People have been saying that sort of thing since the '90s, if not earlier. If California has been working so hard for so long to ruin things, why are we still talking about places being the next Silicon Valley, and not the next Austin or the next Research Triangle?

It’s not all peaches and cream in this fast growing city though. The tremendous growth results in colossal strain on traffic and infrastructure, but ownership of a large house with a yard is available to most people. That’s not such a big deal when you’re single, but it’s huge when you have kids. The demand for increased economic security likewise dramatically increases when you have kids.

California is growing in population though, but very slowly and without equivalent growth in wealth per capita. That is largely a result in personal wealth primarily tied to home ownership and home ownership declining generationally in California.

I take from your comment that you are less concerned with raw numbers and more concerned with vanity labels and trends. If you are a well funded founder perhaps California remains the place to be, but the numbers indicate it’s no longer the epicenter of economic growth that it certainly was in prior decades.

I don’t personally think it’s taxes, or any particular brand of politics (per se, as I know this is a political issue, I just mean relative to this), but that, in essence, that is destroying California slowly from the inside. Both Oregon and Washington are similar politically and Oregon is very close in taxes but they aren’t seeing any population outflows like this. I firmly believe it’s due to the issue of housing before any other factor.

I’m trying to gather more data to back my assertion but all personal experiences of people I know and others I’ve met who have moved have cited this as one of the major or the single biggest reason for having moved

Prop 13 is killing California, repealing it and replacing it with a Land Value Tax, in my opinion, would fix it.

Yes, exactly. I collect vanity labels and make little stickers out of them for my fridge. What a completely useless thing to say. You have no idea what my thoughts are based on one sentence and a half so keep your ad hominems to yourself please.

All you are saying is that California is way too expensive thus people are leaving. Yes, we all know that. Now, why are people unable to live in California? And how should it be fixed? Those are the real questions. And there are reasonable arguments to make for many different theories, which was my point above.

And yet:

> California is growing in population

So, N people move to California each year, and M move away for M < N, and of those T move to Texas for T < M, and this is "bleeding?"

I'm not a demographer but this makes no sense.

Could you please explain what you mean here?

That’s an assumption not directly based on numbers. Yes, the net in migration to California is largely from non-domestic people. That could be due to exactly the reason you provided, or it could also be the result of less movement freedom tied to visa sponsorship, or a variety of other factors. Many of my tech coworkers in Texas are non-citizens under visa sponsorship who, given the choice, have stated they prefer the Midwest due to a variety of economic conditions (not just cost of living).

Speaking of unsupported anecdotes, it makes sense that the people you meet in the middle of the country express a preference for being there. That's pure selection bias. In terms of revealed preference, the states that are getting more than their per-capita share of California out-migrants are Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington.

Not to detract from your overall comment, but that's only just under 2% year on year growth - that's pretty low for a city? (Not trying to imply that faster growth is good, just that you've framed it as rapid growth - a big exodus - and it's.. Not ?)

There are only 37 cities in the US greater than half a million people and only a tiny fraction of those grew by more than 20% over the last decade. The largest two of those are both in Texas and none are in California.

If a city is able to consistently grow at 2% per year it will only take 20 years and a few months to be 50% larger due to compound interest and only 35 years to double in size.

In this context, I care about trends that happen over the course of decades and labels that become popular in recognition of those trends. I don't know why you're bringing up "vanity".

And it's happening: people are fleeing the state.

"California likely to lose congressional seat for first time in history after 2020 Census. Californians moving out lead to cut in Golden State’s political clout."

"other states like Texas are expected to gain as many as three new seats"

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/03/california-lose-congr...

Poor people are leaving to other parts of the USA slower than rich people are moving in from other parts of the world; California has net in-migration despite net domestic out-migration. This is bad in terms of domestic political power, of course, but it's directly a consequence of economic success.

It has lower net growth than many other parts of the country, but that is not just a matter of migration but also the lower natural growth rate that usually accompanies greater wealth. And it's not one of the places actually shrinking because people are actually fleeing, not being displaced by richer people—there are a number of states where that is true, but CA isn't one of them.

I'm familiar with the statistics, the issue gets raised here every couple months or so. You and your friends from. Google aren’t the whole universe. Sure, some well-off people leave and some less well-off people move in, but that's not what is dominating the aggregate statistics.

"Deseret was proposed as a name for the U.S. state of Utah. Brigham Young—governor of Utah Territory from 1850 to 1858 and president of the LDS Church from 1847 to 1877—favored the name as a symbol of industry. Young taught his followers that they should be productive and self-sufficient, a trait he had perceived in honeybees."[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_(Book_of_Mormon)

People with similar belief than you about "value" (really, only money) creation and regulations/taxes are going to other states.

This has nothing to do with being reasonable. Someone perfectly reasonable could think better safety nets and less inequality is a worthy trade-off for less growth.

Except California also has among the highest levels of income inequality and highest cost-of-living adjusted poverty rates in the entire country: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...

It's not just about potentially different priorities about growth versus safety nets. It's also a question of whether you believe that you should double down on the policies that have made California and New York among the hardest places to live for the middle and lower middle class.

In places like California and York, so much money meant to go to "better safety nets and less inequality" actually goes to providing secure middle class lifestyles for college educated white people. California, for example, is drowning in teacher pension debt despite having some of the highest state taxes in the country. But over 60% of California teachers are white, in a state where just 23% of schoolchildren are white. So when people look at white-hispanic test score gaps (California having among the largest gaps in the country), and vote for more education funding, the actual impact on reducing inequity is extremely attenuated. Likewise, on housing policy, people act very concerned about it in New York and California, but how much money and legislative effort goes to actually providing housing for people who need it, versus paying salaries for college-educated administrators and bureaucrats, versus propping up housing prices in middle/upper middle class racially segregated neighborhoods?

I'll note that LA teachers are demanding that as a condition for schools reopening, charter schools be shut down: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-26/citing-c.... Charter schools are, of course, a policy that's supported by the majority of the black and hispanic people that actually have kids in the school districts. (White Democrats are the only group where a majority oppose charter schools and vouchers.) This is a really telling illustration of what the real priorities are.

If, for the taxes Californians and New Yorkers pay, they actually got a robust safety net, good schools, and good transit, I imagine that a lot fewer people would leave.

California is 47th.

Moving from Utah to California is moving from one of the worst states for equality to the best. There is no trade-off needed regarding inequality, and I doubt there is one needed for safety nets either, Utah is unsurprisingly progressive in that area.

See: Canada and Sweden, both of which have soundly demonstrated the combination of a safety net and growth over the last 40 years.

California turned me off, because it just seems like it has reached max capacity, there's just too many people living there. Utah lost to Seattle for other reasons.

I guess my point is, I think all I cared about was the geography and temperature profile, and the lifestyle the place would bring me. The actual company I'd work for came after these.

So in my opinion, Utah is doing well because of its geography, same for California. People just like it there.

This approach/reasoning is too often overlooked. Smart and capable people get to pick and choose where they want to live.

Housing isn't an issue that goes away with value creation.

I'd bet Utah would suffer the same way if a storage container starts costing more than $2000 a month.

Edit: perhaps not "free" education but as-near-as, for any American. That free education was only available to Mormons.