8 ms·

California's Vanished Dream, by the Numbers

78 points by rmason 5y ago

wifiextenderhub 5y ago
[flagged]
jpollock 5y ago
How is this possible? "more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income" I can see under the mean or average, but median? How can 80% be below the median when the definition of median is 50% are below this value?
- DuskStar 5y ago
  Maybe many people are working multiple jobs? So your jobs each pay X, but your income is 2X.
- daxuak 5y ago
  Maybe that is the median of all states? (I did not read the whole article.)
- fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
  Not to make this a political issue, but the number of uneducated immigrants in southern california is staggering. Add those to the regular number of workers below the median income, and this number is very easy to arrive at.
  - alphabettsy 5y ago
    How can you arrive at a median that is not the median?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    OK, but GP has a point. If you're going to add the immigrants to "the number of workers below the median income", but you're not going to add them to the calculation of the median, then you get a garbage number.
    - SkyBelow 5y ago
      It has a purpose, but the writer needs to be clear which groups are being compared. Saying that 80% of group's A value X fell under the median of group's B value of X can be a useful number for some analysis, even when group B is a subset of group A. The author must be clear which group they are using where, as any confusion between group A and group B should be considered an error in the analysis.
- dottedmag 5y ago
  Maybe "median income" here does not mean "median income from jobs"?
- pchristensen 5y ago
  It means a significant portion income isn't coming from wages (e.g. from benefits, investments, living off of wealth, parents, etc). EDIT: nvm, mikeymouse's comment explains it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeyouse 5y ago
  It's a weird point phrased poorly, seems they're referencing the chart at the bottom of page 11 here: https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalism-web-sm.pdf https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalis... Which is saying that 80% of new jobs were created at wage levels below the median level. E.g. they are looking at ~1.8 million jobs added from 2008-2018 and comparing it to the median wage in 2018 out of the ~19 million people working in California.
  - ohwellhere 5y ago
    Additionally, the source material specifies average for the chart, not median, although median is specified in some textual components as well.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  The median income is based on multiple income sources, including having more than one job.
joe_the_user 5y ago
No doubt California has many problems but describing these as if they're isolated to California or merely the result of local political actions is disingenuous (but is what you expect from this right wing site shopping right wing talking points). The US overall has a problem with rising poverty and wages not keeping up with the cost of living. The US overall has a problem home-as-investment standing in the way of actually providing people housing. These manifest differently in different places. Texas doesn't have California's outrageous housing costs but Texas has people in jail for not being able to pay medical bills when they get sick - both are manifestations of distorted costs of various items (coming ultimately from the Fed inflating the dollar and related factors).
- somethoughts 5y ago
  I do think its a bit of a popular <insert popular brand name effect>. It gets page views. Kind of like when people complain about Apple/Android. Sure they could improve but they are popular for a reason. Its my belief that any state that gets to this level of population density will have these issues.
- lax4ever 5y ago
  California is also a state that will throw you in jail for certain types of debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison#Modern_debtors'_prisons_(1970%E2%80%93current) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison#Modern_debto...
  - FpUser 5y ago
    I do not understand this fucked up policy at all. If a person has no money let them go free and garnish reasonable part of their wages when they work. Otherwise fuck off please, do not be a Nazi, stop punishing poverty.
  - escapedmoose 5y ago
    This applies to legal fines. Doesn’t sound like it applies to medical debt: https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-1205.html https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-1205.html
mikeyouse 5y ago
Unfortunately, these pieces could almost always be reduced to "housing costs". They address it a bit in this most recent one, but homelessness / school enrollment / natural population growth / middle class jobs / energy costs can all be traced back to the huge housing deficit that's accumulated over the past 30 or 40 years.
- jandrese 5y ago
  The article starts out talking about homelessness, high housing prices, and people leaving the state in droves, but then pivots to pinning the high energy rates on green energy initiatives. California has such a huge housing deficit at this point that people really have no option except to move out. The point where they are losing the population equivalent of 3 mid size cities every year while still maintaining a housing crisis.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > has such a huge housing deficit And, that housing deficit probably won't be filled with anything affordable. Starting 2023, title 24 requires solar panels that cover the full annual energy usage of the home, along with battery storage. But, guess that's a drop in the bucket for CA housing prices.
    - jandrese 5y ago
      That only applies to "low rise" buildings, which would never solve the housing crisis anyway. The only direction for Californians to build is up unless they move away from the coast or adopt a subterranean lifestyle.
- Scott_Sanderson 5y ago
  I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning. Single unit is the most expensive and least efficient zoning rule. Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down. Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!
api 5y ago
Why even bother mentioning electricity prices except to score cheap points about "green" policies? Energy costs are insignificant compared to housing. Everything is insignificant compared to housing. California could double electricity prices if they could cut real estate costs and everyone would come out ahead... except all the old homeowners who are grandfathered in under prop 13 and show up to oppose every new development at the local town hall.
jleyank 5y ago
Well, if California's not caring about the poor, then the poor are in trouble. All those red states CERTAINLY aren't going to give a sh*t about them...
khazhoux 5y ago
> the average income of the top one percent of households in the city averages $3.6 million Great example of why average is a terrible measure, as the top one percent will include multi-billionaires and centi-millionaires.
- uoaei 5y ago
  For context: the top 5% of income starts at about $200k, and top 1% of income starts at about $500k nationwide.
cowmoo728 5y ago
This seems more like a political diatribe than an informative look at cost of living and wages in California.
- notacoward 5y ago
  This reminds me of a quote from Dune. "My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit. What a fascinating revelation." The column contains dozens upon dozens of hard numbers, most with links to sites that can back them up. Maybe you don't like the political implications, but - as my daughter might say - that's a you problem. It doesn't mean the column is any less factual or more political than it should be.
  - annoyingnoob 5y ago
    It can be a political piece and have some factual information at the same time. I could not get through it, not because of any implications but because of the way its written.
jkubicek 5y ago
> San Francisco, meanwhile, suffers the highest property crime rate in the country. Businesses like Walgreens have shut down numerous Bay Area locations due to “rampant burglaries.” Hasn't the "we're shutting down this Walgreens because of rampant burglaries" been repeatedly debunked? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-shoplifting-forcing-walgreens-to-cut-back-in-sf/ar-AAPA480 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-shoplifting-forcing-wal...
- ceeplusplus 5y ago
  I strongly urge you to just stand in an SF Walgreens and watch how many people walk out the door with stolen goods. None of those incidents are reported, the security guards don't even bother getting up.
  - peder 5y ago
    And why are people so staunchly in denial about crime in Seattle/San Francisco? Why do they seem to feel personally attacked?
    - colpabar 5y ago
      Because a lot of the burglars are black, which means doing anything about it will be seen as racist. SF no longer release tapes of crimes that happen on public transit for the same reason. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholding-surveillance-videos-of-crime-to-avoid-stereotypes/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholdin...
      - infamouscow 5y ago
        Why is it about one's skin color? I thought we were past this.
        trav4225 5y ago
        We were, but society has resurrected it for cynical political reasons.
jollybean 5y ago
Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough. And the absolute parrallel there is - people probably wouldn't feel their money is being spent effectively. I really do feel that rich Californians would accept higher taxes if the money was really well spent. Impossible to talk about is the 'low end' - where you have (and bringing in) people in very, very low skilled and economic classes even on a global scale, who really can't 'participate' in the regular economy to legitimize a solid minimum wage. And so you get 1M people working 'under the table' where the supply/demand bears a low price. It might be heartless to hear, but consider that it may be far more efficient to have US companies invest in developing Mexico, and have those people have wage jobs there that provide them a modicum of dignity - as opposed to coming to Cali and being jammed into the 'bottom'. The 'cartels' (very complicated issue) is an example of how, systematically everything gets oppressed. Cali has never been about 'equality' (i.e. communitarian, hard work, self discipline, charitable giving, good governance, responsible social spending, community cohesion aka Sweden) more like the 'dreamy feeling of equality' where if everyone just 'pursues their thing and acts kind it will all work out'. Throw in a national crisis in healthcare and housing and you have your mess. It takes everything: taxes need to be a bit more for the rich, schools need to be a bit rigorous, parents need to parent, the border needs to be responsibly managed, need to have intervention in healthcare pricing, police need to act fairly and appropriately, city councils need to stop being corrupt, DA needs to stop being populist, don't elect a 'pretty playboy' to lead government instead elect rationalists who are competent and can lead, we cannot allow petty crime to go unheeded, we cannot allow absolute poverty to go unheeded, we cannot allow corporate corruption to go unheeded, we cannot allow government inefficiency to go unheeded. People need to stop being dreamy and delusional and ideological on all fronts. 'TED Talk' thinking does not solve any problems, it misleads us to thinking there is an idea, or a technology that can change - I say rubbish, we need to be responsible and conscientious on all fronts, that's what makes civilization.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough. I'm curious-- why is this your conclusion? California has a $40-70B surplus. California's got one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.
reillyse 5y ago
I don’t recognize the California described in this article and I live in Los Angeles. It seems like a politically motivated attack on liberalism using California as a proxy for the Democratic Party.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  I grew up in San Diego (and my parents still lived there until they retired last year) and it sounds about on the mark to me.
- pishpash 5y ago
  Or maybe you are a non-average beneficiary of the system and don't recognize the problems and dangers of a one-party state. Would not be the first time.
- iak8god 5y ago
  > It seems like a politically motivated attack on liberalism using California as a proxy for the Democratic Party. That is exactly what it is, which should surprise no one considering the source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealClearPolitics#Rightward_turn_during_Trump's_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealClearPolitics#Rightward_tu...
FpUser 5y ago
Here is some cherry on top. This treatment of people looks like it belongs to China: https://www.calhealthreport.org/2018/01/25/anti-homeless-laws-crop-santa-ana-line-statewide-trend/ https://www.calhealthreport.org/2018/01/25/anti-homeless-law... >"Kimberly Sandoval holds a ticket in her hand in disbelief. Her infraction: being in possession of spare bicycle parts." >"She has also been ticketed for being in possession of a tent, a lawn chair and a Bluetooth speaker—all items newly banned at the Civic Center under an ordinance passed by the City of Santa Ana late last year." >"Also prohibited under the new law: shopping carts, pallets, golf clubs, hockey sticks, screwdrivers, solar panels, mattresses, carpets, anything that can be used as a temporary toilet or as an outdoor shower, and storing or sorting recyclable materials." >"In addition, the ordinance established a new permitting process for charity and social service organizations that offer food or medical services to the Civic Center’s homeless population, a move that residents and providers say has led to a steep drop off in aid."
- RangerScience 5y ago
  Notable: Santa Ana (and the rest of Orange County) is substantially more conservative than many people realize.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    >"substantially more conservative" This just warms the cockles of my heart /s
  - wcfields 5y ago
    Municipalities are in an arms race to criminalize homelessness to push the issue to another city (defacto being Los Angeles).
  - vondur 5y ago
    I don't believe that's the case for Santa Ana. The demographics aren't like the rest of Orange County.
  - mrkstu 5y ago
    Read: 'slightly less liberal' https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/california/santa_ana https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/california/santa_ana
RangerScience 5y ago
The thing I want to look into that this article points out is how the thesis of "building dense housing is good / reduces housing costs" is panning out. Article seems to be saying that it isn't - here in CA, and elsewhere in the world - and TBH, that makes some sense to me, now. "There keep being more people in the world, and they keep wanting to live in the same places" isn't resolvable by making those places able to handle more people - it's resolved by making more of those places. Seems to me, anyway, but I haven't exactly done any actual research on this. (Although you do need enough housing in those places, or you haven't actually created more of the desirable housing, just made the existing housing more desirable, and there's lots of those existing places that definitely do need more housing.)
- jabthedang 5y ago
outside1234 5y ago
This is a partisan rag - so take this for what it is.
newaccount2021 5y ago
[dead]
guelo 5y ago
Why are there so many "California/San Francisco is horrible" articles? As if every state didn't have different sets of issues. To me it looks like conservative bias in our media since all I hear these days is how everything is liberals fault.
- confidantlake 5y ago
  SF isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous cities. Yet article after article about how it is falling apart. Where are all the articles about St Louis or Jackson Mississippi?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    We expect St Louis to be falling apart. We don't expect San Francisco to be. But I don't agree with the GP either. "Conservative bias in our media"? Either you're to the left of CNN (in which case you're far from the median, and so in a bad position to judge), or you're looking at a very skewed subset of the media. Personally, I think it's a backlash. I think the liberals have been loudly triumphalist since... maybe the beginning of Obama's presidency? Somewhere in there. There's been this aura of "We're going to re-order the country to our approach, and we're going to fix all the problems." And they did re-order it, not completely, but to a large degree. So when that fails to produce the paradise that was promised, people point out that the liberal agenda, in a place where they were pretty free to carry it out, failed to produce what the liberals claimed it would. There's no shortage of articles pointing out that the conservative agenda, in places where they were free to carry it out, also failed to produce. But those articles get less traction, I suspect because people find "conservative agenda fails to produce" to be less surprising than "liberal agenda fails to produce". (Or maybe just because "the conservative agenda will produce" lately has been less widely trumpeted than "the liberal agenda will produce".)
    - confidantlake 5y ago
      Maybe the media I read is skewed. It is mostly what I link to from HN. I lived in Sf about a decade back. There were a steady stream of articles even way back then about how San Francisco was falling apart. Like yeah the Tenderloin is a ghetto and there are not enough public bathrooms. But the rest of the city is pretty safe. The biggest problem by far were the housing prices which is why I moved out. A decade later the Tenderloin is still a ghetto, still not enough bathrooms, and the housing prices are still too damn high. And there are still articles about how it is on the verge of collapse.
WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago
Things (housing, schools, cost of living) are so expensive that also "tech" workers at so called FAANG are leaving California to work in new campuses that big tech are opening in other (for now still cheaper) places in US and abroad. California has become a little island for reach people and NIMBY. No way to build a future and a family unless multi-multi millionaire. Also, building a startup in California does not make any sense any more. Cost of hiring is too high.
smm11 5y ago
The realclear group seems to have a certain slant. And given that California has Silicon Valley, and also the Central Valley that's full of farm-oriented immigrants, of course you're going to have this gigantic disparity in wages. Pick up Silicon Valley and put it in Iowa, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or North Dakota, what would happen then? Have other states stop shipping the destitute to California. What would happen then? Go back and time and keep Purdue Pharm from making legal heroin. What would happen then?
- tjr225 5y ago
  Uh, yeah they have a certain slant, lol: https://www.city-journal.org/ivermectin-sparks-yet-another-covid-culture-war?wallit_nosession=1 https://www.city-journal.org/ivermectin-sparks-yet-another-c...
50yearsold 5y ago
As an immigrant who came to USA 25+ years ago and made SF bay area home since then I can say that California is not doing well. I am lucky to have a home here and surrounded by friendly neighbors and community. But as someone who came from India - I can draw parallels on many (negative) fronts between my experiences in India and where California is headed. Too much income inequality, inflation, poverty, homelessness, high cost of living, corruption, lack of civic sense and disregard about law shown by many when out in public in public spaces. I truly hope CA does not become replica of yet another "developing nation".
ryscheng 5y ago
If you live in California, I recommend getting involved in your local housing element. This program will have huge implications in how zoning and development occurs in the state for years to come. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element/index.shtml https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element... For example in San Francisco, they are reviewing drafts now. https://sfhousingelement.org/ https://sfhousingelement.org/
justinzollars 5y ago
I did the math for Mountain View: Average Home | Downpayment | Finance | Monthly payment (Loan + Insurance + Tax) | Necessary Annual income $2,140,000.00 | $428,000.00 | $1,712,000.00 | $11,517.00 | $414,612.00 Mix that with high taxes across every category, very high crime, homelessness and extremely poor indebted government providing poor service. The state needs to hit the reset button. Taxes are already high, and a negative feedback loop has started: capital flight, loss of income, increase taxes, which in turn causes more capital flight. The annual costs of the state are increasing because we must retire the boomer generation and pay for past promises. I think the best path forward for California is default, and then start over. The current path is not good. I wish California could compete with Florida and Texas, but it has real structural problems.
- confidantlake 5y ago
  Do you mean default on their debt? If so that is a really bad idea. I don't really get it being uncompetitive. California has a higher gdp per capita then either Texas or Florida.
  - justinzollars 5y ago
    I mean default as in bankruptcy, then restructure the fixed costs in a way to become competitive with Texas and Florida.
    - confidantlake 5y ago
      Their debt to gdp ration isn't even in the top 10 of states. There is no reason for them to declare bankruptcy. The idea that California is not competitive couldn't be further from the truth.If California were a country they would have the 5th highest gdp in the world.
      - justinzollars 5y ago
        Do you live here? Do you see the math in my post? Outcomes are horrible. Families can’t afford to exist.
rayiner 5y ago
I’m convinced that tax rates on the upper middle class (top 10%) need to be much, much higher. An interesting premise of Modern Monetary Theory is that taxes can and should be used to control inflation, and further that this can be done in a controlled way based on where inflation is occurring. If that is correct, one can reason that inflation for things like housing, education, etc., is caused by taxes being too low—specifically among the folks with high incomes competing for these goods. More specifically, it appears that taxes are too low on the upper middle class specifically. In my neighborhood near Annapolis, the price of houses has doubled since 2016. We came here because it was a nice place where you could afford a house without being a dual professional household, but that’s increasingly less true. The problem, it seems to me, isn’t billionaires. The house next to mine wasn’t torn down and replaced with a new million dollar home by a billionaire. It was some upper middle class professional. The top 10% has been riding the coattails of the top 0.1% for decades and has significantly pulled away from the median American. Unlike billionaires, which are few in number, this is a large class of people who can use their growing incomes to outbid everyone else for homes, education, etc. At the same time, taxes on these folks are the lowest in the developed world, even lower today than after Reagan’s second round of tax cuts.
- ffggvv 5y ago
  astounds me people are still referencing MMT when its exactly what got us into this inflation mess in the first place. the tantalizing cancerous idea which will never die
  - rayiner 5y ago
    I’m not sure why you’d blame MMT. The theory behind MMT is that inflation is the primary check on government spending. When significant inflation occurs, you need to raise taxes to remove cash from the system. Obviously that’s not what we’re doing (instead we’re dumping more cash into the system by doing gas tax holidays and subsidizing gas).
- skrbjc 5y ago
  One of the actual major tax problems in CA is that property taxes are not equally applied. I bought my house in 2017 and pay well in excess of $10,000 a year in property taxes. But guess what? My neighbors who bought their houses in the 90s pay far less than half of that despite their houses being twice the size and worth far more than my home. Prop 13 has been a terrible thing for California over the long run and has served to inflate housing prices while trapping people in their current home because selling it and moving would force them to immediately increase their tax burden by a significant amount.
JaimeThompson 5y ago
A nearby house that is slightly less fancy than mine just sold for 100+K more then mine is listed on the tax rolls which is drastically above previous sales for such homes in this area. Not a large town, lots of empty land for sale, excellent Internet and prices are still thru the roof so it isn't just a California issue when talking about housing and such costs.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
Little detail that should be considered by US tech workers moving to another state: non-compete enforceability. This [0] is from 2016, but you get the idea. [0]: https://beckreedriden.com/50-state-noncompete-chart-2/ https://beckreedriden.com/50-state-noncompete-chart-2/
photochemsyn 5y ago
This is hardly how the problems with California's electricity and manufacturing sectors arose: > "The state’s climate change policies, however well-intentioned, have had a particularly devastating impact on manufacturing. California’s “renewable energy” push has generated high energy prices and the nation’s least-reliable power grid, crippling an industry reliant on fossil fuels and a stable electric supply. The state fell to 44th in the country in manufacturing sector employment growth last year. . ." In reality neoliberal trade policies facilitated the outsourcing of California's electronics and garment manufacturing industry over the past 40 years. This alone accounts for much of the loss of middle-class prosperity around the Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin. Furthermore, the disastrous deregulation of the investor-owned utility sector is what caused electricity bills to spike initially and the few publicly-owned electricity distributers had lower rates. Getting off fossil fuels doesn't 'destabilize the grid', either. I don't know enough about the rest of the claims in the article to say anything about them, but the take on energy and manufacturing looks inaccurate at best.
cscanlin 5y ago
Where does the information on California having the highest poverty rate in the US come from? The source they listed only gave California's poverty rate at 16.4% [1]. But the Census source used by Wikipedia lists California's rate at 12.58% [2] Neither rate actually puts California at the top of any other lists I find. In what measure does California have the highest poverty rate? EDIT: I see the first number is based on California Poverty Measure (CPM) which takes into account cost of living [3]. But is there a direct way to compare this to other states? [1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/poverty-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/poverty-in-california/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [3] https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/research-reports/california-poverty-measure https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/research-report...

78 points by rmason 5y ago

[flagged]

How is this possible? "more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income" I can see under the mean or average, but median? How can 80% be below the median when the definition of median is 50% are below this value?

DuskStar 5y ago
Maybe many people are working multiple jobs? So your jobs each pay X, but your income is 2X.
daxuak 5y ago
Maybe that is the median of all states? (I did not read the whole article.)
fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
Not to make this a political issue, but the number of uneducated immigrants in southern california is staggering. Add those to the regular number of workers below the median income, and this number is very easy to arrive at.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  How can you arrive at a median that is not the median?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  OK, but GP has a point. If you're going to add the immigrants to "the number of workers below the median income", but you're not going to add them to the calculation of the median, then you get a garbage number.
  - SkyBelow 5y ago
    It has a purpose, but the writer needs to be clear which groups are being compared. Saying that 80% of group's A value X fell under the median of group's B value of X can be a useful number for some analysis, even when group B is a subset of group A. The author must be clear which group they are using where, as any confusion between group A and group B should be considered an error in the analysis.
dottedmag 5y ago
Maybe "median income" here does not mean "median income from jobs"?
pchristensen 5y ago
It means a significant portion income isn't coming from wages (e.g. from benefits, investments, living off of wealth, parents, etc). EDIT: nvm, mikeymouse's comment explains it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mikeyouse 5y ago
It's a weird point phrased poorly, seems they're referencing the chart at the bottom of page 11 here: https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalism-web-sm.pdf https://www.chapman.edu/communication/_files/beyond-feudalis... Which is saying that 80% of new jobs were created at wage levels below the median level. E.g. they are looking at ~1.8 million jobs added from 2008-2018 and comparing it to the median wage in 2018 out of the ~19 million people working in California.
- ohwellhere 5y ago
  Additionally, the source material specifies average for the chart, not median, although median is specified in some textual components as well.
gnicholas 5y ago
The median income is based on multiple income sources, including having more than one job.

joe_the_user 5y ago

No doubt California has many problems but describing these as if they're isolated to California or merely the result of local political actions is disingenuous (but is what you expect from this right wing site shopping right wing talking points). The US overall has a problem with rising poverty and wages not keeping up with the cost of living. The US overall has a problem home-as-investment standing in the way of actually providing people housing. These manifest differently in different places. Texas doesn't have California's outrageous housing costs but Texas has people in jail for not being able to pay medical bills when they get sick - both are manifestations of distorted costs of various items (coming ultimately from the Fed inflating the dollar and related factors).

somethoughts 5y ago
I do think its a bit of a popular <insert popular brand name effect>. It gets page views. Kind of like when people complain about Apple/Android. Sure they could improve but they are popular for a reason. Its my belief that any state that gets to this level of population density will have these issues.
lax4ever 5y ago
California is also a state that will throw you in jail for certain types of debt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison#Modern_debtors'_prisons_(1970%E2%80%93current) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtors%27_prison#Modern_debto...
- FpUser 5y ago
  I do not understand this fucked up policy at all. If a person has no money let them go free and garnish reasonable part of their wages when they work. Otherwise fuck off please, do not be a Nazi, stop punishing poverty.
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  This applies to legal fines. Doesn’t sound like it applies to medical debt: https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-1205.html https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/penal-code/pen-sect-1205.html

mikeyouse 5y ago

Unfortunately, these pieces could almost always be reduced to "housing costs". They address it a bit in this most recent one, but homelessness / school enrollment / natural population growth / middle class jobs / energy costs can all be traced back to the huge housing deficit that's accumulated over the past 30 or 40 years.

jandrese 5y ago
The article starts out talking about homelessness, high housing prices, and people leaving the state in droves, but then pivots to pinning the high energy rates on green energy initiatives. California has such a huge housing deficit at this point that people really have no option except to move out. The point where they are losing the population equivalent of 3 mid size cities every year while still maintaining a housing crisis.
- nomel 5y ago
  > has such a huge housing deficit And, that housing deficit probably won't be filled with anything affordable. Starting 2023, title 24 requires solar panels that cover the full annual energy usage of the home, along with battery storage. But, guess that's a drop in the bucket for CA housing prices.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    That only applies to "low rise" buildings, which would never solve the housing crisis anyway. The only direction for Californians to build is up unless they move away from the coast or adopt a subterranean lifestyle.
Scott_Sanderson 5y ago
I just don't understand why cities in California won't let go of single unit zoning. Single unit is the most expensive and least efficient zoning rule. Getting rid of it would bring housing costs down. Ever visit a beautiful city like Paris, Copenhagen, Milan and wonder why we don't have that? It would be illegal to make the buildings they have under our zoning code and parking mandates!

api 5y ago

Why even bother mentioning electricity prices except to score cheap points about "green" policies? Energy costs are insignificant compared to housing. Everything is insignificant compared to housing. California could double electricity prices if they could cut real estate costs and everyone would come out ahead... except all the old homeowners who are grandfathered in under prop 13 and show up to oppose every new development at the local town hall.

jleyank 5y ago

Well, if California's not caring about the poor, then the poor are in trouble. All those red states CERTAINLY aren't going to give a sh*t about them...

khazhoux 5y ago

> the average income of the top one percent of households in the city averages $3.6 million Great example of why average is a terrible measure, as the top one percent will include multi-billionaires and centi-millionaires.

uoaei 5y ago
For context: the top 5% of income starts at about $200k, and top 1% of income starts at about $500k nationwide.

cowmoo728 5y ago

This seems more like a political diatribe than an informative look at cost of living and wages in California.

notacoward 5y ago
This reminds me of a quote from Dune. "My son displays a general garment and you claim it's cut to your fit. What a fascinating revelation." The column contains dozens upon dozens of hard numbers, most with links to sites that can back them up. Maybe you don't like the political implications, but - as my daughter might say - that's a you problem. It doesn't mean the column is any less factual or more political than it should be.
- annoyingnoob 5y ago
  It can be a political piece and have some factual information at the same time. I could not get through it, not because of any implications but because of the way its written.

jkubicek 5y ago

> San Francisco, meanwhile, suffers the highest property crime rate in the country. Businesses like Walgreens have shut down numerous Bay Area locations due to “rampant burglaries.” Hasn't the "we're shutting down this Walgreens because of rampant burglaries" been repeatedly debunked? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-shoplifting-forcing-walgreens-to-cut-back-in-sf/ar-AAPA480 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-shoplifting-forcing-wal...

ceeplusplus 5y ago
I strongly urge you to just stand in an SF Walgreens and watch how many people walk out the door with stolen goods. None of those incidents are reported, the security guards don't even bother getting up.
- peder 5y ago
  And why are people so staunchly in denial about crime in Seattle/San Francisco? Why do they seem to feel personally attacked?
  - colpabar 5y ago
    Because a lot of the burglars are black, which means doing anything about it will be seen as racist. SF no longer release tapes of crimes that happen on public transit for the same reason. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholding-surveillance-videos-of-crime-to-avoid-stereotypes/ https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholdin...
    - infamouscow 5y ago
      Why is it about one's skin color? I thought we were past this.
      - trav4225 5y ago
        We were, but society has resurrected it for cynical political reasons.

jollybean 5y ago

Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough. And the absolute parrallel there is - people probably wouldn't feel their money is being spent effectively. I really do feel that rich Californians would accept higher taxes if the money was really well spent. Impossible to talk about is the 'low end' - where you have (and bringing in) people in very, very low skilled and economic classes even on a global scale, who really can't 'participate' in the regular economy to legitimize a solid minimum wage. And so you get 1M people working 'under the table' where the supply/demand bears a low price. It might be heartless to hear, but consider that it may be far more efficient to have US companies invest in developing Mexico, and have those people have wage jobs there that provide them a modicum of dignity - as opposed to coming to Cali and being jammed into the 'bottom'. The 'cartels' (very complicated issue) is an example of how, systematically everything gets oppressed. Cali has never been about 'equality' (i.e. communitarian, hard work, self discipline, charitable giving, good governance, responsible social spending, community cohesion aka Sweden) more like the 'dreamy feeling of equality' where if everyone just 'pursues their thing and acts kind it will all work out'. Throw in a national crisis in healthcare and housing and you have your mess. It takes everything: taxes need to be a bit more for the rich, schools need to be a bit rigorous, parents need to parent, the border needs to be responsibly managed, need to have intervention in healthcare pricing, police need to act fairly and appropriately, city councils need to stop being corrupt, DA needs to stop being populist, don't elect a 'pretty playboy' to lead government instead elect rationalists who are competent and can lead, we cannot allow petty crime to go unheeded, we cannot allow absolute poverty to go unheeded, we cannot allow corporate corruption to go unheeded, we cannot allow government inefficiency to go unheeded. People need to stop being dreamy and delusional and ideological on all fronts. 'TED Talk' thinking does not solve any problems, it misleads us to thinking there is an idea, or a technology that can change - I say rubbish, we need to be responsible and conscientious on all fronts, that's what makes civilization.

mlyle 5y ago
> Among myriad of issues, one is that the tax rates for the very rich are not high enough. I'm curious-- why is this your conclusion? California has a $40-70B surplus. California's got one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.

reillyse 5y ago

I don’t recognize the California described in this article and I live in Los Angeles. It seems like a politically motivated attack on liberalism using California as a proxy for the Democratic Party.

HideousKojima 5y ago
I grew up in San Diego (and my parents still lived there until they retired last year) and it sounds about on the mark to me.
pishpash 5y ago
Or maybe you are a non-average beneficiary of the system and don't recognize the problems and dangers of a one-party state. Would not be the first time.
iak8god 5y ago
> It seems like a politically motivated attack on liberalism using California as a proxy for the Democratic Party. That is exactly what it is, which should surprise no one considering the source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealClearPolitics#Rightward_turn_during_Trump's_presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealClearPolitics#Rightward_tu...

FpUser 5y ago

Here is some cherry on top. This treatment of people looks like it belongs to China: https://www.calhealthreport.org/2018/01/25/anti-homeless-laws-crop-santa-ana-line-statewide-trend/ https://www.calhealthreport.org/2018/01/25/anti-homeless-law... >"Kimberly Sandoval holds a ticket in her hand in disbelief. Her infraction: being in possession of spare bicycle parts." >"She has also been ticketed for being in possession of a tent, a lawn chair and a Bluetooth speaker—all items newly banned at the Civic Center under an ordinance passed by the City of Santa Ana late last year." >"Also prohibited under the new law: shopping carts, pallets, golf clubs, hockey sticks, screwdrivers, solar panels, mattresses, carpets, anything that can be used as a temporary toilet or as an outdoor shower, and storing or sorting recyclable materials." >"In addition, the ordinance established a new permitting process for charity and social service organizations that offer food or medical services to the Civic Center’s homeless population, a move that residents and providers say has led to a steep drop off in aid."

RangerScience 5y ago
Notable: Santa Ana (and the rest of Orange County) is substantially more conservative than many people realize.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"substantially more conservative" This just warms the cockles of my heart /s
- wcfields 5y ago
  Municipalities are in an arms race to criminalize homelessness to push the issue to another city (defacto being Los Angeles).
- vondur 5y ago
  I don't believe that's the case for Santa Ana. The demographics aren't like the rest of Orange County.
- mrkstu 5y ago
  Read: 'slightly less liberal' https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/california/santa_ana https://www.bestplaces.net/voting/city/california/santa_ana

RangerScience 5y ago

The thing I want to look into that this article points out is how the thesis of "building dense housing is good / reduces housing costs" is panning out. Article seems to be saying that it isn't - here in CA, and elsewhere in the world - and TBH, that makes some sense to me, now. "There keep being more people in the world, and they keep wanting to live in the same places" isn't resolvable by making those places able to handle more people - it's resolved by making more of those places. Seems to me, anyway, but I haven't exactly done any actual research on this. (Although you do need enough housing in those places, or you haven't actually created more of the desirable housing, just made the existing housing more desirable, and there's lots of those existing places that definitely do need more housing.)

jabthedang 5y ago

outside1234 5y ago

This is a partisan rag - so take this for what it is.

newaccount2021 5y ago

[dead]

guelo 5y ago

Why are there so many "California/San Francisco is horrible" articles? As if every state didn't have different sets of issues. To me it looks like conservative bias in our media since all I hear these days is how everything is liberals fault.

confidantlake 5y ago
SF isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous cities. Yet article after article about how it is falling apart. Where are all the articles about St Louis or Jackson Mississippi?
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  We expect St Louis to be falling apart. We don't expect San Francisco to be. But I don't agree with the GP either. "Conservative bias in our media"? Either you're to the left of CNN (in which case you're far from the median, and so in a bad position to judge), or you're looking at a very skewed subset of the media. Personally, I think it's a backlash. I think the liberals have been loudly triumphalist since... maybe the beginning of Obama's presidency? Somewhere in there. There's been this aura of "We're going to re-order the country to our approach, and we're going to fix all the problems." And they did re-order it, not completely, but to a large degree. So when that fails to produce the paradise that was promised, people point out that the liberal agenda, in a place where they were pretty free to carry it out, failed to produce what the liberals claimed it would. There's no shortage of articles pointing out that the conservative agenda, in places where they were free to carry it out, also failed to produce. But those articles get less traction, I suspect because people find "conservative agenda fails to produce" to be less surprising than "liberal agenda fails to produce". (Or maybe just because "the conservative agenda will produce" lately has been less widely trumpeted than "the liberal agenda will produce".)
  - confidantlake 5y ago
    Maybe the media I read is skewed. It is mostly what I link to from HN. I lived in Sf about a decade back. There were a steady stream of articles even way back then about how San Francisco was falling apart. Like yeah the Tenderloin is a ghetto and there are not enough public bathrooms. But the rest of the city is pretty safe. The biggest problem by far were the housing prices which is why I moved out. A decade later the Tenderloin is still a ghetto, still not enough bathrooms, and the housing prices are still too damn high. And there are still articles about how it is on the verge of collapse.

WYepQ4dNnG 5y ago

Things (housing, schools, cost of living) are so expensive that also "tech" workers at so called FAANG are leaving California to work in new campuses that big tech are opening in other (for now still cheaper) places in US and abroad. California has become a little island for reach people and NIMBY. No way to build a future and a family unless multi-multi millionaire. Also, building a startup in California does not make any sense any more. Cost of hiring is too high.

smm11 5y ago

The realclear group seems to have a certain slant. And given that California has Silicon Valley, and also the Central Valley that's full of farm-oriented immigrants, of course you're going to have this gigantic disparity in wages. Pick up Silicon Valley and put it in Iowa, or Alabama, or Mississippi, or North Dakota, what would happen then? Have other states stop shipping the destitute to California. What would happen then? Go back and time and keep Purdue Pharm from making legal heroin. What would happen then?

tjr225 5y ago
Uh, yeah they have a certain slant, lol: https://www.city-journal.org/ivermectin-sparks-yet-another-covid-culture-war?wallit_nosession=1 https://www.city-journal.org/ivermectin-sparks-yet-another-c...

50yearsold 5y ago

As an immigrant who came to USA 25+ years ago and made SF bay area home since then I can say that California is not doing well. I am lucky to have a home here and surrounded by friendly neighbors and community. But as someone who came from India - I can draw parallels on many (negative) fronts between my experiences in India and where California is headed. Too much income inequality, inflation, poverty, homelessness, high cost of living, corruption, lack of civic sense and disregard about law shown by many when out in public in public spaces. I truly hope CA does not become replica of yet another "developing nation".

ryscheng 5y ago

If you live in California, I recommend getting involved in your local housing element. This program will have huge implications in how zoning and development occurs in the state for years to come. https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element/index.shtml https://www.hcd.ca.gov/community-development/housing-element... For example in San Francisco, they are reviewing drafts now. https://sfhousingelement.org/ https://sfhousingelement.org/

justinzollars 5y ago

I did the math for Mountain View: Average Home | Downpayment | Finance | Monthly payment (Loan + Insurance + Tax) | Necessary Annual income $2,140,000.00 | $428,000.00 | $1,712,000.00 | $11,517.00 | $414,612.00 Mix that with high taxes across every category, very high crime, homelessness and extremely poor indebted government providing poor service. The state needs to hit the reset button. Taxes are already high, and a negative feedback loop has started: capital flight, loss of income, increase taxes, which in turn causes more capital flight. The annual costs of the state are increasing because we must retire the boomer generation and pay for past promises. I think the best path forward for California is default, and then start over. The current path is not good. I wish California could compete with Florida and Texas, but it has real structural problems.

confidantlake 5y ago
Do you mean default on their debt? If so that is a really bad idea. I don't really get it being uncompetitive. California has a higher gdp per capita then either Texas or Florida.
- justinzollars 5y ago
  I mean default as in bankruptcy, then restructure the fixed costs in a way to become competitive with Texas and Florida.
  - confidantlake 5y ago
    Their debt to gdp ration isn't even in the top 10 of states. There is no reason for them to declare bankruptcy. The idea that California is not competitive couldn't be further from the truth.If California were a country they would have the 5th highest gdp in the world.
    - justinzollars 5y ago
      Do you live here? Do you see the math in my post? Outcomes are horrible. Families can’t afford to exist.

rayiner 5y ago

I’m convinced that tax rates on the upper middle class (top 10%) need to be much, much higher. An interesting premise of Modern Monetary Theory is that taxes can and should be used to control inflation, and further that this can be done in a controlled way based on where inflation is occurring. If that is correct, one can reason that inflation for things like housing, education, etc., is caused by taxes being too low—specifically among the folks with high incomes competing for these goods. More specifically, it appears that taxes are too low on the upper middle class specifically. In my neighborhood near Annapolis, the price of houses has doubled since 2016. We came here because it was a nice place where you could afford a house without being a dual professional household, but that’s increasingly less true. The problem, it seems to me, isn’t billionaires. The house next to mine wasn’t torn down and replaced with a new million dollar home by a billionaire. It was some upper middle class professional. The top 10% has been riding the coattails of the top 0.1% for decades and has significantly pulled away from the median American. Unlike billionaires, which are few in number, this is a large class of people who can use their growing incomes to outbid everyone else for homes, education, etc. At the same time, taxes on these folks are the lowest in the developed world, even lower today than after Reagan’s second round of tax cuts.

ffggvv 5y ago
astounds me people are still referencing MMT when its exactly what got us into this inflation mess in the first place. the tantalizing cancerous idea which will never die
- rayiner 5y ago
  I’m not sure why you’d blame MMT. The theory behind MMT is that inflation is the primary check on government spending. When significant inflation occurs, you need to raise taxes to remove cash from the system. Obviously that’s not what we’re doing (instead we’re dumping more cash into the system by doing gas tax holidays and subsidizing gas).
skrbjc 5y ago
One of the actual major tax problems in CA is that property taxes are not equally applied. I bought my house in 2017 and pay well in excess of $10,000 a year in property taxes. But guess what? My neighbors who bought their houses in the 90s pay far less than half of that despite their houses being twice the size and worth far more than my home. Prop 13 has been a terrible thing for California over the long run and has served to inflate housing prices while trapping people in their current home because selling it and moving would force them to immediately increase their tax burden by a significant amount.

JaimeThompson 5y ago

A nearby house that is slightly less fancy than mine just sold for 100+K more then mine is listed on the tax rolls which is drastically above previous sales for such homes in this area. Not a large town, lots of empty land for sale, excellent Internet and prices are still thru the roof so it isn't just a California issue when talking about housing and such costs.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

Little detail that should be considered by US tech workers moving to another state: non-compete enforceability. This [0] is from 2016, but you get the idea. [0]: https://beckreedriden.com/50-state-noncompete-chart-2/ https://beckreedriden.com/50-state-noncompete-chart-2/

photochemsyn 5y ago

This is hardly how the problems with California's electricity and manufacturing sectors arose: > "The state’s climate change policies, however well-intentioned, have had a particularly devastating impact on manufacturing. California’s “renewable energy” push has generated high energy prices and the nation’s least-reliable power grid, crippling an industry reliant on fossil fuels and a stable electric supply. The state fell to 44th in the country in manufacturing sector employment growth last year. . ." In reality neoliberal trade policies facilitated the outsourcing of California's electronics and garment manufacturing industry over the past 40 years. This alone accounts for much of the loss of middle-class prosperity around the Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin. Furthermore, the disastrous deregulation of the investor-owned utility sector is what caused electricity bills to spike initially and the few publicly-owned electricity distributers had lower rates. Getting off fossil fuels doesn't 'destabilize the grid', either. I don't know enough about the rest of the claims in the article to say anything about them, but the take on energy and manufacturing looks inaccurate at best.

cscanlin 5y ago

Where does the information on California having the highest poverty rate in the US come from? The source they listed only gave California's poverty rate at 16.4% [1]. But the Census source used by Wikipedia lists California's rate at 12.58% [2] Neither rate actually puts California at the top of any other lists I find. In what measure does California have the highest poverty rate? EDIT: I see the first number is based on California Poverty Measure (CPM) which takes into account cost of living [3]. But is there a direct way to compare this to other states? [1] https://www.ppic.org/publication/poverty-in-california/ https://www.ppic.org/publication/poverty-in-california/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_poverty_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [3] https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/research-reports/california-poverty-measure https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/research-report...