I disagree with your assessment that Texas has wide acceptance for opposing viewpoints, at least out in the suburbs where I grew up. If you were not religious and conservative (I have my own anecdotes), you did not fit in. Only when I went to college in a college town did people largely seem to want to live and let live. Sure, inside the larger cities it is more cosmopolitan, for lack of a better word, but lots of people live in the 'burbs and around the smaller areas and do not get the benefit of this peaceful coexistence. For example, to this day I do not recommend being openly gay and living near Tyler.
If someone moved to Texas, they made a choice to accept it and I will not knock people for their individual choices. But my experience is not that the prevailing view is open acceptance of people of all stripes like found in other parts of the country.
The whole system has been optimized to milk as much money as possible from newcomers. The people in power in California even scapegoated the newcomers for a long time, and pretended that they were unwanted. Now that the system has finally become unsustainable, we get these ridiculous takes about how somebody "extracted wealth" from California.
The words "luxury housing" are designed to make you think that it is taking up space that could be used by non luxury housing. Like the only reason a new apartment is so expensive is because it has a gold-plated toilet or something, and if only the developer had built an apartment without a gold plated toilet you could afford it. But in Minneapolis, for example, a 2 bedroom apartment in the nicest building in the city, with a built in pool, car wash, and cigar lounge, is $2000 per month. That barely gets you a spot in someone's living room in SF.
This proves that it is not luxuries that make "luxury apartments" expensive in SF. The only luxury is having a roof over your head.
In practice, "pushes down the prices" is an overstatement, and what actually happens is that once demand pressure reaches a certain point new luxury supply only opens up higher pricing tiers. It potentially stabilizes older construction, which is not bad, but doesn't seem to provide downward pressure. The only thing that seems to do that is non-marginal demand dropping out of the market.
And if you follow it through that's how the incentives seem to be aligned. Capital examining opportunity in construction will want to chase the highest return it can and if you have capital the marginal cost on luxury construction over non-luxury at the same unit scale is usually less than the return. On top of that, at certain scales of operation vacancy is apparently less of a drag on nominal property values involved in the accounting and financing, which means prices tend to float down when the fall rather than plummet. Though of course, any potential developer doing the math is going to look at vacancy rate and will make their decision about whether/what to build targeting points short of outright surplus.
There are some types markets where I think you can drive down pricing market-wide by coming in from the top (consumer tech sure seems to work that way) and that's my guess why so many seem think the same must apply to housing. Perhaps housing could indeed work the same way if the actual manufacturing techniques and costs were being iterated with the same speed and scale.
But that's why there are specific drives for affordable housing: building at the top slows/stops price increases but only lets people on the verge of being priced out tread water.
Personally I think there needs to be vacancy taxes proportional to the market segment being operated (probably also correlated to tightness of supply) so that prices clear on the falling side more easily, but who knows how that would change people's construction calculations.
I liken it to the California of the Midwest. Its nots the cheapest, its more middle of the road (though, I think in absolute terms there are places around Chicago that outpace the cost of the highest cost parts of Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro last time I looked, granted that was a few years ago).
Its culturally though, very liberal (from my own experience, tends to also be very much a democrat state). One thing I will say is Minnesota's public school system is great, and the collegiate system is both affordable and high quality, on average.
It's still cheaper than California, New York, Seattle, Portland etc. paying 2000 a month for a place to live in Minnesota is still very much not the norm, even in nice parts of the Twin Cities.
If you're willing to live up North a bit, Duluth is amazing, its mostly a college town now, and you can surf in the summers!
The downside is always the snow, though if you live in the Twin Cities there are upscale parts of downtown that have miles of indoor walkable paths that take you all over the city.
I really love the state. I've contemplated moving back several times. I just don't think my tech industry connections would carry over as well, so it would limit some of my job opportunities, even with this big push to work from home by a lot of companies. That will have to shake out for me personally first before I would consider moving back.
Though, they've done a decent job netting progressive employers and have in large part been able to avoid the economic collapse that hit much of the Midwest (the rust belt, in places like Ohio). I know a lot of people out there employed in highly trained manufacturing jobs (highly skilled CNC work, maintain automated manufacturing facilities etc.) and those jobs are the only ones in that sector that aren't leaving the USA in droves yet, plus there are a lot of medical technology companies there. Also, a lot of enterprise software companies have HQ or large presence in the cities as well.
It's not a startup scene like SF, but its changing. When I was a kid the state had these huge policy pushes to try and get people entering college to focus on technical degrees (be it 2-year technical school at a community college doing CNC machining and the like or 4-year degrees in engineering/cs). It's also one of the most educated populations in the country [0][1]
Now I just feel like I'm selling it. Though I want to mention one quirk about the population that stands up to everyone I know who has visited. Minnesota Nice [2] is alive and well still. People tend to just be more friendly there than anywhere else I've lived or travelled, and I've been through more than a dozen states from coast to coast. It's just a general demeanor thing. Thats not to say that everyone is nice all the time though, of course. I'd say on average you're less likely to have small confrontations though, than anywhere else I've been.
[0]: https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/outreach/back-to-s...
[1]: http://www.ohe.state.mn.us/fc/2108/pg.cfm
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_nice#:~:text=Minneso....
If a community says 'we'd rather be homes and don't want to turn everything in to high-rises' then that's entirely their discretion.
It's definitely not any individual townships moral or civic responsibility to change their community to accommodate either state/national strategic planning, especially for the benefit of people who do not even live there.
There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between. If the FAANGs having trouble with salaries and bringing in people want, they can be part of this strategy.
I bet there are thousands of G staffers who'd live to live somewhere south of Morgan Hill, away from the city.
Suppose a person buys a house to retire in, on a peaceful quiet little street with plenty of room to park. The neighbors then build: an 80-story apartment tower, a supervised injection place for IV drug users, an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant.
Maybe we overdo it, but yes, we're going to curtail private property rights.
If this is financially viable, that land must be worth a ton. Retiree should sell the property and stop monopolizing such valuable land. They'll have plenty of funds to use to move elsewhere
> a supervised injection place for IV drug users
Very few people want one of these built near them, which itself causes huge societal problems. We'd be better off in aggregate if more services for the poor could be built.
>an organometalic peroxide production plant, a hog farm, and a tire recycling plant
Unlikely to be built on expensive residential land, but if they were it would help fight climate change by reducing commute times, since employees can now live nearby. The existence of actual property rights allows ample housing to be built in this high-demand area
The real prospects of the lack of zoning is something that nobody wants, which is why literally every civil place in the world has zoning.
The failure in the 'property rights' argument is that what's built on one property affects the other - there are externalizations.
What is built on one plot, affects the materiality (and value) of the others.
These arguments exist only on HN and other boards, thankfully.
Calling Houston uncivil is a subjective judgement I can’t objectively falsify, and so is calling its residents “nobody”, but the latter act strikes me as ironically uncivil, and IMO not in line with https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments.
But there are good reasons we ought to have governments, and fewer reasons we ought to have a State. I would sum those up as keeping the four horsemen at bay, adjudicating disputes and delivering justice. A few decent reasons too, such as accelerating R&D with their justifiable actions, but pretty much everything else is an abuse of power and tax authority.
Also your examples are ridiculous. There are few places in the world where you can just throw up an 80 story apartment building, and even fewer people who can afford to to spite their neighbors. A world where police powers are not abused to the extreme that they are is also not one without a quiet place to retire without an organometallic peroxide plant nearby, nor one without remedies if a neighbor chooses to break ground on such a project.
Zoning is an important and foundational aspect of civil governance, and works well for the most part.
If SF residents in any clear majority wanted to have zoning laws changed, they probably could, there's a fair component of democratic impetus here.
Most importantly - it's essential to recognize that points of property are not fundamentally discrete from one another.
The value of one piece of property depends a lot on what's around it. Large buildings vs small ones, noise vs quiet, density vs. green, sun vs shade, - there are major externalizations to every property, and zoning helps establish parameters for those things.
Go ahead and put a 50 ft flag pole on our front lawn with a flag on it and see how your neighbours react.
There are innumerable situations wherein tall towers would go up beside homes - they exist in droves in literally every city. Go to any North American city, go to where there are tall buildings - and find homes nearby. Those homes are likely there due to zoning.
There are even more instances wherein homes would be knocked down to put up all sorts of other things - office buildings, industrial facilities, retail outlets, clinics - whatever.
There is in general, no interest in that. Not even the folks wanting to build 80-story towers want it really, lets the autoplant be built across the street and destroy their own property value.
Where we disagree is whether it is an abuse, not the mechanism by which it is justified by the State.
We don’t disagree that what is around is a factor in our purchase and selling decisions, but to be frank, when the developer of your hypothetical skyscraper bought the land to build the skyscraper, he didn’t buy the lot across the street with it that would one day become this hypothetical autoplant, nor the use rights for the lot across the street. In fact, the developer probably didn’t buy across an empty lot because someone that is building an 80 story apartment building wants to attract tenants, and tenants want neighborhood amenities if they’re living in an apartment building.
You could still build across from an empty lot that might be an auto plant in the future, but you don’t build that big without a business case. Property doesn’t exist in a vacuum, we’re agreed on that, and I’m not even 100% against zoning, just maybe 99% of how it is used.
When you buy property, you buy property, not the rights to limit the development and use of all the other properties around you. That “right” comes from a simple tyranny of the majority using the State as their vehicle of power.
It has nothing to do with police powers, it's called zoning and it's absolutely a legitimate part of our governing structure.
If the residents of SF wanted to go Hong Kong style full on skyscrapers everywhere, they would have.
Bulldozing communities to create utopian/dystopian hyper density is one of the most short-sighted urban concepts going.
There's plenty of space, go elsewhere.
Also, I'll be even a hyper fast public transport system that connected the Bay Area with surrounding regions: imagine the Bart/Caltrain being 'one thing' running in a really fast loop around the bay, with quick buses LTRs as spokes - and then fast communter trains connecting them out to Sac, Modesta, Santa Rosa, that might work.
Especially if they build smartly around slight more dense centres instead of just pure suburban homes.
Zoning is a mechanism of economic suppression to appease the haves and separate them from the have-nots. They de-diversify and oppress.
> If the residents of SF wanted to go Hong Kong style full on skyscrapers everywhere, they would have.
Yes my point is that they didn’t, and now they’re paying the ridiculous cost: $3000 for a bachelor. Do anything other than work for FAANG? Sorry, you don’t get to live here. Please bus an hour so you can serve me coffee.
> Bulldozing communities to create utopian/dystopian hyper density is one of the most short-sighted urban concepts going.
Bulldozing exclusive communities and replacing them with inclusive ones, which create more local business opportunities and reduce dependence on transportation. Calling high density planning short sighted in favour of single family dwellings is absurd.
> There's plenty of space, go elsewhere.
This mindset is what causes suburbia, which has an absolutely disastrous impact on the environment and local economies. And leads to class segregation (which is a proxy for racial segregation in the US.)
The above sentence could be said about building codes.
I sort of jest but also shudder to think: How soon will progressive SFBA thought leaders call out building and health and safety codes as pushing up costs and excluding homeowners (and potential homeowners) that cannot comply with them ?
Because they absolutely do that. God help us if we act on that knowledge ...
Dezoning is not an argument for deregulation, it’s about creating new economic opportunity in a very direct way. You don’t have to sacrifice building safety as a next step. Sure, you could. And you might be right that it is economically positive to do so. But that’s a sort of deregulation extremism.
This is a ridiculously false statement.
Everyone wants zoning laws, you can't put up a gas station or an industrial facility right in the middle of xyz residential neighbourhood, nobody wants that.
"Yes my point is that they didn’t, and now they’re paying the ridiculous cost"
So you're saying that people are making a choice, but because you're not happy with the choice, they should change?
Are you arguing for rights or not? Which is it?
SF residents wanting to keep zoning laws intact are making their own choices, and that's fine.
"Calling high density planning short sighted in favour of single family dwellings is absurd."
Just the opposite when in fact the citizens are adamant that their city not turn into Hong Kong.
"This mindset is what causes suburbia, which has an absolutely disastrous impact on the environment and local economies"
Total rubbish. Suburbs are some of the most peaceful, plentiful, conscientious, and safe places in civilization ... which is exactly why those types of people move there. They are downright boring in their concientiousness.
That they lack trendy cafes, and hipster fentanyl needle clinics is not a problem for some.
That’s not reality. It doesn’t make economic sense for a an industrial business to set up shop in a supposedly “residential area” - there will still be commercial clusters because that makes sense economically. And you can still define environmental regulations and build infrastructure where you want industrial commerce to happen. Zoning laws are mostly abused.
> So you're saying that people are making a choice, but because you're not happy with the choice, they should change?
The people who are making the choice are the ones who can afford to make the choice. Everyone else is forced out. So what you end up with is a bunch of entitled rich people who forced everyone else out of the market, bleeding the city of its charm and diversity.
> Just the opposite when in fact the citizens are adamant that their city not turn into Hong Kong.
You don’t reach the density of Hong Kong without need. For HK that need is to be included in the region of (former) autonomy. Naturally things aren’t going to get that dense. You can double the density of SF and it still won’t look anything near like HK. And once again, the people who are adamantly against densifying the city are not the ones who have to commute an hour by transit to work in it. They are the stakeholders because they forced their way in. What about people who used to work in SF but got forced out by rising rent, but who still work in the city. They don’t deserve a say?
> Suburbs are some of the most peaceful, plentiful, conscientious, and safe places in civilization
This is so painfully ignorant it’s hard to unpack. Do you understand the toll it takes on small business owners to not be able to buy commercial land where people live? Do you recognize the damage that daily mass commuting into and out of the city has on both the global and local environment? Do you understand that the “peace” is actually just economic segregation? Take a drive outside the gated communities and go on down to the economically segregated “suburbs” of the less fortunate. I believe they call those “ghettos” in the US. Not sure you’ll find much peace or safety there.
> That they lack trendy cafes, and hipster fentanyl needle clinics is not a problem for some.
Man you are a piece of work.
Nobody is arguing it’s not their discretion. I’m just saying it makes you a bad actor in the larger community of people who would like to benefit from the opportunity of living in a city that they otherwise might not get if they weren’t living in the city.
> especially for the benefit of people who do not even live there.
They don’t live there because they’re being systematically and economically excluded from living there by people of means who are unaffected by the damage they’re doing to their own local economy.
> There's plenty of physical space in Cali, if anything, the opportunity might be in Sacramento and in-between.
So... not in your back yard?
It’s the places that everyone want to live in that are crowded, and there are good reasons apartment blocks aren’t going up in farmland (this isn’t China where people are told to live outside the fifth or sixth ring road just because).
So if SF goes 'Hong Kong' style i.e. tears down all those homes and puts full on sky-scrapers everywhere, will the 'current' residents be happy, and will future residents want to be there as much?
'Everyone wants to live there' - which is why it's so expensive - this is an inevitability of a good culture whereupon the physicality is usually critical.
If SF went Hong Kong it simply wouldn't be SF.
Pay the price or live elsewhere - California is vast and beautiful.
Also - if some areas on the peninsula put their minds to it, they could be as cool and fun as SF.
People who want change are free to leave. Only when there are no other places to leave to will there be change.
I feel like the average HN poster sits in a pretty air-tight STEM bubble and doesn't realise how bad life for most people in the Bay Area who are not in STEM. To them, tech workers can leave and the industry can tank and it would be a welcome change. The tax revenue the cities have made during this "boom" have not affected them at all. Building more houses just means more traffic, more crowded hiking trails and beaches, more crowded and trashed natural parks, and for what?
They think it has not affected them, but if they stop, the house of cards that is underfunded ultra-generous defined benefit state/municipal pensions tumbles like a house of cards. When the munis start going bankrupt, only then will people notice...
Who benefits from these exactly?
Tax revenue is up ten fold from where it was at in 2008 and yet the quality of life for most of my connections not working in tech in the bay area is much worse. Everything is more expensive, taxes are much higher, traffic is 10x as bad, homelessness is more severe... Who's this "house of cards" supporting?
The minimum wage is up, that's the only thing, but it doesn't matter. Since a couple making minimum wage could actually have an apartment in 2008, which is not the case now.
CA is as expensive as it is in large part because of NIMBYs and tax schemes that were absolutely the product of right-wing ballot initiatives for the most part. OTOH, a large part of the appeal of TX is that it doesn't have a state income tax, but the state is absolutely on the dole. IIRC TX takes in ~$150b from the Federal government, but only pays ~$100b into the system. CA (like NY) pays more into the system then it takes out, so about ~$50b of the annual budget of TX is literally bumming money from other states, albeit indirectly.
Which is a roundabout way of saying, the narrative about people moving from CA to TX often makes it sound like a narrative about left-wing economic policies vs. right-wing economic policies, but the reality is that CA is expensive in large part because of right-wing economic policies and TX is cheap in large part because it's basically on welfare from the Federal government. Which is fine, the system should allow economically healthier states to help the less successful states get by (looking at you KY), but it's so counter to the narrative that usually surrounds these stories that people tend to sweep it under the rug. And also TX is hardly an economically unhealthy, depressed state in need of assistance from the rest of the country. It should step up and stop being being a bum, because AFAICT it's not a bum but rather a state with well above-average prospects.
This isn't true. According to the SUNY Rockefeller Institute of Government report dated Jan 8, 2019 (which used the data from the Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2019) the fifty states all had differing Federal expenditures vs Federal receipts but Texas and California were close. See page 15 at [1].
On a per capita basis, here are the federal expenditures per dollar of receipts for a few states:
Connecticut 0.74 50th
New Jersey 0.82 49th
Massachusetts 0.83 48th
New York 0.86 47th
North Dakota 0.94 46th
Illinois 0.97 45th
New Hampshire 0.98 44th
Washington 0.98 43rd
Nebraska 0.98 42nd
Colorado 0.99 41st
California 1.00 40th <=== CA
Texas 1.03 39th <=== TX
Utah 1.04 38th
Wisconsin 1.06 37th
Wyoming 1.06 36th
Minnesota 1.09 35th
Iowa 1.13 34th
Nevada 1.14 33rd
South Dakota 1.15 32nd
Kansas 1.23 31st
Florida 1.24 30th
...
Virginia 1.97 6th
Alabama 1.99 5th
West Virginia 2.17 4th
Mississippi 2.19 3rd
New Mexico 2.34 2nd
Kentucky 2.35 1st
Or is VA's proximity to DC and ownership of a lot of the Federal apparatus helping them to get a disproportionate cut?
The former -- lack of growth in the rest of the state -- may also be driving the state Blue.
"Other states are high or low for various reasons: the outliers Maryland and Virginia, for example, both have dramatically higher Federal spending per capita than the average state, as they are near the physical headquarters for most of the Federal government and have significantly disproportionate Federal spending for procurement and Federal wages."
So, while Virginia is a relatively high-income state and contributes a lot of Federal income tax, they also have a lot of Federal employees, grants, contracts, etc.
(I was surprised at first too)
This is patently false. Property taxes can and do raise 2%/year.
California does need to build new housing.
This had been especially obvious because historically low interest rates have enabled a lot of asset appreciation, with real estate being one example. High real estate prices lead to high property taxes, which makes the difference in taxes paid much more obvious.
NIMBYism also plays a part, but I think people routinely overlook that developers often don't improve local facilities in line with local housing projects, which can lead to all kinds of awfulness. That new 1000 unit apartment complex also needs 1000+ parking spaces, along with other improvements in local infrastructure in proportion to the increase in population, but a developer won't care about that unless someone forces them to care.
2. Why should it be the developers jobs to build out new infrastructure that isn't directly needed by their building. It's their job to build housing which brings people, those people bring taxes and those taxes pay for upgrades to infrastructure.
In terms of who should improve infrastructure, it doesn't really matter who does it, but I think either local government or the developer should be required to do it and not be allowed to let things slide. I focus on the developer because they're the first in the process, but it doesn't matter if instead the city requires the developer to build in the infrastructure improvement costs and does it themselves. The only position I have is that it should get done.
Btw what infrastructure are you talking about? Water, electrics, roads or sewage I'm guessing.
I guess they could be $15k/year, but I've never seen an example that high. My mom lives in Yucca Valley and has two or three Mello Roos items (water district, local community college, and something else), and I think maybe pays about $600 total for them.
https://playavistaexperts.com/buying-selling-resources/mello...
It's a ton off money either way, although I guess not surprising in Playa del Rey.
This tweet highlights some of the insaneness: https://twitter.com/nextdoorsv/status/1265719788875272192
Someone pays $806 per year, living next to someone who pays $27,732 per year.
https://twitter.com/alfred_twu/status/1327821019931787264?s=...
Translation: The people who live there won't vote for a thing they don't want.
Because of it's size and market influence, California laws can effect the rest of the country, should the rest of the country vote in California elections?
The people who _choose_ to sit in the traffic are getting what they signed up for. I could be that person and I choose not to be in no small part to that situation.
You can see a detailed study of it here: https://www.buildzoom.com/blog/cities-expansion-slowing
Palo Alto. Someone pays $1081 per year living adjacent to someone who pays $24K per year.
Compared to 2020 Anywhere, 2000 Anywhere was a very bigoted place.
This really is not true, in many big cities it was another common facet of life that people were by and large apathetic about at that point.
Even Tyler has changed. (old article, but still)
https://www.advocate.com/society/activism/2009/09/29/gays-ta...
If Texas voters will finally vote in someone who is more like Ann Richards than Greg Abbott, I will believe the mindset is changing. Statewide votes for Governor, Lite Gov, Comptroller, and so on are not gerrymandered so a vote in San Antonio counts just as much as a vote in Midland.
(To your first question, I have not lived in Texas for over a decade, but I am the only member of my family who does not so I have pretty close connections to this day.)
I'm a white man and I suppose I would be a bit wary if I had a huge Bernie sticker on my car, I otherwise don't feel unsafe in the middle of nowhere TX. I just don't like that they're all rah rah GOP.
My own (black) experience in West Texas (Ft. Bliss), "Careful" meant driving across state to see family in Houston and absolutely not stopping in certain counties, not even to piss or stretch my legs.
After getting stopped, pulled over and ordered out of my vehicle while an officer stood back at his car several times and interrogated about "where are you going" "where are you supposed to be" "who do you know in this town" and "where did you steal the car from" (all separate experiences) while doing nothing but trying to take holiday leave.
So... that kind of careful for some of us.
edit, before anyone even makes the attempt:
- I was not driving erratically
- I had no bumper stickers on my car signaling political viewpoints
- I was not wearing any 'curious' clothing other than a shirt and jeans
- I had functioning turn signals and brake lights
- I was driving a legally purchased, registered and insured vehicle at the speed limit (or +5mph) consistent with how I drive literally every day
I remember my truck breaking down in Menard, TX and my black friend and I walked into a restaurant in the morning... everyone stopped and turned around and stared at us for a moment and went back to their business.
I've had ... interesting interactions with police and even some ornery locals as far south as Austin (yes, that "blue dot surrounded by red" as people like to call it) and as far north as Milwaukee, which isn't that far from where I live now, comparatively.
Kinda stopped believing in that whole "social avarice is relegated to certain parts of the country" stuff before I even hit 23.
(but don't get me started about certain parts of Missouri)
Sometimes I don't think humanity deserves to continue existing. It was a wacky experiment, but it is not working out.
That's astounding. Do you have a source for this?
I think we need to admit that we are all racist. Every ethnic majority thinks they are the greatest, it seems. If we can't even admit it, I don't see how it will change.
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, Pensacola, or anywhere in "the sticks" of Texas or Oklahoma or Utah or Alabama before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
Newsflash, you're not going to like upstate New York, either.
All it takes is realizing changing X rule like a deadline will help or hurt your party and then voting based on that rule. Eventually this can fail, which oddly enough tends to flip states so they can quickly go from solidly party A to solidly party B.
And that’s exactly what you would expect from the data. Georgia is one of the few states in the country where Black voter registration rates are equal to registration rates for whites: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/voting-and-voter-r.... (California, by contrast, has a 12 point difference in Black-white registration rates.) In 2018, the Black voter turnout rate was actually 2 points higher than the white voter turnout rate in Georgia. It makes total sense that as you increase turnout, you’re going to see roughly the same demographics.
Same thing in Texas. 87% of votes were cast by mail in ballot. Turn out was up almost 7 points compared to 2016. But Trump earned basically the same percentage of the vote as in 2016, with Biden gaining a few points from winning people who voted third party last time: https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/04/texas-voter-turnout-...
Democrats have this idea that voter suppression is preventing more minorities from coming out (and voting Democrat). But what the data seems to suggest in Georgia and Texas is that people who want to vote are already voting. Making it easier to vote or having a high states election will increase turnout, but by dipping into a pool of lower propensity voters who don’t look all that different demographically than the people who were already voting.
As to the extra voting in Texas. 2020 had an additional + 1205300 Republican votes and + 1381258 Democratic votes in a solid red state which just hit 1/2 of voting age population. That’s 46.6% Republican and 53.4% Democrat and means those extra votes very much favored Democrats. Project a 20% increase in turnout with that kind of margin and Texas is in dead even recount territory.
Of course any election where Texas is that close Democrats have already won by such a margin as to make possibility flipping Texas largely irrelevant. Further, looking at these numbers it’s clear why targeted voter suppression becomes so significant.
You can’t conclude that because it overlooks third parties (who performed very well in 2016) and people who changed their votes from 2016 to 2020. That happened in suburbs all over the country. My traditionally red county (where voting was always super easy) went for Clinton by less than a point, but for Biden by 14 points. Voter turnout was up only 4 points, so Biden’s gain came mainly from flipping votes.
In Texas, Trump won basically the same share of the much larger turnout compared to 2016 (dropping just 0.1 points). Biden’s gain came almost entirely at the expense of third party candidates.
Indeed, nationwide, turnout went up 11 points. But Trump’s vote share also went up, from 46.1% to 46.8%. Again, Biden’s increased margin came entirely at the expense of third parties.
Donations to the Green Party for example are a clever and accepted means of reducing Democrats’s turnout. Libertarians draw surprisingly evenly from both sides, but Republicans have had their own spoilers.
Biden increasing his vote share at the expense of third parties doesn’t indicate any structural benefit to Democrats from higher turnout. It seems quite specific to Trump/Biden as candidates versus Trump/Clinton. Clinton and Trump had very high disapproval ratings, which pushed people to a surprisingly strong third party vote. Biden had much lower disapproval ratings than Clinton, which led those third party voters to vote for him in 2020. That doesn’t show a structure benefit to Democrats from higher turnout.
I’ve done a little numeric modeling, and it produces some surprising implications about who new 2020 voters selected. Pre-election polling showed that 9% of Trump 2016 voters planned to vote for Biden, while only half as many Clinton 2016 voters planned to vote for Trump. Moreover, they showed people who voted third party in 2016 strongly favoring Biden.
Trump won about 11 million more votes than in 2016, and Biden won about 15 million more votes than Clinton. But there was an over 3 million vote drop in the third party vote. If you assume that Biden pulled in a significant number of Trump 2016 votes, say 6-8%, while losing only 3-4% of Clinton 2016 voters, and won the majority of people who voted third party in 2016 but not in 2020, then its quite likely Trump actually won a majority of the 22 million new votes in 2020.
Your nationwide numbers are also off for several reasons. For example many people voting in 2016 skipped the 2020 elections for various reasons like death. Further pooling including exit polls doesn’t match up with actual voting very well suggesting a significant portion of Trump voters are unwilling to say they voted or plan to vote for Trump. That or a truly massive pro Republican voter fraud which seems unlikely.
Anyway looking at hard data. In 2016 Clinton got 65,853,514 votes Trump got 62,984,828 votes. A Democratic margin of 2,868,686 million votes. In 2020 Biden got 81,282,896 votes vs Trumps 74,222,484 a Democratic margin of 7,060,412.
Using the middle of your range 62,984,828 * 0.075 - 65,853,514 * 0.035 that’s a net gain of 2,418,989 votes which far less than the actual net gain of (7,060,412 - 2,868,686) = 4,191,726 votes that Biden over Trump.
To gain the (4,191,726 - 2,418,989) = 1,772,737 votes from a 3 million 3rd party voter drop would have taken a truly extreme margin of ~80% even assuming your other assumptions where correct. That might be reasonable if they where mostly green voters, but it’s largely from the Libertarian party.
Having satisfactorily worked hard to make voting as difficult as possible in Texas, he wants to use the state's limited funds to sue other states that dared to improve their democracy. This is the government of Texas.
Are you stating that as long as public officials are "daring to improve their democracy" that they are free to ignore Constitutional requirements that the legislature has plenary authority to proscribe the manor of selecting electors?
Note: Setting aside the likelihood that any of the alleged unconstitutional actions resulted in a different electoral outcome, isn't it important that election law is established through the Constitutionally proscribed legislative process and not via executive and/or bureaucratic actions independent of the legislature?
Let's not pretend that this absurd lawsuit has any merit -- it's one in a long line of losing lawsuits (what are they up to, 50 out of 51 lost now?) by the current president to overturn an election result he didn't like.
I'm interested in poking holes in that argument not avoiding it.
It is.
> but you’ve neatly avoided addressing the underlying argument that they are making that the election rules were not changed by the legislature in these states and those actions are unconstitutional.
The reason why that is false is well-argued in some of the briefs for the defendant states in Texas just-failed lawsuit, but, in summary: State legislatures are constitutionally free to, as part of the rules they set for elections of Presidential electors, submit those same rules to the same judicial and executive constraints otherwise applicable to state law including those applicable to state elections, the defendant states (and most other states, including those suing) routinely do so and specifically have done so for the rules applicable in this case, and the rules for the elections were all handled according to state law (including the role that state law affords judicial and executive officers in its application).
No, it would actually be terribly disruptive if the legislature could not subject its regulation of federal elections to the judicial and executive power in the same way as other state laws (and, particularly, laws governing the administration of simultaneously and on-the-same-ballot state elections) are.
The concern here was entirely feigned, hypocritical by the states involved in complaints, and substanceless and purely based on partisan advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_v._Virginia_State_Board...
So, it’s a much more specific question you’re asking. It also had zero impact on this election, but that’s largely irrelevant to the question.
The question in the Texas lawsuit doesn't challenge the actions of the legislature, it challenges the actions of the other officials.
It’s often argued by public officials that exceptions are allowed in extreme situations, though what those are is of course up to the courts. Perhaps best summed up as "The Constitution is not a suicide pact". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic... Which of course isn’t a blank check to do anything for any reason, but it is considered by the court system in various cases. There are many examples of this argument being considered acceptable, and perhaps more frequent examples of it being rejected.
As such simply saying the legislature was bypassed on it’s own is not considered a sufficient legal argument.
Well, the interesting point of law here is that the Constitution specifically delegates the authority to the legislature. So in this particular case it may indeed be as straightforward as saying that the legislature was bypassed and didn't authorize the changes. At least that is my understanding of the case so far.
It all rolls back to article III section 2 The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
The legislature is often assumed to have a great deal of power, but it was intended to be relatively weak just like the other two branches of government.
It's a relatively clean slate in state vs state case precedent. Clean enough that a majority will easily find a way to justify a desired ruling one way or the other.
In any case you can't dismiss a lawsuit "because no one has presented any evidence". That is part of a lawsuit itself. Perhaps the evidence will be determined to be insufficient but that will be determined within the proceeding itself.
Now if you want to say that the claims presented in this particular motion is unconvincing, that would make logical sense. But any rationale for dismissing the motion has to be based on what is in the motion, not on what is floating around in social media.
No, six attempted to do so (since the suit was never permitted to be filed, no one actually joined it.)
18 states (including the six that shortly after that filed to join the suit as party intervenors) filed a request to file a pro-plaintiff amicus brief, which is different than joining the suit.
It’s not that people are choosing to insulate - the metros are where the jobs are. Those metros have been changed by the influx of people, and if there were jobs the suburbs you would see the electorate change there as well.
I think the problem with this is that it rests on a fundamental assumption that someone's primary motivation for voting Republican is bigotry. Polls by the Pew Foundation do not bear this out. Non-college educated Democrats and Republicans have equally wrong knowledge about what people on the other side of the spectrum believe. College educated Republicans match their numbers. The outliers are college educated Democrats. They, by far, have the most distorted view of what right wing people ACTUALLY believe. It goes both ways of course, with conservatives dramatically underestimating the patriotism of liberals, etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/21/democr...
When I lived in Arkansas, the voters simultaneously voted for a Republican governor and state house, AND a ballot initiative to significantly raise the state minimum wage, as well as a ballot initiative for medical marijuana.
The GOP politicians were all against these measures, but the voters approved them by large majorities.
The point I'm making is that the politicians on both sides aren't in step with the electorate, even if they are chosen by the electorate. People are voting for the lesser of two evils a lot more than we give them credit for.
California may seem like it's 100% different, but that's mostly because people only know San Francisco, LA, and the other coastal cities. CA has its other parts, too.
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, or Pensacola before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
The "dysfunction" is more likely a function of population density as it is a unique California thing. Watching local Austin news - definitely some familiar problems - gentrification, what to do about the homeless/crime, pollution, desires to raise taxes, traffic.
It's not as though California was always unicorns and rainbows, either.
Compare that to the dirty looks I got walking around SF in a Buck-ees hat that happened to be red. It bordered upon comedy.
Man sent to jail for attack on man wearing MAGA hat: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/man-who-attacked-maga-hat-wearin...
And an article about other incidents around the country: https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/attacks-trump-supporters...
49ers hats are not bright red, and tend to be fairly distinctive.
Anecdote time - my buddy sometimes wears a red hat with the California bear on it, and he regularly (as in without fail) gets dirty looks because of it. I personally stopped wearing my red Nike running hat in public last year because of the reactions I'd get. For context, we live in a relatively conservative East Bay suburb of Northern California.
2) Politically motivated violence is rare in the US and right-wing violence obviously exists as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Portland_train_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_mai...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_boogaloo_killings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
Implying that people who enjoy wearing red hats should avoid SF is like telling liberals to not open their mail. It's absurd.
3) They definitely make 49er hats in bright red:
https://www.rallyhouse.com/assets/images/products/59001909-1...
https://m.hatland.com/prodimg/m1/49ers-super-bowl-xxiii-gold...
https://www.neweracap.com/medias/sys_master/root/h75/h28/891...
https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/1f6093f0-cbdc-42ac-a096-c65...
For those who doubt you, I ask them to ponder the following:
Put on a "Make America Great Again" hat and walk through downtown Chicago, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, or Cambridge before or after election day 2016 (or 2020). Now, put on a "I'm With Her" or "Biden/Harris 2020" shirt and walk through Provo, Fort Worth, or Pensacola before or after election day. In which scenario are you more like to be yelled at and/or physically attacked?
There are plenty of conservative places that would be upset to see Harris / Biden attire. Look no further than the classic Top Gear episode with the Gay Pride car and the Clinton car driving through the south.
I think a difference might be that these are super rural and uneducated communities as opposed to global capitals of business and technology
Are Fort Worth and Pensacola also filled with "overly polite Mormons"? Are they also "cartoonish examples of polite conservative locales"? (Congratulations, by the way, on making polite Mormons and conservatives sound like bad things.)
Conversely, are San Francisco, Ann Arbor, and Cambridge "cartoonish examples of crazy extreme leftists", or are they (unfortunately) typical of places where such congregate?
Mormons are excellent people. I sincerely appreciate how absurdly polite they are. They are cartoonishly polite. It’s just true. My newly married 20 year old next door neighbors moved in and immediately brought me, a plate of fresh baked cookies on day 1.
Fort Worth is a place with plenty of parts of town where I can pretty well guarantee that you’d catch some flack. That said, most big Texas cities are as liberal as they are conservative, if not more, so it’s a bad example of an absurdly conservative place. It’s nowhere near as conservative as SF and Cambridge are liberal. No major city in Texas is. Texas is more diverse than anyone gives it credit for.
I don’t know anything about Pensacola, so I can’t comment on that.
That doesn't sound very specific of Texas, that's the case pretty much everywhere
A couple years ago I was at a bar in Marfa, Texas - a small art-centric town that gets a lot of tourism for things like it's fake Prada store (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prada_Marfa) - and overheard a few guys celebrating a birthday. They were all clearly gay, which isn't unusual in Marfa. I started talking with them and it turned out that one of them, who was black, had just bought a ranch a half hour north of Marfa outside the town of Fort Davis. Fort Davis also has a bit of a touristy feel with its exaggerated "old western town" look and because it's right outside Fort Davis State Park, but culturally it's no Marfa.
The fact that an openly gay black man felt comfortable buying farmland in a small Texas town was pretty awesome. I have a hard time believing that would've happened even 10 years ago. In fact, he might be the first.
I hope he still likes it there.
I've never heard anyone in Tyler scream at random strangers calling them "f*t". But that does seem to be a pretty much daily occurrence from the illustrious cast of characters that hang out around the Powell Street BART station.
You might not have heard it because they've already hammered down all the nails around you that stick out.
Notice he's "fleeing" after he made his billions.
The Texas you grew up in is not the same as Texas today. Places change. People change. Look at a county-by-county map of the election results.
What did he extract from California? Was he on welfare?
[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...
Houston is literally the most diverse city in America, statistically speaking.
And you have to look hard to find religiously conservative people in any Texas metro that are also exclusionary. I say that as someone neither white nor Christian.
If anything, the only place you may find a lack of diversity is Austin, which is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly intolerant of non-leftist opinions.
I hear this claim from time to time but I’d like to know what it means concretely. Do you mean things like churches being closed due to COVID, or some sort of anti-white racism existing in Austin on the one hand while on the other hand racism isn’t prevalent outside of Austin?
Austin is trying to turn in a smaller scale version of San Francisco, complete with needles and shit on the streets.
Nothing about that is "great". I'll take Fort Worth over that any day.
Well, live and let live sounds pretty ideal, given that in several places across California conservative opinions are not tolerated.
Maybe we agree that a college town in Texas it's a place where opposing viewpoints can still coexist?
I think that people underestimate just how common this very same thing is here in California.
> but lots of people live in the 'burbs and around the smaller areas and do not get the benefit of this peaceful coexistence
Again, very similar to California.
I grew up in California and moved to Texas for 13 years, and have recently (begrudgingly too) moved back to California. Things have not changed a whole lot here. Once you get out of the cities and into more rural areas, it's about the same as you'd experience anywhere else.
> If someone moved to Texas, they made a choice to accept it and I will not knock people for their individual choices.
Sucks if you're gay and are born near Tyler. In case others will knock you for something that wasn't even a choice to begin with.
It's odd because I grew up in a major metro, and going to college I found people in college to be very strict and severe about enforcing their morals on people. You had to use specific language, be nice and more forgiving and understanding to the right groups of people, and you were not supposed to disagree on specific subjects of discussion or you'd be a pariah.
The idea that this is "live and let live" is silly. It seems that way to you because your morals align very closely with the morals of people in a college setting. If they didn't, you'd notice the similarities to an orthodox religious community immediately.
Any society will try to grind your unique edges off to more smoothly fit into their culture. Perhaps you were more inclined to explore liberalism or intellectualism (more prone to be the culture around colleges) or had had enough of conservative religiousness. I had that same kind of inclination from ~18-30 years old.
I have seen plenty of discrimination and judgment coming from 'the right' in my upbringing (usually directed toward others). But now that I'm much more center road and no longer extremist leftist, I am experiencing increasing hostility from my still left leaning friends/groups.
I hope that the internet can somehow transform into a vehicle of understanding rather than a vehicle of argument. Maybe video comments would be more helpful in this regard.
Unfortunately many of those leaving don't realize the policies they voted for are the main cause of this mess and might repeat the same thing in the new areas.
It's not perfect by any means but you could easily draw up a similar list for any state. A state is a big area and it's probably more useful to talk about most of these kinds of things at a local level.
This isn't true at all. Since prop 47, property crime has exploded across the state. Even violent crime rates are significantly higher in LA than they were in 2010.[2][3] In particular gang-on-gang violence may be moving the homicide rate lower, but predator-on-prey violence has shot up. Rapes have more than doubled in the past decade.
> From Seattle to Los Angeles, a “shoplifting boom” is hitting major retailers, which deal with thousands of thefts, drug overdoses, and assaults each year. Since 2010, thefts increased by 22 percent in Portland, 50 percent in San Francisco, and 61 percent in Los Angeles
[1] https://www.city-journal.org/west-coast-shoplifting-boom [2] http://www.laalmanac.com/crime/cr02.php [3] https://abc7.com/murder-los-angeles-crime-covid/7185695/
Do you have any source that states that this increase is actually due to more crimes taking place, rather than more victims reporting rapes due to shifting attitudes and/or less fear of societal rebuke? It could very well have been under-reported in the past due to stigma and other reasons.
These kind of societal factors can often affect the number of reported rapes more than the actual crime rate does. And we absolutely know that the attitude toward sexual violence and misconduct has changed a lot in the last decade. So it is reasonable to believe that this had had some effect on the increase of reported sexual violence, especially since most other violent crime has had sharp declines.
Summary of the provided source for people scrolling past:
Since 2010, homicide had a 21% decrease, robbery a 14% decrease, aggravated assault a 25% increase, and rape a 94% increase.
The contrast is even more sharp when looking 20 years back:
Since 2000, homicide had a 52% decrease, robbery a 35% decrease, aggravated assault a 47% decrease, and rape a 41% increase.
Also, police departments and mayors have every incentive to keep reported crime lower. The LAPD, for instance, has a history of underclassifying crimes to maintain appearances that their city was safe: https://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-reclass-20141...
Also, the OP specifically pointed to 10-year statistics, not 20. Isn't it at all concerning that we're erasing all the progress we've made over the course of decades?
Property arrests and crimes are actually down, while violent crime has increased.
Interestingly, just as a comparison, Texas has as many rapes despite having somewhere around 10M less people.[1]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QgrfJvfa8XaVm0MEfU4j...
CA provides sanctuary status for illegal immigrants, along with driver licenses, free healthcare and other benefits paid for by tax-paying citizens. Traffic is terrible because of a lack of any other alternatives that are routinely defunded, destroyed and dismissed from high-speed rail to bus lines to ridesharing.
CA is now worse than before. It's also worse than many other places. Just because 1 facet is better than somewhere else doesn't impact the objective collective decline. Again, please name 10 things that have gotten better in CA over the last decade if you can.
I've been a California resident for over 20 years. Feel free to come down to LA and I'll walk you through the actual streets from downtown to Inglewood. We can even visit a few prisons where I can introduce you to people on both sides of the law, visit the various homeless areas, and talk to the gang task force and DEA agents. Maybe we can also go down to the border and see how things are.
Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective and have little experience with the reality on the ground?
I'm also from a multi-racial family with rich African American roots and spent many summers and trips with my family who mostly live in Lynwood/Compton (no these aren't scary names to me, just places with fond memories of summers spent with cousins).
> Or perhaps are you too used to a single media perspective
I don't get my perspective from media. I get it from living.
But since you have such a long history, what part of my previous comments are you disagreeing with? Care to tell us what in CA has improved over this last decade?
There is such a high degree of historical segregation in the state, that sheltered white folks definitely do have a big shock when they, say, hop onto the Purple Line to visit Watts Towers. It's just so different, and I think people don't know how to process it since they have no frame of reference.
It's a shame, because historically African American parts of Los Angeles have a wonderfully rich history that is much more than just 'Crips and Bloods.'
Glad to hear your perspective.
Cross at San Ysidro, grab lunch at Tacos El Franc and some craft beers at Border X Brewing in Tijuana. Visit CECUT, navigate the traffic circle around Las Tijeras for a real Latin American driving experience, and pick up a torta and some chapulines at Mercado Hidalgo, and then head over to Tecate for a relaxing stroll around the zocalo and a visit to the brewery. Or even south to wine country, and beautiful Ensenada where I've spend many weekends wandering around on-foot exploring by myself.
The beaches in Ensenada are gorgeous and don't get the crowds of the So Cal beaches. I recommend the Ultramarino bar for craft beer and live local music (mostly rock), and if you can find them (it's a very walkable city), the fish taco stand across the street from the birria stand (you'll know it when you find it) is where my family and I head straight-for when we enter the city limits. If you're just looking to hang out and get some work done with your laptop there are several good hipster coffee shops with wifi.
If you're really, really fancy, Verde y Crema in Tijuana is pretty cool (I've only eaten there once, it's a little pricey for me). Tijuana also has a bunch of hipster bars, that are what I imagine SF looking like back when Lenny Bruce was doing shows (Try a big 'ol caguama of Indio beer at El Tigre - It's walkable from the San Ysidro pedestrian crossing).
We could even do the biannual Rosarito to Ensenada bike ride when things open up again after COVID. Hundreds of people turn out, they let you cycle along the toll road, and it's very family-friendly. That Tijuana-to-Ensenada toll road drive is my favorite coastal drive, only second to California 1.
Aw hell, maybe we could even go to a Xolos game.
A visit to the border sounds just wonderful right now, and I can't wait until we get the vaccine out so I can start heading down every weekend again.
Maybe you should visit scenes like these to get an understanding of the topic discussed: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-11-24/cartel-c...
The drugs coming this way I couldn't give less of a shit about. I'm pro-decriminalization anyway.
I hope that doesn't stop anyone from spending time in Baja, California. It is truly one of the hidden gems of the area. The people are wonderful, and the region has a lot to offer. Your least pleasant experience will be dealing with US Customs and Border protection on the way back in. Those people have a real stick up their ass.
To add on to the understanding thing above, I did a master's in International Affairs with a focus on Latin American Politics and a special interest in the Drug War in Mexico at UCSD's school of Global Policy and Strategy. I took a class from David Shirk. My final GIS project was tracing narcotics trafficking routes up through Mexico. I know more about it than I want to. And yet, despite all that, I will talk anyone's ear off about the absolute wonders of Baja, California to anyone who will listen because it really is a special place.
As for the rest, yes the situation complicated, although I'm not sure what the people of Baja and its tourism have to do with the state of California and its conditions. Were you using this to refute any of my previous comments or something else?
This state has massive problems that do come with its massive population and economy. But it is also a truly special place with a totally unique geography, a rich, diverse culture, a robust economy, and one of the best public university systems on the planet.
I hate it when people start on the 'California is falling apart' train, because it's not. The state has massive problems. Yes, I've walked alone south of Los Angeles street recently. I've seen the used needles scattered on the Gold Line tracks. But that is just one tiny part of what is a truly magical place. For all of that, there's Joshua Tree, and Grand Central Market, and Lake Sabrina, and the quiet postwar bungalows of San Diego, and the Sutro Tower poking out of the fog, and Coronado island, and the Griffith Park Observatory, and the Broad, and Big Bear Lake, and Kelso Dunes, and Telescope Peak, and the French Laundry, and Pappy and Harriet's.
California is falling apart in some places and booming in others. It's a big 'ol nuanced tapestry. That's how it goes when you have 40 million neighbors. But, I wandered around downtown Palm Springs this morning, and lemme tell ya San Jacinto has never looked more gorgeous. I was in Oklahoma two weeks ago, and man the first thing I did when my plane landed back in California was remind myself how fortunate I am to live here.
Of course positives exist, but they are few and decreasing. Unsurprisingly, nobody has yet to answer my repeated question to name 10 things that have gotten better over the last 10 years.
2. Craft beer has continued to get better and better in San Diego.
3. The Black Mountain bouldering area has been more highly developed.
4. Shoshone got internet.
5. Grand Central Market got refurbished.
6. Angel's Flight is open again.
7. Modern Times got Black House on nitro (ok, so this belongs in 2, but it's just so good it deserves its own point.)
8. They re-did the 10 between Redlands and Cabazon.
9. The San Diego light rail got extended out to UCSD.
10. Pho came to 29 Palms (although the loss of Palm Kebab is deeply mourned).
11. Here's an extra one just for fun, Mira Mesa got an 85 Degrees. Hello sea salt coffee.
12. Oh, here's another one. They fixed the toll road between Rosarito and Ensenada where it got wiped out by a landslide, so it took like 40 minutes off the drive.
13. Wait, here's another one. They opened the CBX cross-border express in Otay, so you can fly cheap and direct from San Diego to Mexico City by just walking directly across the border into the Tijuana airport.
14. Oh, and the Sand to Snow National Monument got established.
15. California got three brand new medical schools as well.
16. Oh, and now you can fly in a P51 Mustang at the Palm Springs air museum (They have a C47 as well that is so cool. The sound of radial aircraft engines makes my knees weak. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbc5OCU0s00 ...Just do it. Why haven't you done it yet? Hurry up and do it. My god...just listen to those engines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlpmHBgHBCg)
17. Marijuana also got recreationally legalized in the state.
18. Bodie remains the same, which in the grand scheme of things I consider a net positive.
19. The Broad opened in Downtown Los Angeles.
20. Oh gosh, I guess I'll round it out. The cops stopped hassling people over doing the Carrizo Canyon hike (to the largest wooden railroad trestle in the world) in Anza Borrego from Carrizo Gorge Road (the coolest route) along the railroad tracks. (If you do it, do yourself a favor and round the day off with a visit to the Arroyo Tapiado mud caves)
Cool California stuff from a Californian who spends their time doing cool California stuff instead of sitting around getting bummed out about statistics. Elon can have fun in Texas, no hard feelings.
I'm up in Silicon Valley, and... would say some things have gotten better in 10 years. The craft beer explosion has definitely hit here, too, and even more so around Sacramento.
A terrific new tiki bar opened in Oakland (The Kon-Tiki) and multiple terrific new tiki bars opened in San Francisco (Pagan Idol, Last Rites, Zombie Village; Smuggler's Cove opened in 2009, so not technically within 10 years, but they're considered one of the best bars -- not just tiki bars -- in the world).
As much as San Franciscans like to dump on San Jose, I think downtown San Jose has actually gotten pretty cool in a lot of respects, and that's entirely in the last decade.
There's a fair number of other smaller towns scattered around the Bay Area which are seeing some silver linings of gentrification.
I could probably come up with a more detailed list, but despite some very real downsides, particularly economic -- real estate prices really are out of control (and there is no One Single Cause to point to, despite a lot of folks trying); homelessness has become a genuine epidemic -- it's still a great place to be, and it's hard for me to think of another place in America where I'd genuinely rather be. (This is distinct from "another place I'd still like.")
I hadn't heard that tiki bars were a thing! That's pretty cool. Talk about a blast from the past.
With regards to real estate prices, that is one thing where I can really, really understand people's complaints. Even down in So-Cal you can see desert cabins on the market for $300k. I figured a bubble would burst at some point, but it hasn't so far. Maybe with more WFH folks who don't really want to be here can go somewhere that they can get more bang for their buck in terms of property, and the die-hard California folks can catch a break on real estate prices.
Cheers though! Good to hear from someone who isn't so down on California. It really is a cool place, and it's easy to take it for granted until you've spent some time in the Midwest.
I expected real estate prices to start going down, well, any year now, and they're definitely a drag on things. I'm likely to have to leave California in a year or so for family obligations; moving back a few years after that will prove difficult, I suspect, unless I find one of those "merely" $300K desert cabins!
And let's be real here: the policies that have driven California's economic woes date back to the 1970s (tax policy, rent control) or far, far longer (water and fire management), and many of those old policies were pushed into place because California has long been a place people genuinely want to be. If you think we're being obstinate in pushing back against you, it's perhaps because we think you're coming across like "California is NOTHING BUT A PIT OF STEAMING DESPAIR." No, sorry, it isn't. Even now, heading into 2021, it just isn't. The highs aren't going to balance out the lows for everybody, and yes, it would be disingenuous to pretend the lows aren't there -- but it's just as disingenuous to pretend the highs aren't, either.
The lack of people being able to answer yet type multiple paragraphs in response is extremely telling. If you can't even explain how quality-of-life has improved for yourself then what argument is there?
/s
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QgrfJvfa8XaVm0MEfU4j...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-prop-47-shoplifting-th...
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/14/shoplifting-cal...
Why are you suspicious? When you stop arresting people for crimes and allow criminal behavior then you get more crime. This is so correlated as to be mathematical fact. This is no different to NY removing bail and then being surprised that criminals walk right out of the courthouse and back to their operations the same day while being further emboldened by these policies.
Many think there isn't much crime because they're usually sheltered from it by distance and police activity. It only takes a small gap to notice how bad conditions can get, and how quickly they deteriorate.
Also, it's really...strange...to place the blame for the fires or the weather at the foot of the state.
Why is your only defense picking single skewed metrics and comparing it to separate places? Are you going to compare CA as a whole against TX or would that reveal your bias?
You still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years so I'm going to end this here.
EDIT for your newly added last line: I thought about this and figured that HN readers would understand that "weather isn't great either" was in addition to the other issues and even specifically wrote "main cause" in the hopes that nobody would conflate the issues but here we are. But yes fires are mostly due to poor planning and infrastructure. Wildfires are the most preventable disaster but California has gotten to the point where insurance companies are proactively cancelling policies because of the fire damage.
You twice pointed out illegal immigrants with emphasis on their contrast to "tax-paying" citizens but failed to connect it to any deeper meaning. So what if they've given them driver's licenses or paid for children & young adult healthcare? At least they've made attempts to integrate them, ostensibly recognizing their hardships and to prevent them from engaging in crime or becoming homeless.
Wildfires are easily preventable if you draw the line at individuals not lighting shit on fire in arid areas or private companies better maintaining their infrastructure.
Instead of costing citizens, working with federal agencies to remove illegal immigrants would be the better outcome. That would do a much better job of actually eliminating crime instead of enabling it with driving privileges.
But... you still haven't answered what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years. So let's call it done now.
Would it? How do you know?
It's not that nothing has gotten better, but it's obviously relative. Everything has two sides.
- Marijuana was legalized and the convictions of thousands of inmates and priors adjusted accordingly, bettering the lives of thousands.
- Better protections and benefits for those here illegally.
- LGBT protections and rights under the law have greatly expanded.
- Worker protections from discrimination and predatory employers has expanded.
- Most types of crimes have decreased (and if you think things have been wrongly decriminalized, I'd be interested to hear what they are).
- Home values have probably doubled in that time without property tax increase.
- The tech industry continued to grow and employ more workers.
One could go on.
I see these easily debunked anti-immigration talking points regularly elsewhere on the web in right-wing circles, but I'm surprised to see it on HN.
I encourage anyone interested in the reality of immigration(including the common myths like the above) to either read Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, or watch a short talk on the subject here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6wGLhEW_uc
Feel free to actually respond to the specific policies that are affecting the state of California instead. Here's just 1 example to get you started: Illegal immigrants have free healthcare until the age of 26 in California, however tax-paying law-abiding citizens are fined if they don't have health insurance.
Indeed, I didn't attempt to debunk anything you said, other than point out they are easily debunked. You understand that these are two separate things, right?
If something is so easy to debunk, then please do so instead of just claiming it is and posting a non-sequitur.
To put it in briefly: Concerns over immigration's impact on labor markets and cultural assimilation are not only wildly sensationalized by not supported by any evidence in data or studies on the subject. They are a thin veneer over xenophobia.
The less immigration controls, the better off everyone(worldwide) is.
(I swear, the lump-of-labor fallacy is responsible for like 75% of this kind of populist tripe)
Mostly because it got more crowded. As a CA resident, if you don't like CA, please DO move out. It will help traffic, for one.
If ALL you care about is a big house and taxes, then CA is probably not for you. As soon as you walk outside your TX McMansion, you may realize why CA is so crowded.
So what? That means more people and tax revenue to solve problems. There are plenty of very dense areas around the world run just fine. This is a failure of policy not population. If people are such a problem then maybe tax-paying law-abiding citizens should be prioritized over illegal immigration.
> "If ALL you care about is a big house and taxes, then CA is probably not for you... you may realize why CA is so crowded."
Who said that? Your dismissive and defensive attitude along with blaming completely irrelevant details like population is the reason why CA and its voting populace is in the state that it's in.
Please list what has gotten better in CA over the last 10 years or I'll assume you have no argument.
I'm not the state government though, I'm an individual with a life outside of my house. When the majority of the time for any activity outside of my house is sitting in traffic or waiting in lines, it's difficult to enjoy the area you live in. For this reason, I find myself heading further and further out of town to find areas or activities that aren't completely congested. Tax revenue won't make the lines shorter or traffic less. To do either would require bulldozing all of the housing and building up, at least where I am. Unfortunately, whenever this is done, luxury condos or apartments are the result, with rent that's higher than a mortgage, even for around here.
If you don't spend your weekends fly-fishing Big Pine Creek, 4x4ing the Mojave Road, climbing at Joshua Tree, grabbing burritos and craft beer at Grand Central Market, and swimming out to the mile-buoys at La Jolla Cove, why stay? If your eyes don't light up when you hear 'Clifton's Cafeteria,' or 'Pappy and Harriet's,' or 'half-day boat' what on earth are you doing here?
This state is one of the most unique and incredible places in the country. I can drive from the lowest point in the continental United States (Badwater) to the foot of the highest point (Whitney) in a couple of hours. That's absolutely magical. I love this state with a deep passion, and I know many of its nooks and crannies (still exploring and learning). That's why I will never leave.
If you don't do any of that stuff and you just sit in a bubble writing code all day why on earth would you stay? Just takes parking away from the people that actually enjoy California for the magical place that it is.
I'm happy to pay higher taxes. It helps keep this state humming along as the 5th largest economy on the planet.
Tens of thousands per year in state income tax. The nation's highest sales tax on top of that and we barely even afford school buses for my kids.
Why? Because all that tax revenue is going into my landlords already fat pockets. Prop 13 is over $30B per year -- that's 4x the size of the NSF and $7B larger than NASA. That stupid law ruined the state and I don't fault anyone for leaving. I'm trying to figure a way out to.
Prop 13 is pretty controversial, and considering it bullshit it not something I would consider unreasonable.
I wish you the best wherever life takes you.
Still, why can't there be a beautiful place with lower taxes? If taxes are enough to drive people away from a breathtaking place, maybe they're too high.
I've been very grateful to have non-extreme weather throughout the year. I am looking outside at a sunny sky right now and I will go walking on a path shortly to clear my mind. For someone with high allergies, I found that I am not allergic to trees, pollen, and grass in LA. I've had several nasal surgeries in the past to fix issues from allergies. I didn't want to risk it in Austin with different plant landscape.
Population growth without commensurate growth in housing. You can add people, but you gotta let them build houses. If you don't, then prices rise, for reasons that are very easy to understand if you're not financially (or otherwise) motivated to find them confusing.
I'll turn your phrasing around and say show me a city that makes it legal to build as much housing as people desire for 30 years that still has high prices and I'll consider your point of view. But until then, it seems to me that you're going to have to make it legal to build housing if you want more housing.
Same complaints: cost of living / taxes, quality of life, and kids' education.
The only thing keeping me here is my current job and clear opportunities for future [tech] jobs. If WFH became the norm, I'm out of here in 50 milliseconds. There are probably a lot of people like me.
Granted, $120k-150 for a single earner is plenty to live a good life in Texas, even in the cities (as long as you don't have excessive personal debts). Something to think about that I'm sure you've probably considered.
Anecdotal, but everyone I know who left California recently did so due to the high cost of housing, not because of their tax liabilities or a plastic straw ban. Kinda hard to be upset about having to give 9% of your income to the state when you have to give 50% if your income to the landlord (for an 80 year old, 350 sq ft studio heated by radiator in my case when I lived there).
Sorry for noseing-in, but could you elaborate on the part that affects the kids? What sort of factors are there, or what kind of expectations?
Where I will be moving to in TX has more diversity than where I live in San Francisco, which is something I am happy about. My children will be seeing more black & brown people in TX than San Francisco.
But hey, thanks for casually assuming racist motivations!
I'm not going to claim that SF is some amazingly perfect bastion of racial diversity, but if you're mainly only seeing and interacting with white and Asian people here, that speaks more to the circles you spend your time in than the city's diversity.
Other Bay Area cities have different distributions. For example Oakland is approximately 29% non-hispanic white, 26% hispanic, 23% black, 15% asian, 5% mixed, 1% other.
As an aside, I often cringe at arguments involving skin-deep diversity. I’ve lived in towns that bragged of diversity when in reality they tended toward the same monolithic affluent culture regardless of skin tone.
> As of the 2010 census, the ethnic makeup and population of San Francisco included: 390,387 whites (48%), 267,915 Asians (33%), 48,870 African Americans (6%), and others. There were 121,744 Hispanics or Latinos of any race (15%).
> In 2010, residents of Chinese ethnicity constituted the largest single ethnic minority group in San Francisco at 21% of the population; the other Asian groups are Filipinos (5%) and Vietnamese (2%).
So less than 5% Indian.
It runs counter to a lot of their narratives regarding diversity, immigration etc.
Maybe it's your neighborhood, some islands in the city look like a white suburb, like Noe Valley for example.
The typical home value of homes in California is $599,159. [1] The typical home value of homes in Texas is $224,065
California sales tax rate of 7.25% is higher than that of any other state, and its top marginal income tax rate of 13.3% is the highest state income tax rate in the country.
Texas has an 6.25% sales tax and no state income tax. [2]
California's per capita combined state and local taxes is ~$6,000 per person.
Texas's per capita combined state and local taxes is ~$4,000 per person
https://www.zillow.com/ca/home-values/
https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/texas-residents-pay-8-...
1: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/529-Driscoll-Pl-Palo-Alto...
2: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/37-Colonel-Lindbergh-Ln-M...
Texas also exempts grocery store food purchases from sales tax, barring a few specific luxury categories, so that's something to keep in mind as well if you have a large family. Saving 8% on food could be a decent chunk of change for a lot of families. Restaurant food is still taxed at the normal rate.
California does this too. That said, food prices are higher in California because the local cost of living is factored into all prices.
It's not uncommon to find decent homes in decent neighborhoods well below that average (I'm in a north Houston suburb, in a 1600 sqft corner lot 3/2 that's currently around $160k)
It's a particularly egregious statement given that people the world over (myself included) would love to retire in California some day due to the wonderful weather, the abundance of high-quality food and the lovely ocean next door, not to mention the world-class in-state universities, and the abundant employment opportunities. Yes, SF is expensive, and perhaps it makes sense to move out, but leaving California altogether is a whole other kettle of fish. Resorting to Texas as being significantly better given its poor social safety net, open-carry laws, wide variation in schooling based on neighbourhood wealth, well "significantly better" starts to look downright fishy.
Thankfully you're not owed an explanation of what someone deems to be a significantly better option to another.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/26/14340542/wh...
I understand it's an uncomfortable discussion, and I'm happy to stop, although I personally think these discussions are worth having as there are some fundamental issues around diversity and inclusion at play here. For the record, I have not once claimed it's motivated by racism.
> Texas is still predominantly white. I'm wondering if that is the unstated preference here.
Sure, you didn't actually claim it was motivated by racism, you just wondered it out loud.
I think it's pretty amusing the only conclusion you can come to for why a person would possibly move from California to Texas is because of race. If CA has a kool-aid you've been drinking it.
I love where I live, in Colorado. I would not move to California. I'm not racist though, I promise.
[citation needed]
When I type “california public schools” into DuckDuckGo, the top suggestion is “california public schools bad.” Accepting this, the top three results are:
① “California schools were once the nation's envy. What went wrong?”
> The enormous strike in Los Angeles paints a grim picture of wealthy state that is struggling to fund its education system
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/19/california...
② “Are California Schools the Worst in the Nation?”
> Roughly speaking, there’s the usual mix of good ones and bad ones, and overall they’re about average.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/01/are-californi...
③ “California Is Home to Some of America's Worst Public Schools”
> In fact, a spokeswoman for WalletHub says, “California has the 12th worst school system in America.”
> The study was based on 17 metrics, including student-to-teacher ratio, dropout rates and average SAT and ACT scores. Compared with the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, California ranked 47th in reading test scores, 46th in math test scores and dead last in student-teacher ratios.
https://www.laweekly.com/california-is-home-to-some-of-ameri...
According to https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2020/08/04/states-wi..., Texas public schools rank 28th in the nation, while California’s are now №37.
The local -> state change to the funding structure in CA a few decades ago has benefitted previously grossly underfunded schools in poorer cities, but it is a trade-off for sure. Arguably almost all of the schools statewide are now underfunded.
One problem with funding schools at the state level is that it has made it very difficult to increase school funding, because it requires support from across the state to raise taxes for it, and (a) most people in the USA are generally opposed to any taxes that they can’t see immediate direct benefit from, and (b) Prop 13 makes the bar for tax increases very high.
> Texas is still predominantly white.
Texas is big, it's not monolithic, percentage of ethic origins varies widely geographically. Also have you ever been to Texas, or anywhere. Your comments come off as extremely naive / opinions learned from online rather than experience.
You might have to adjust your statistics regionally for income. Middle class in California is upper middle class everywhere else, even adjusting for salary reduction. Leaving California put us in the 90th percentile for family income in our new region even accounting for change in salary, vs 75th back in the South Bay. That opens up a lot more opportunity for leisure and better schools - we don't have to live in a middling caliber town or neighborhood anymore.
Also, owning a home is a massive improvement in quality of life. Something we couldn't do in California. No more shared walls, a garage, a home office, backyard, basement hobby space, spare bedroom, nursery... I would have to double or triple my take home pay (not everyone takes equity to pay down a mortgage) to have the same quality of home in my old neighborhood than I do today.
Weather is meh, we can afford central heating and cooling and there aren't wildfires that turn the air to poison for days at a time. Snow be damned.
I really wish more homes in Texas had basements, but they add a lot of unnecessary costs to the building that aren't required for code reasons. Plus, then you can spend that money above ground increasing your living area. Unfortunately, most people don't factor in the extra expense of cooling more above ground space, whereas a basement would hold the temperature better. I'd reckon after a decade or so, the energy savings of putting some extra square footage in a basement would event out.
I would recommend anyone building a new home have their basement on a separate HVAC zone, or else the heat rises in the winter and space heaters aren't a great solution.
Our situation in California let us offer everything except stability. Younger kids are fine anywhere as long as their parents are involved, but older kids benefit from social stability so they have time and space to define who they are.
I.e., if the school determines network and schools don’t contribute much to achievement, doesn’t it imply scholastic network effects have limited value?
I sometimes wonder is we dedicate too much mindspace to the wrong area and rationalize our choices
Implying that moving out of California is racist is quite the take.
>California has: Better schools across all grades
No, it doesn't. For example, USNWR ranks TX public schools #33 and CA #37:
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education
More generally, public schools in many affordable parts of California are severely underfunded due to Proposition 13, while the statewide average is boosted by high-ranking schools in ultra-expensive cities like Palo Alto. Texas has less inequality between public schools and has earned international recognition for its Ten Percent Law:
>41.4% Non-Hispanic White
4.8%. that sure makes a world of difference.
I'm wondering if you're implying that there's something wrong with having such a preference though. You have provided some interesting statistics, would you mind if I did so as well?
A cynic would see this as a dog-whistle for "too many Asians/Hispanics/foreigners". (And I have actually heard a white person here in California say that about the schools.)
I suspect though you mean something else.
It's remarkable how "I don't like the Bay Area" translates so easily to "racist dogwhistle".
Quality of life means things like:
- "there are children in my neighborhood"
- "I don't need to keep looking over my shoulder at the playground with my children"
- "I can get a 15-yr mortgage on a house that is 2000 sqft, be financially stable, and safely deal with recurring large medical expenses that we will always have due to pre-existing conditions"
- Massive seasonal forest fires that have become normalized
- Risk (however small) of a catastrophic earthquake
- Dangerous public transport
- Piles of feces, needles, and general filth on (some) city sidewalks
- Daily bumper-to-bumper traffic on freeways from 8AM-11AM and 1PM-6PM
- Extreme regulatory burden and cost of normal things like starting a business, building a home or addition, and owning firearms
Although in all fairness, I am not aware of the drug situation in other parts of the country.
The problem is that most people on HN, and elsewhere on the internet, got everything they know about Texas from watching cartoons on TV. (Same for their knowledge of religion.)
They enjoy repeating half-century-old stereotypes while turning a blind eye to their own region's failings. It's geographic fanboyism.
/Lived in Texas for five years. Also lived in 13 other states. Would return to Texas if the opportunity arose.
No one is knocking Texas per se.
Edit: the reason I ask the question is that I've noticed a trend among people from very left-leaning areas to define anyone slightly right of center as being "far-right". I've been called "far-right" because of beliefs that were typical of moderate Democrats in the 1990s.
What label that leaves for people like actual Nazis, fascists, neo-Confederates, etc, I'm not sure. Far-far-far right?
The virtue signaling left has made it to the point that words don't mean what they should anymore because they crank things up to 100 every time they accuse anybody of anything.
Excellent example.
For the record, I support civil rights protections for all humans, including gays on the basis on sexual orientation. I disagreed then with most of Bill Clinton's policies toward gay rights (I also strongly supported making marriage a uniquely civil institution vis-a-vis government recognition available to all citizens, like France).
By the way, you know who else had that exact same views on gay rights as Bill Clinton when he entered office?
Barack Obama.
Was he "far right" in 2008?
It's absolutely untethered how far much of the left has moved in 10-15 years. The right has also moved toward the right, but they're much less homogeneous in their beliefs.
This is reflected in polls over time from Pew and others:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...
(click "animate" to see to 2017).
I don't know your exact situation at all and criticism of you may indeed have been unfair. But for fucks sake don't try to make a case that you're not far-right by looking to the behavior of people in the past. That indicates strongly you may indeed have backwards views that are 30's years out of date.
Do you think going back to a world where gay people were often attacked and beaten in public is a good idea? Where women were regularly subjected to sexual assault at work? My mum who worked as a teacher in the 80s and 90s told me she was regularly slapped on the ass by male teachers at work. Is this ok? Would you be ok with your daughters getting this treatment?
How do you reconcile the fact that slavery was once widespread and morally acceptable by the majority of society, and defended by the church, with your position that morality does not improve over time?
How about the fact that interracial marriage was once considered sin, and that women allowed to own property or vote was also morally acceptable?
Would you prefer a return to the morality of the 1800s, since in your view morality does not change, where women and dark skinned people returned to their "rightful place"?
Even the Church has undergone massive reformation over the centuries, and what was considered morally acceptable in the 1200s is not acceptable to modern Christians.
Atlantic chattel slavery could be argued to be crueler than ancient/traditional forms of slavery and hence a temporal decline in moral goodness from the middle ages to late 1800s. It may also be noted that in a low-tech society, feudalist and traditional slave economies may have had some advantages over e.g. a laissez faire wage worker economy. (In a famine perhaps? A question for historians). The cruelty of nature itself on human lives in a low tech society interacts with moral judgments about economic systems etc. in ways that complicate these questions - I would say be careful not to credit to improved virtue what is really the due of technological innovation.
A counterexample of moral improvement could be respect and care for elders and parents, broadly speaking. The point being only that the march of progress is not always consistent nor can it be counted on to be so.
And how to describe Nazism except as a moral abberation? That wasn't moral progress after the (already declining) morality of the Weimar republic.
And I'm getting weird dystopian vibes from a significant % of the present left. The moral crusading. The authoritarianism. The absolutism. The shaming. The religious ferver of its movements.
Conservative leaders, at least in the US, seem far more authoritarian and xenophobic than left leaning leaders. I'm curious what you see as authoritarian about the modern left.
Also, it is interesting that you associate shaming with authoritarianism. Shaming is intrinsically a grass roots thing - it's the people, not some autocrat, that shames people. Authoritarian governments don't need to shame people, they simply imprison them or take other direct coercive measures.
Societies shame people because they cannot physically do anything to them. That's a huge distinction.
But as for all the others I insist that they are primarily left-wing phenomena.
And regarding your argument for shaming, what happens when the folks who do the shaming gain power?
I suspect we'll find out in the coming years.
If you say morality was better in the past, which past are you talking about? After all, as you just admitted, morality changed in the past just as much as it did in the present.
Not only was morality not constant in the past, it was not constant geographically, nor even within the same religion (Protestant vs Catholic, Southern Baptist vs Episcopalian). Protestants in the US did not agree with Catholics in Europe, to say nothing of Muslims in the middle east and Buddhists in Asia.
What "eternal constant morality" are you appealing to? Are we talking about Protestantism in 1800? Roman Catholicism in 1400? Buddhism in 800 AD? Theocratic Judaism in 200 BC? Kantian categorical imperatives of the early 20th century?
So, again, if you claim that morality is constant based on some "past", it is incumbent upon you to answer : Which past, and in what country/tribe/kingdom, was the absolute "constant" morality that you claim we should now uphold here in the 21st Century?
And I think it's still fair for a person to claim tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints while rejecting positions that are bigoted or deemed unacceptable.
For someone who rejects meliorism, what moment in human history is the correct frame for evaluating the world? Many social or religious conservatives positions today often overlook that certain perspectives they hold now were unacceptable a century ago. The use of contraceptives being one example.
Can we live in a world where "if you believe this now you're evil but if you believed this 10 years ago you're cool."? Replace 10 with any number of years.
As a personal anecdote; every time i've been slow to adapt to the new societal norms, when i look back it's been me who was wrong, not society. It's just taken me time to realize it. I've learnt to force myself to accept, based on repeated past experience, that it's probably not society that's wrong when the overton window moves, it's probably me. I'm yet to regret adapting my viewpoint even if at the time it irks me somewhat. If you're over 30 think back to the school yard gay insults and compare your own viewpoints now. It's not wrong you've changed is it? Take that lesson into account with todays changes and you won't regret it.
What i'm trying to say here is that fighting against changes to the overton window will cause you to end up as a sterotypical old person with grossly outdated views. There's no need to be this way.
And before you ask what my morality is, I'll just sum it up as enlightenment Western liberalism, for want of a longer essay to explain it. And today's left (and right!) are starting to leave that outlook behind, to our detriment.
Now remember this thread started because you specifically raised an issue with being called far right. Do you think that maybe you do have views outside the norm. Note that i'm not saying it's right or wrong nor do i even want to know what your views are, i'm just pointing out that you might just fit the description of far right/left if your measuring stick for normal is to compare your views to those of a decade that started over 30years ago.
And yes, I'm right. It's sometimes right to have views outside social norms.
However, my views are not "outside social norms", unless you only count members of the full-on right, and full-on left as "social norms". My views are right in between those two.
Edit: "You can still be outside norms without being at the fringes." Hehe, we used to have a name for this: centrist. I know your kind hates us even worse than Trump supporters. They're beyond your influence, but you know that bullying, shaming, and harassment can "convince" many centrists. Well, not this one.
And boy, I screwed up by saying 1990s moderate Democrats. I should have said a 2008 Obama moderate, which is basically the same thing but few would dare call him "far right". BTW, I voted for him in 2008 (but not 2012).
That's absolutely ridiculous. "outside norms"? Whose norms? Your in-group's norms, which is at best around 20-30% of the country. There's a stronger argument that you all are the ones who are outside our country's norms, at least at present.
In addition alot of the far left is pinning 'nazi' or 'facsict' on any politician or idea that does not meet their ever changing ideas. Even feminists are now getting trampled on if their ideas don't meet up to the week culture temperature checks.
AOC (a leading democratic congresswomen) has called for complete prison abolishment - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/yes-aoc-tweeted-she-want...
A insightful piece from the NYtimes talking about 'abolishing' not defunding the police - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Here's another article about when Jacob Frey (mayor of Minneapolis) is asked by a sea of left wing activists if he will abolish the police, he said no and was greeted by a sea of boos - https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0615-abo...
CA decriminalizing shoplifting, which is fueling a huge boom in theft across the west coast - https://www.city-journal.org/west-coast-shoplifting-boom
(I say people because the same thing occurs in reverse when talking about "extremist leftists")
What constitutes center right, center, center left in your view?
And my specific viewpoint in question? That all people should be treated equally, and given equal opportunity, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
I will die with that belief, even if 99% of the population believes otherwise.
If you're saying that anyone who was professionally successful in California has no right to ever leave the state, that seems like a tough sell.
I left California for Nevada many years ago, and I subsequently sold stock I accumulated while in California without paying state income tax.
It is legal and you can do it, but there are a lot of legal hurdles. They're pretty well documented around page 5 of FTB 1031 [1].
In my case, I quit my W2 job in California, entered into a contract to lease a home in NV, got rid of all leased or owned real estate in CA, sold or re-titled all motor vehicles from CA, registered to vote in NV, surrendered my CA driver license for a new NV license, re-titled all my financial accounts at my new address, got a NV phone number, etc.
This was all easy because I was single without children. If my situation was more complicated, like I had a spouse or ex-spouse with children enrolled in CA schools, or decided to retain owned real estate in CA, the situation can quickly fall into a gray zone.
If you have a W2 job in CA while claiming you're in NV, it's very hard to escape the CA FTB.
CA is very aggressive about chasing down its former residents. It's important to check all the boxes to get them from chasing you.
After I left, I filed non-resident CA returns for three years basically saying, "I had income but I am not a resident and it was not from a CA source, therefore I owe no CA tax." This is important because it starts the statute of limitations running. If you don't file, the statute of limitations doesn't start.
And while I'm writing all this: what in the world is up with a 13.3% state tax bracket? Screw California.
[1] https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf
And AZ isn't NV. The FTB pays special attention to NV in particular because it has no income tax. Someone who moves to AZ isn't so obviously trying to skirt CA state income tax.
My case was a little special because I sold a lot of stock right after leaving CA, which makes it a little suspicious to the FTB.
If you move from California to another country, and are subject to US Federal Income tax, and don't qualify for an exemption, the Franchise Tax Board still considers you a resident of the state, and as such, taxes you on your worldwide income; as you did not end your residency by establishing residency in another state.
Income taxes has so many bad consequences. It would be great to ban it and replace it with land value taxes.
[1] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
While this is strictly correct, I think the implications of what you wrote are too strong. If you move from California to another country or U.S. state, the requirements to get an "exemption" from California tax residency are essentially "convince the FTB that you have weaker ties to California than to your new location."
While arbitrary and open to abuse in theory, it appears less so in practice. Quoting from California's Guidelines For Determining [Tax] Resident Status [1], heading "Leaving California" on page 6:
> Example 4 - You and your spouse/RDP are California residents. You accept a contract to work in South America for 16 months. You lease an apartment near the job site. Your contract states that your employer will arrange your return back to California when your contract expires. Your spouse/RDP and your children will remain in California residing in the home you own.
> Determination: You maintain strong ties with California because your spouse/RDP and children remain in your California home during your absence. Your intent is to return to California, and your absence is temporary and transitory. You remain a California resident during your absence. You are taxed on income from all sources, including income earned in South America.
> Example 5 - You receive and accept a permanent job offer in Spain. You and your spouse/RDP sell your home in California, pack all of your possessions and move to Spain on May 5, 2019, with your children. You lease an apartment and enroll your children in school in Spain. You obtain a driver’s license from Spain and make numerous social connections in your new home. You have no intention of returning to California.
> Determination: You are a part-year resident. Through May 4, 2019, you were a California resident. On May 5, 2019, you became a nonresident. All your income while you were a resident is taxable by California. While you are a nonresident, only income from California sources is taxable by California.
> Example 6 - You are a resident of California. You accept a 15-month assignment in Saudi Arabia. You put your personal belongings, including your automobile, in storage in California. You have a California driver’s license and are registered to vote in California. You maintain bank accounts in California. In Saudi Arabia, you stay in a compound provided for you by your employer, and the only ties you establish there are connected to your employment. Upon completion of your assignment, you will return to California.
> Determination: You have maintained greater connections with California than you have established in Saudi Arabia. Your absence is for a temporary or transitory purpose. Therefore, you remain a California resident. As a California resident, your income from all sources is taxable by California, including the income that you earned from your assignment in Saudi Arabia.
Example 5 above is closest to what I think you were talking about by "moving from California to another country." The only way I think FTB could go after you for here is to argue that you could have an "intention" of returning to California eventually, and I do not know whether keeping your American bank accounts at California banks would be enough of a hook for FTB to decide it's worth the effort to try that argument.
For myself, if I did move from California to become an indefinite expat, I wouldn't worry too much about the FTB going after me. Opinions may vary, of course.
[1] CA FTB Publication 1031, 2019 edition: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf
FTB can use 'has a storage unit in California' as a factor; and maybe combined with California banks and California voting, and maybe a California mailing address, if you use friends/family to forward your mail, could be enough to tip the scales for them. It's rather opaque.
I don't think it's a small motivation of Musk to escape the tax rate when he starts to sell his shares. Just because he vested them while in CA - if he's a resident of Texas when he sells I don't think he owes CA a dime.
It depends on what type of shares/options/equity grants, and what's still vesting, and what isn't.
ISOs that are exercised in a qualifying disposition are taxed based on residency on the day of exercise.
RSUs that vest while you're a resident are taxed on vest day, and any capital gains from that are taxed based on residency on the day of the sale, yes.
RSUs that vest while you're not a resident are taxed on vest day, and a portion of the income will be california source if you worked in California during a portion of the vesting period, or if you were a residing during a portion of the vesting period.
https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1004.html#E-Restricted-Sto...
You make it sound like if you ever lived in CA you have to pay CA tax for the rest of your life until you retire lol.
But, as much as i am a lefty(+capitalist), that seems a fault of the state. States should expect this more imo. You give near negative returns to companies to come to your state and then you're shocked when they leave and you haven't gotten your ROI?
But maybe this will be good. If the migration continues perhaps California will have to stop subsidizing low-tax states and let them fend for themselves more.
Does California invest money/resources to companies? Or is it more of an indirect thing, such as maintaining roads and bridges?
Why are businesses choosing to hop off the California gravy train? Is the gravy not worth the taxes? Is the gravy just hyperbole?
"The far-left managed to create an "amazing" (and terrifying) perspective.
If you're a leftist but not as leftist as them, you're a centrist, maybe even center-right which makes everybody on the right to be automatically far-right."
It's a magical place where only those who agree with the person speaking are allowed to have an opinion and shouldn't be censored by big tech co.
Since then the Democratic Party has continued tracking to the right, with Newt Gingrich and the Heritage Foundation's 1994/94 HEART Act being slightly edited and passed as Obamacare.
This isn't a "terrifying perspective", but literally public statements and accepted political science.
They gained power before that (their main original organization, the DLC, was a powerful force in Democratic politics well before its former head became the Democratic nominee in 1992), but they were definitely the unquestionably dominant faction from that point forward, though that has gotten weaker over the past decade or so.
I suspect you haven't elaborated on it because you recognize that your application of the term is easily disputed.
Far-left is the complete abolition of private property, abolition of police and prisons, in some cases the abolition of monies period.
There are literally zero far-left people in elected or appointed positions within the US government today.
Your worldview is much smaller than reality and the dog-whistles you lean on are obvious. Educate yourself before choosing to expound your limited views.
Oh, come on. You can't really be that condescending and expect people to take you seriously.
Anyway, according to your broad worldview, communists are not far-left. Ok.
So you're wrong again.
Folks seem to be taking me seriously. I don't know if you can say the same.
Attacks on rhetoric and not substance only serve to expose your lack of a basis on which to make your claims.
To reciprocate your condescending comments I could say you should read a little bit before making a fool of yourself.
I'm not wasting my time anymore with you.
Your house and toothbrush and such is personal property.
Some call that... being a snowflake :)
Socialists want to end the private ownership of means of production. Communists go further.
Your attempts to silence me are petty.
such a low level of discourse. I thought these kind of comments weren't allowed on HN?
When center leftists started to embrace free trade and things like that.
So basically anybody not on the left fringe was label a neoliberalist, all the way from Clinton to Milton Friedman.
You can make it really easy if you just throw everybody in the same bucket and label it evil. Its a classic move in politics.
It does have a meaning.
> Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers" and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
So disheartening to see this low quality of discourse on HN.
You can be right of the Democratic Party and be anywhere from merely slightly-less-center center-right to, well, anywhere to the right of that.
But the US polítical spectrum is basically bimodal, and the peak to the right of the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is far-right.
Do you see anything that looks like "socialism" coming from the democratic party in the united states?
Ocasio-Cortez is one congress woman who has been in office for less than two years. She is not in a position of power within the democratic party, in fact they actively oppose her.
So what is your point? AOC does not reflect where the democrats are as a party, and it's dishonest to pretend so.
And student loan relief is not socialism. Free college could arguably be, but what is being discussed is far from free college.
Your logic is astounding.
That's all socialism.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-repu...
The GOP does not employ "populism" they employ scare tactics.
But the state remains a very conservative place overall, just like the rest of the USA. There’s a broad swath of the public who distrust the government, are opposed to taxes of any kind, and so on. Even in 2020, 34% of voters picked Trump, even though his rhetoric has included badmouthing CA as a cornerstone. And many CA Democrats are pretty conservative by the standards of most other developed countries, and would most naturally fit in a centrist or center-right party.
I figure Florida makes it up with their tourism industry but Texas decidedly does not have that.
Sales tax and property tax.
> What is the difference between their government and California's?
Houstonian* here — Texas doesn't provide nearly the level of social services.
* I saw a post recently where someone said "I'm from Houston, not from Texas."
As to Hurricane Katrina: We took in about 250K evacuees but only about 40K stayed permanently (which is a bunch, of course). I'd guess most of those were the sort who liked being here better, so they made lemonade out of the lemons that the storm forced upon them. [0]
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40460412/after-hurricane-harvey-...
It's not that it's a Louisiana influence, it's that we're all on the gulf coast and all have a lot in common. (Not with New Orleans so much, but certainly with Lake Charles/etc.)
That somehow gets misnamed as a "Louisiana influence", when really it's just the region we're in.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/san-francisco-school...
Your math is a little off, it was 1978.
On the east coast some of our states have high state income tax AND high property taxes (and property is very expensive) and I’m not sure the services or infrastructure are any better than in states like Texas. At least in California your property tax is locked in, which has its own problems of course.
At least where I live, a good deal of today’s tax revenues go to pensions to people that retired to Florida or Arizona (or some other tax free state) in their 50’s. I think Texas has avoided this trap many states are in today.
Lots of trade-offs.
P.S. Tourism's economic impact on my city in Texas was over 15b BC(before COVID).
- Personal income/wage tax
- Business income tax
- Capital gains taxes, Dividend taxes
- Sales tax
- Proper tax (homes, cars, etc.)
- Reducing services (e.g., worse schools, worse healthcare)
- Borrow (this can be a slippery slope)
- Create shadow liabilities that dont show up on the books (e.g., pension liabilities with poor growth assumptions)
Seems like they're still moving in instead of moving out, for now, though.
Is it driving home prices up?
Or is it robbing the state coffers of a tax revenue that has to be made up elsewhere?
I don't know.
People don't move because there's a tax hike proportionate to how long you've lived there, so there's less turnover in housing, meaning less supply, meaning higher prices.
It puts a hard, long term, effectively permanent cap on tax growth, so cities must plan for everything to continually get leaner. Cities make land use and zoning decisions based on uses that are net contributors to revenue, vs net costs. What is a net cost? Housing in general, especially housing that might contain school aged children - that's why 3+ bedroom apartments are so much more rare. What are net contributors? Offices and retail. So the places with demand get to pick, and SF and the Peninsula restrict housing as much as they can and have a huge concentration of offices.
Places on the outskirts (e.g. Dublin, Livermore, Gilbert, Brentwood) are allowing housing to be built because they're trying to turn nothing into something, but any established, and especially built-out city, has a strong financial incentive not to admit a single additional resident to live there, while encouraging everyone they can to shop and work there.
Those who would benefit from its repeal - renters, people who moved out, people who choose not to move to CA in the first place because of cost and governance, children, etc, either don't vote as consistently or can't vote in CA at all.
Proposition 15 (which would have eliminated commercial property tax breaks) failed 48%-52%. I think its biggest political flaw is probably the fact that it would apply July 1, 2022, with no phase-in for small businesses whose lease passes through the property tax. So hopefully in November 2022 another attempt can be made that addresses the political shortcomings.
Proposition 19 (which eliminated tax breaks for inherited investment property in exchange for increased tax portability for the elderly) only barely passed 51%-49%, and that was after it received overwhelming support from the legislature, and a $45 million advertising campaign from the California Association of Realtors that some people criticized for only highlighting the goodies for old people and not the costs for inheritors.
No one is attempting a full repeal of Proposition 13 including residential property.
It could also be attacked judicially; see this episode of the Henry George Program for a discussion of Nordlinger v Hahn and whether different legal arguments could be tried (e.g. does Proposition 13 impinge on the American freedom to migrate under the US Constitution?) http://seethecat.org/ep/2017-07-11.html
I believe it could be revisited on the grounds that Prop 13 primarily benefits white families (makes sense -- they were the only ones buying property 40 years ago).
There is now good data on the racial disparities in our current tax law and with enough money I think another lawsuit has a chance.
https://twitter.com/alfred_twu/status/1327821019931787264?s=...
Another problem is that many California counties subsidized suburban sprawl by not charging for utility hookups (like sewers). This put them in debt which caused them to encourage sprawl to balance the books, and some day someone will get left holding the bag, as is happening now.
California catered to the wealthy for decades and now they are having to pay the piper, so to speak.
This is what happens when you bend over backward for the super rich. I say good riddance, maybe California's taxation policies will recover to something more equitable without the 0.1%ers fucking it all up.... Like lowering income tax and repealing prop 13.
For single-family, owner-occupied housing, remove Prop 13 provisions for new sales, but grandfather in all current owners until their death or 20 years, whichever is sooner. After which their assessed values are gradually (say over 5 years) allowed to rise to the fair market value.
Force a reassessment upon the property being inherited, and remove Prop 13 protections from it. Right now, there's no reassessment if a child or grandchild inherits the property.
Eventually all grandfathered owners will die off, sell and leave, or start paying taxes based on the fair market value of their property.
Build X amount of new housing or have your property tax go up 10% per year until at market rate.
Would never pass, but I think it would be interesting.
It probably means prices are a bit higher than they could be, and people have stayed in their current property longer than they might've, but as a dominant factor? It's a lazy explanation since expensive city property is a problem elsewhere in the US and internationally too.
That continued price growth also tells you that "exodus" is a misleading oversimplification, since it means people are still buying. It wouldn't be too expensive for the people leaving if there weren't richer people buying!
(Even in a prop-13-less CA, the additional people selling their current properties to buy new CA properties instead would be adding to both the buyer pool and seller pool, it's not like there'd be an increase in inventory without an increase in buyers. So price effects seem potentially weak?)
He's not a perfect person by any stretch but he's been a net benefit and gain for CA, the US, and maybe the world?
The guy constantly gets called out for his twitter shitposting and people think he's some evil overlord... these same folks don't seem to care at all when their elected reps sell them out w.r.t housing, development, healthcare.
I also remember reading stories years ago about CA/SV businesses that had offices up in Colorado as a back-up for when 'The Big One' hits.
And toll roads, etc...
In short, the money has to come from somewhere — if not from income tax then it will be from somewhere else.
You'll likely be paying close at best the equivalent of Silicon Valley housing.
https://www.redfin.com/TX/Houston/9730-Arched-Oak-Dr-77095/h...
The rate may be higher, but the total paid will probably be less.
CA/0.74%/$2839
TX/1.8%/$2275
> But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here. I like that...
You hear this a lot lately from tech bros. It's hilarious considering how many things are illegal in Texas. Ya you can buy an assault rifle, but its illegal to buy hard liquor on Sunday. Have you ever looked at their gerrymandering? Did you know during the 2016 election they didn't allow mail in ballots?
Hispanics are set to become the largest racial demographic soon. ~13% of the population is black.
Houston is one of the, if not the depending on the report, racially diverse cities in the country. It's a bit self segregated geographically, but is pretty impressive and there is a lot of culture to be found. Large Asian community with substantial communities from countries that don't really exist elsewhere in the state.
The state is also more or less purple outside the voting booth. Major metro areas have higher concentrations of liberals. Etc etc.
Pretty much a microcosm of the USA.
Yes the like most urban areas they trend left and more ethnically diverse. Thus Texas is also trending left. I'm not sure what your point is.
Is your point that change is coming for Texas? I totally agree with that, but I think it's going to be a longer and harder fight than most think. From my experience a lot of the white population there are some of the worse bigots I've ever met.
My point was it's not a very free state, lol there are just certain specific things allowed. And it has low taxes so it's great if you're already rich and successful.
Every area has its unique challenges and benefits. For example, there are many jobs in California in a variety of areas including tech.
I think you're talking about Dallas/Houston/Austin vs everything else. I actually wouldn't necessarily call that diverse, it's in fact polarizing, but that's okay.
At the end of the day, no one in Texas really cares because the economy is strong and people's assets are going up. Until that stops (and it will eventually, like California) then thats where the divisiveness is going to be a problem.
Unless you are referring to specifically the covid moves, which are high cost of living minus geography mattering. It's anyone's guess whether it'll continue or reverse or what after covid.
I don't see many "opposing viewpoints" in Palo Alto either.
This is completely unhinged (and bigoted) fantasy. I have lived in multiple places around the US and liked many of them. California works pretty well, actually. It is not remotely like the USSR circa 1985.
It does overtax and underdeliver. But the federal government does that on a much grander scale.
The Bay Area and LA are overcrowded. There are other places to live in California! Some with much more natural beauty.
That's the sort of insightful, tolerant viewpoint that helps elevate discussions.
Stopped reading at "urban hellscape like NYC"
No. There's a trend of rich people commissioning articles about them leaving california. Articles which provide literally zero evidence of a trend.
The media likes to build up hype brands and then do exposes to deflate them. It's different parts of the media doing different hyping/deflating.
Also, more people move to California than any other state.
California is just huge
So it's not just Elon. It's those who have the opportunity to do so where it does not impact their lifestyle significantly.
Indeed and people leaving LA or SF because of the homelessness problem are going to have a serious wakeup call when they get to Austin. It's certainly not as bad as it is in CA but there are tent cities under countless overpasses and downtown has a large amount of homeless.
Lol. A couple weeks ago, there was footage of a bunch of Trump supporters in trucks boxing in a Biden campaign box on I-35 and trying to run it off the road.
This isn't a state where people with differing political opinions can coexist harmoniously.
The fact is Musk extracted all his value from California then “fled” to Texas.
He’s a parasite.
Interesting point.
It reminded me that in his past he has also left South Africa, and yet South Africa could also be described pretty accurately as "its not perfect. But its pretty diverse, and it seems that folks with opposing viewpoints can still coexist here."
Now I'm fairly certain based on his interviews that the reason he "left South Africa" was more to do with him wanting to move to the US since it increased the odds of success of his entrepreneurial dreams.
So I suspect his move to Texas might be along similar lines?
> I suspect something must be going on for several high profile folks moving out.
Interesting question you raise there.
If that were indeed true, what would you guess might be the cause?
I'd guess it might have to do with freedom of some kind.
Crime is South Africa's biggest pusher-outer-of-citizens.
But those that have been to Cape Town and its surrounds understand why so many still choose to live there.
It's a tough compromise!
If it wasn't for the lack of a high trust society, I would actually look into moving to Cape Town myself.
If you can afford it, perhaps consider purchasing a small beach-front studio apartment along the Atlantic Seaboard of Cape Town.
Then should South Africa evolve into a high trust society you'd feel comfortable living in, go spend a few months in Cape Town during its spring/summer (October to March) and check out the local beaches and mountains.
Clifton Beach and Devil's Peak in particular.
You have massive slums of people with no hope or future less than a 100 miles/kms away from the billion dollar French Riviera esque lifestyles of Camps Bay.
And with so many refugees coming in from the rest of Africa it almost seems like an unsolvable problem.
I guess it comes down to your risk appetite.
In South Africa you the most gorgeous landscapes that are freely accessible public landscapes on everyone's doorstep - irrespective of their financial position in the steadily recovering historically unequal society.
Yeah, there will continue to be crime until balance is had, but there are plenty SaaS opportunities, and the forested cliff-side hiking trails ending in tranquil beaches are an awesome way to experience nature.
Refugees are welcome in South Africa. The media has its paws in everything.
I've never been there.
All I come in contact with, living in middle income suburbs, is panhandlers at intersections.
Not sure what you mean by "panhandlers" - please clarify?
Here in Houston there are $500 per month apartments and $25,000,000 estates within the same city limits, yeah. There are some homeless folks, but not like Sacramento or San Francisco. Some people who work make less than $8 per hour right now. Other people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in just insurance premiums.
I fail to see the devastating difference in Texas when cities in California are adding to their own homeless populations by refusing to allow more housing to be built. Austin is a little more strict than here, but in Houston there are practically no zoning laws.