Taxes aren't the issue. It's how people are taxed. Income tax is just one way people are taxed and they aren't the ONLY type of tax on income (despite people using the word tax to mean income tax). We have social security tax, payroll tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, property tax, and (maybe possibly a wealth tax in the future). And that's just individual taxes.
People say this all the time and it is false: California is a high tax state. No it isn't. It is a high Income tax state. It is an extremely low property tax state.
To put this in perspective, I live in Boston and my mom lives in California. She owns > $3 million dollars worth of property that she pays 1% tax on when she bought it (for around 500K total) so an effective property tax rate of .16%. In Texas she would be paying 3% property taxes which 1800% percent more. She also gets depreciation on the rental property that is marked up to when some it got transferred to her so she gets depreciation amortized over 18 years at ~2.5 million valuation. She also collects social security, a pension from a previous government job, and rental income. All unearned. Some of the rental income comes from Section 8 and other welfare programs (paid for by young workers). Let alone medicare which she will certainly get way more out than she ever put in.
I on the other hand, make ~190K a year. One year I got lucky with stocks/bitcoin. I've been paying in the 250K income tax bracket for 3/4 years. I've also paid >5% state income taxes every year on that money. I've paid double or triple my mom's taxes every year despite her making total earnings including investments way above me. ON top of that I have high payroll taxes, sales taxes, and no deductions. I live in a crappy apartment (near a bunch of frat houses) that costs 2K a month (a little less than my mom's mortgage on a house worth $1.7 million).
For young people that have no property and income we are in an awful position. All we hear is increase income taxes, but that is the only way we are moving up the socio-economic ladder. We have many types of inequality in the US, but the most extreme is age-related inequality. Older people have almost all the money in America. The largest generation now is the millennials and they hold Its no wonder that younger and middle class people are flocking to places like Texas where they can afford a house (because property taxes prevent money flooding into real estate), and can actually get ahead because of little to no state income taxes.