This civic control correlation can simply have more to do with the most-white-supremacist Democrats switching to the GOP en masse and also simultaneously leaving multiethnic cities and school districts en masse after the 1960s. That self-selection left Republicans not a competitive amount of credibility or voter pool behind to work with. Your implication that policy dysfunction has ensued on that account rather than because of fiscal drain -- that's a separate topic. Individual states and individual cities have too many fiscal policy similarities and differences, overlapping, to responsibly compare in any online discussion.

> That self-selection left Republicans not a competitive amount of credibility or voter pool behind to work with.

So by your logic New York is a better governed state than Florida? Net internal migration would seem to disagree.

Is it your opinion that the only factor relevant for those deciding what state to move to is quality of government?

I'm surprised that things like the job market wouldn't come into play, for example.

The two are related: bad governmental policy can make employers leave a state or cause the employer that choose to stay less prosperous.

I think quality of governance is a major reason, yes. When my parents immigrated to this country, they moved to a deep red state (Virginia) instead of the deep blue state next door (Maryland). Why? A focus on good schools, low crime, and low taxes, instead of a focus on economic redistribution.

I may have misunderstood, when you said internal migration in the earlier comment I assumed that was referring to people moving from one state to another rather than immigrating from another country.

> A focus on good schools, low crime, and low taxes, instead of a focus on economic redistribution.

That's also interesting. I wouldn't have rolled that up to quality of governance, but I could see why you would. To me that falls more into a sign of long standing culture, I could see a place with existing policies that match now having a terrible administration in charge.

> may have misunderstood, when you said internal migration in the earlier comment I assumed that was referring to people moving from one state to another rather than immigrating from another country.

I was just giving an example—people moving within the U.S. make the same choice. When I was growing up, Virginia was like Florida is today: a red state with a booming economy, low taxes, and a good business climate. Why did AOL start in the farmland of Loudon County instead of the farmland of eastern PG County (which is closer to DC)?

> That's also interesting. I wouldn't have rolled that up to quality of governance, but I could see why you would.

It’s a cultural trait that strongly affects governance. The government can focus its energies on making things better for middle class people and businesses, as Virginia long did, or it can focus on poor people and minorities, as Maryland long did. And the resulting differences in governance are quite apparent. Virginia has better schools, ore employment, and has grown faster than Maryland over the last 50 years.

To be clear: if they moved to Virginia, they did not move to a deep red state.

Maryland is a deep-blue state. Virginia is about as red as Pennsylvania.

... because nobody moves to Florida for (what they perceive of) the weather, right? Especially not retirees tired of the idea of one more winter in NY.

Exactly. If I'm looking for an explanation of Florida immigration / New York emigration, "an aging populace" is where I'd start.

> New York is a better governed state than Florida

Yes, New York is significantly more successful than Florida in almost every way: Better education, better healthcare, longer life expectancy, less pollution, lower crime, more productivity, higher wages, more amenities, better transportation infrastructure, less poverty, happier residents, and so on.

> So by your logic New York is a better governed state than Florida? Net internal migration would seem to disagree.

Yes, and it's not even close. Choose just about any metric and NY is running laps around Florida.

And, not just Florida, but red states in general. If you look at the metrics, they typically are some of the poorest states with the worst outcomes. Bad infrastructure, bad education, not a lot of job opportunities, horribly impoverished, under-developed.

It's just that nobody cares. Nobody expects Louisiana or Florida to be decent places to live. But since California is the economic powerhouse of the US, people do expect it to be decent. That's the issue, the blue states are essentially carrying the economy of everything else on their back, so they now get a new, unfair set of standards.

There's some exceptions here, mainly Texas.

What makes California's government dysfunctional?

What about Detroit?

A government that runs the richest city in the country (SF trades this spot with NY every few years) and makes it look the way it does is the definition of dysfunction.

And Detroit... well, I guess now that they've bulldozed all the abandoned buildings it looks less like a post apocalyptic hellscape and more just abandoned. An improvement I suppose.

You are all over this thread treating HN like reddit or twitter. Please go.

Yes sir! Mam? Xer?

But more seiously: you are saying that there's this poor little party that can't manage to vote for any laws because big bad Republicans keep coming in and aww shucks. Do we really want such incompetence in government?

California also has easily solvable housing, education, transportation and mental health crises that are entirely driven by mismanagement by the state government. They haven’t done anything meaningful to address these issues in 25-40 years depending on the issue.

Heck, they ignored the water crisis for twenty years, and what they’re doing now for aquifer replenishment is still less than what makes sense.

I say they are easily addressed because simply reverting to California’s policies from ~ 1975 would greatly improve the current situation.

The biggest root problem with California governmental structure is harmful constitutional features added by public referendum, especially Proposition 13 (1978). I guess you can blame "government" for that, but it doesn't seem like quite the right target.

The water crisis is a difficult problem because water rights are complicated and central valley farmers are an influential political group very focused on short-term preservation of water access and not as concerned with long-term sustainability.

> easily solvable housing, education, transportation and mental health crises

I submit that these are much less "easily solvable" than you claim. (What have you personally done to work on these problems, if they are so "easy"?) Legislators don't get to wave a magic wand, but need support of a wide variety of stakeholders who have contradictory demands and expectations (some of which are fairly unrealistic, but anyway..).

Education for example has competing goals of local funding vs. inter-city equity. Should the wealthiest towns get to spend arbitrarily much local property tax money on their own children's public schools while the poorer town next door is running out of toilet paper, or should the state try to equalize funding between schools to give every child the best opportunity? There's not really a "correct" answer to this, and every possible choice has some serious disadvantages.