It's the latter that really bugs me.

I'm willing and even happy to pay taxes for commensurate benefits. I don't really feel like I get that in CA. It's like an extremely inefficient engine.

Ironically there is one way in which the tax benefits are ABSURDLY generous - unemployment. When I saw how much that returned I was staggered. Perhaps I'm in an income sweet spot, but when I calculated it, it was far more assistance than I would have expected from a non-French government.

I'm aware of course that state tax sits on top of Federal tax, but when you factor into the equation what responsibilities are Federal and not state, it looks astonishingly poorly distributed.

I'm not really sure how the high cost of living is anything other than a milestone around the area's neck. I've lived in v-high COL areas, but that has always gone hand in hand with extreme density, which could easily be viewed at as a simple tax for the provision of world-class services. Somehow I'm out here in suburbia paying Megacity rates.

> California's answer to everything is raise taxes.

Really? It's almost the end of 2020 and California hasn't passed a single tax increase. Let's look at 2020 ballot measures:

* Requires commercial and industrial properties to be taxed based on market value and dedicates revenue? REJECTED

Source: https://ballotpedia.org/California_2020_ballot_propositions

And legislation?

* AB 2088 - Wealth Tax? REJECTED

* AB 1253 - Tax rate increase on taxpayers making over $1M? REJECTED

* AB 398 - Headcount tax on businesses with 500+ employees? REJECTED

Source: https://blog.armaninollp.com/tax/2020/09/08/ca-legislative-s...

FWIW, Democrats have held a supermajority (>= 2/3) in both the House and Senate all year long.

> It's almost the end of 2020 and California hasn't passed a single tax increase.

Prop 19 involves both additional exemptions and limitations on existing exemptions from full-value assessment, but is projected on balance to be a net increase, and is definitely an increase for some taxpayers, and it passed. So, while I agree with your general point, this claim is technically overstated.

This leaves out key context: Prop 19 is designed to rollback some of Prop 13, which has been a financial disaster for CA since the voters passed it, many decades ago. You can trace a lot of California's "let's raise taxes" issues to the lack of revenue caused by Prop 13.

The trick is, will those voting for taxes to be raised do the same when they relocate elsewhere? California is not a dictatorship. The people of the state have voted for this situation.

I realize that not everyone in California votes and thinks the same. Those leaving the state might not be reflective of the voting patterns of the state as a whole but doubt this migration out of California is impactless on the places those leaving go to.

Yes, that is a big problem. People don't seem to learn their lesson. CA peoples leave CA and go to austin and we're already seeing some of the same things happening there as in CA, where housing supply is restricted and of course, at that point housing prices go up again.

People just never learn the fundamentals of economics and how those decisions lead to economic hardship for so many, that's the real problem.

> People just never learn the fundamentals of economics

Maybe. Or they know if they buy today and make it hard to build, they can go somewhere new with a big pile of money later. They got theirs, and they don't care about the others.

In actually, it's a big and heterogeneous group of people. I expect some never learned, as you say. Some are jerks, as I described. Some just don't think deeply enough about their policy choices, and some think there are post-Econ 101 reasons why the Econ 101 dynamics (while important) aren't what dominate.

And of course there are some of us Californians, staying and leaving, who do think it should be easier to build.

By people, do you mean policymakers that disincentivize building more housing in order to prop up property values?

both the policy makers, and the masses of voters that support them.