California is a shitty state for normal middle class people on many objective measures. It has some of the worst schools in the country, outperforming only Deep South states and Oklahoma and West Virginia. It has the highest cost of living adjusted poverty rate in the country: https://calmatters.org/commentary/2023/11/lower-california-h.... It has net domestic out migration, meaning that more people are leaving instead of coming in. Despite all that, it also has the highest tax burden of any state.

Yes, people talk about California a lot, but only because it’s such a clear A/B test result. It went from being a prosperous red state to being a dysfunctional blue state within a single generation.