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  People want to live near jobs, services and amenities, and diversity of those can only be achieved at scale. You could build a million homes in the middle of nowhere and you’d wind up with a million empty houses.

sgustard 5y ago

All those problems get better as the population declines.

jiggliemon 5y ago
This is the biggest asshole response to real problems that I see Californians say all the time. Maybe I just know too many assholes – but there has to be a better answer to “people are fleeing California for legitimate reasons” than “good riddance.”
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  Have you considered that it is not "good riddance", but an observation that as the population declines the housing problem is decreasing until it will go away? Population growth is a real problem, we are living in an finite system called planet Earth. With 1/4 of the world population everyone would live better - less pollution, 4 times more resources per capita, etc. Imagine California with 10-15 million inhabitants, no homeless people, enough water for everybody.
  - lazyjones 5y ago
    > Population growth is a real problem, we are living in an finite system called planet Earth. With 1/4 of the world population everyone would live better First half is true, second half ignorant. Your life is better because somewhere out there are half a dozen poor people mining resources and building goods for you, for a tiny fraction of your income.
    - kewrkewm53 5y ago
      That's only assuming that being able to buy cheap stuff actually makes people happier. I don't think it does.
      - lazyjones 5y ago
        Nobody is talking about happiness and nobody could agree with everybody on what that means. The word here was "better" and cheap labor in poor countries objectively makes our lives better, because we can afford more goods (both needed and unneeded) with our incomes and expectations regarding working conditions.

lsiebert 5y ago

"But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these" Yeah, the thing is there are political and regulatory efforts to deal with these, but most people don't hear/read about them, unless they are super wonky. So the people who tend to get involved are the wealthy people who benefit financially from the outcome, and the occasional non profit. The latter is where you can actually make an impact for good. Check out https://cayimby.org/ https://cayimby.org/ and take part in their campaigns/petitions, and tell your friends to do so. They have a great track record in terms of housing bills, and an associated organization that is suing communities that are blocking affordable housing.

newsclues 5y ago
If you rely on nonprofits to solve homelessness, you are essentially allowing a nonprofit homelessness industry to exist and funding it with tax dollars.
- canadianfella 5y ago
  What do you recommend?
- throw123123123 5y ago
  Or charity
- teachingassist 5y ago
  Agree. It's evident that the free market has failed to house people appropriately, and also evident that it would be cheaper and easier to solve homelessness with state-provided housing first solutions. Not taking this action is "allowing a homelessness industry to exist".
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    There are people working towards that (and doing so thoughtfully, not just to segregate poor folks into projects) https://eastbayforeveryone.org/socialhousing/ https://eastbayforeveryone.org/socialhousing/

Der_Einzige 5y ago

But the places like Oregon and Washington which are booming as a result of "California flight" have all of those same factors with marginally different weights associated to each individual problem. In particular, Oregon has a higher tax rate than California does for high (~120K+) earners as a result of a lack of sales tax and correspondingly absurdly high income taxes. Oregon is booming. Blue state politics is not what is driving people out of California.

elevenoh 5y ago
>Blue state politics is not what is driving people out of California It's certainly part of it (wealth tax, non-nuanced small-biz killing lockdown, signalling > results) though. Not all 'blue state politics measures/stances' overlap.
- epistasis 5y ago
  "Wealth tax"? The people who are leaving California are not high wealth. The best wealth tax out there, a land tax, has been prohibited in the California constitution via proposition 13, and that tax would go a long way towards eliminating the rentierism that is pushing out people with lower incomes.

rdevsrex 5y ago

Exactly. I grew up in LA, and my parents bought a house for 50K in the 70s, but that same house today is ~700K. Just getting the down payment for a house that price would take a long time.

throwawayboise 5y ago
But what was their income in the 70s?
- pharmakom 5y ago
  More than 700/50x less
mattmanser 5y ago
$50,000 in 1970 is worth $350,000 in 2021 dollars. So in reality the house has doubled in price.
- kubb 5y ago
  And I guess what we think are great salaries in the tech industry today, were salaries of a postman or a factory worker back then?
  - poloopolo 5y ago
    Of course, what has gone down is the real purchasing power of a dollar. Good thing we now have crypto but the transition will be a wild west
  - mattmanser 5y ago
    A small section of the total workforce has had a massive salary bump due to a severe shortage. Not sure what that's got to do with anything we're talking about.
failwhaleshark 5y ago
My grandparents bought their house on the SJC - Los Gatos border for $30k in 1968. It sold in 2019 for $1.4M. That's what piggyback second mortgages are for. There are also subsidized loans for first-time buyers in the US called FHA loans that allow 3.5% to 10% down payments.

29athrowaway 5y ago

And earthquakes.

akudha 5y ago

What states are your acquaintances fleeing to? If you leave CA, where do you plan to move to?

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
I moved to TN, anecdotally.
cookiecaper 5y ago
Utah is great, but don't come here. We want CA problems to stay in CA.

austincheney 5y ago

> But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. Based upon comments I have seen on HN California deliberately does not want to solve many of those problems. Expensive social polices cost more money which means higher taxes, which may or may not provide the intended result irrespective of increased price. As a better more precise example of that phenomenon look at the city of Austin which has many policies, funding concerns, and results comparable to large California cities despite being the capital of a large deep red state. Compare the Austin experience, in numbers, to other major metros in the same state.

failwhaleshark 5y ago
There is only one party, the Property party, with two wings: Democrat and Republican. - Gore Vidal California doesn't care about anyone who isn't rich. (I'm politically ambivalent and non-participatory.) It's the neoliberals (the Clinton lowercase democrats who emulated Republican laissez-faire social darwinism) who let CA become an unequal society and helped along by Reagan Republicans. (The progressives are the group who later became the "true liberals" after the neoliberals stole and bent the uppercase Liberal moniker.) PS: Heya ATX from I-35 and 5th. I moved to ATX from CIC/SJC/MTV in late 2020 because my mom couldn't financially live in Paradise anymore, or take the smoke and PSPS power outages. Unfortunately, all of the worst of Californians who made it terrible are moving here too. I prefer the original ATX hippie/bike mechanic/entrepreneur/tatted/skater/cool friendly people, not these kidult, a/anti-social, rude, fake, yuppie, ignorant, selfish ahole office jobber transplants who are clueless about what makes ATX culture or the plight of the tent city homeless under I-35. The yuppies I mentioned comprise most of my apt complex, and like stockbrokers, they take more meth and coke than the homeless do.. they bust out the hard drugs, and I leave. I tried being friendly with the neighbors, but they're not people I would be friends with or even want to be acquainted with... they're uncool like posers.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  > There is only one party, the Property party, with two wings: Democrat and Republican. - Gore Vidal So enlightening from a person who owned Italian and Hollywood Hills villas while saying this. 'Property for me, not for thee'

failwhaleshark 5y ago

Yep. Unless you have Prop 13 and can afford the cost-of-living and taxes, then GTFO. I was born there in the late 70's but left in 2020, mainly because most Californias were either out-of-touch (the 2% of the rich, sociopathic bastards who will hit-and-run anyone in their Bimmers) or angry-unfriendly ready to explode (90% of people). The middle-class in California is almost nothing but a slim segment of baby boomers and software developers. In addition, the SF Bay Area is, in a sense like Man Jose, full of dudes. Furthermore, the people who have migrated to the area pumped up real estate prices and displaced long-time residents. It's now (or was, pre-COVID) a place where people come to make tech money and leave, not put down roots; so most people come and go, and don't invest socially or in any community sense.

vmception 5y ago

You say that but I absolutely love gentrifying (aka signing literally any lease at someone else’s price when I move literally any where) and there are still tons of people who took a bus escaping Mormonstan or Missouri to shack up with From my perspective nothing has changed

tibiahurried 5y ago

I agree. The worse part is that at Federal level all tech bro are considered rich end up paying ton of taxes along with CA taxes, without any possibility to deduct anything because, you know, as long as you work in tech, you are rich by definition. I work in tech, I earn very good money, but can't afford to buy a home. I am planning to leave anyway, so at this point I don't really care much. But CA, along with its taxes, crazy regulations and nimby have made CA impossible to live for normal people. CA is for rich, period.

squaredisk 5y ago

> I feel like it's only going to get worse. Why is this a bad thing? Less crowd is good for everyone. Is it not?