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California’s population shrinks for third straight year

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Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people I know personally who left California in the last 2-3 years were pretty apolitical but definitely left-leaning socially. Around a dozen of them. All left due to the cost of living, none were ever "accused" of being republican. To me it sounds like you are mostly regurgitating some toxic Twitter-talk.

I've lived in the Bay Area for my entire life and am considering leaving only because it's not progressive enough. The Bay and most of California is only progressive on inconsequential social issues. Housing? Homelessness? Fucking Houston Texas is more progressive than us. Frankly, I blame the venture capitalists. They have turned what was once a vibrant region I loved into a soulless husk of itself though money. Our…

> I've lived in the Bay Area for my entire life and am considering leaving only because it's not progressive enough.

Where will you go? Wakanda?

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Most of us aren't even asking you to do anything or pay higher taxes - just stop screwing it up for everyone whose income isn't as big as yours It's true people don't have to "do" anything, but they are still affected by QOL decline: increase in traffic, not enough parking, schools get crowded, everything gets crowded, etc. So it's not a no-op.

But by buying a house they're not buying the whole city and the right to prevent others from living there.

If these are REALLY the objections, we could find ways to mitigate these issues.

A reasonable discussion could be had about how fast neighborhoods should change, or what reasonable expectations buyers should have about the neighborhood changing over what period of time around them.

However, if more people move in, their single family home in the period of 10-20 years will probably double in value and they'd probably be able to sell it and move to the outskirts of the now-expanded city with a similar character to what they had before, which has become the center of the growing city.

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#274
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a life-long Texan (more or less), and this sounds like totally logical analysis. I love living in Texas, but I don’t particularly care for our state government, but it also doesn’t affect me enough to affirmatively desire to leave the state. I’d love to live in California but not sure I could afford the lifestyle I’d like to maintain. In fact, quite sure I couldn’t - CA is a great place!

Thank you for this take. I don’t live in California, but most of my family has this attitude of “California is the worst! Look how expensive it is.” It seems as if supply and demand has decided it’s a great place to live. Edit: Not sure why this take would upset anyone. I didn’t say it was necessarily good or bad to live in California. All I said is that the average price of a home seems to dictate that people enjoy…

Yeah, every time I go home to the Georgian suburbs I have to patiently explain that—while San Francisco certainly has its fair share of obvious and well-publicized problems—if it were really all that bad, people wouldn't be lining up to pay exorbitant amounts in order to live there.

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#275
post #198
post #157

How smug are Californians that those who always disagree with them always “must be Republicans”? They really said people are leaving the state because of “political reasons” (ie, “they’re Republicans, aka, ‘non-regrettable attrition’”)? Couldn’t be all of the other reasons could it. I say this as a California native who left for a litany of reasons, last of them being the politics.

California is basically Georgia with 2.5 Atlantas. Of course it can afford to lose Republicans, there are Republicans being born in every corner of the state to replace them. It’s not safely anything, it’s a competitive battle for political control, remember Arnold? (Whispers: this is how it’s supposed to be) Also, Do smart people really think the nation’s richest collection of businesses owners, VCs and executives a…

> Also, Do smart people really think the nation’s richest collection of businesses owners, VCs and executives are a bunch of lefties?

You mean a portion of the 1% ?

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#276

This is “gross” decline, the backing data has a “net” migration of -113k. NY actually had a much higher net decline at -180k which translates to a 3x higher decline as a percentage (0.9% vs 0.3%). This isn’t necessarily a CA thing as people keep positioning it, it’s a high taxes among other things (like housing, and high mobility)

> This isn’t necessarily a CA thing as people keep positioning it, it’s a high taxes among other things (like housing, and high mobility)

So a CA thing

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does one build 3.5 million houses? The housing needs to be where jobs / etc, are. It should also be where resources are. A good deal of the state has water issues regularly; additional part of the state can't keep the power on due to - heat waves, fires, over use, winds, cats farting. The rural county I live in has open jobs, but a sizeable chunk of the work force is either seasonal (logging, etc) then coast on…

> Where does one build 3.5 million houses? The housing needs to be where jobs / etc, are. With the resources of an entire state government, or a lot of private equity, this is very solvable. Take a place like Sunol, CA or Livermore, CA, either one about an hour east of San Francisco and trivial to connect to public transit. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.5871047,-121.8716321,3a,75y,... (California has nowhere to bui…

> Done. Solved. But they don't do it. Why?

This is called the Napkin Fallacy. When you write down some solution to a long standing social problem on a napkin in a coffee shop, and then instead of asking

"What is wrong with my solution, that it hasn't been adopted?"

you ask

"What is wrong with the world, that it hasn't adopted my solution?"

The world needs a lot more people asking the first question rather than the second. Virtually no one should be asking the second question. As the saying goes "For every problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong." That's usually the napkin solution. When you stop to really think about what is wrong with the napkin solution, you start down the path of solving real problems. It is highly unlikely that long standing social problems have napkin solutions.

As a slightly toxic corollary to the Napkin Fallacy is the Virtue Fallacy, which tries to answer the second question with

"It is because the world is run by bad people"

This is bad not only because it is an easy way to avoid the difficult work of understanding why the napkin solution doesn't work, but also because it caricatures one's opponents, and it is close to self-deification. While the saying "Let God be true, but every man a liar" is sound, the saying "Let me be true but every man a liar" is unsound. There is generally nothing about any of us that makes us better than others. Do not assume the world is run by people worse than you.

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So few days of good weather [in Texas]. That's why I tell disbelieving Californians that we have better weather in Texas than they do: When we have nice days, we appreciate it, whereas when they do, they don't even notice .... :-) (Source: Spent several years in California long ago.)

This is true of the Midwest, too. After the months of winter 40° days are barbecue outdoors and go for hikes weather.

While people remain in denial about how nice it is to only have 2-3 months of livable outdoor weather a year, housing prices will always tell the truth

Re: California’s population shrinks for third straight year

#279
post #43

Moved from the bay to Texas because of everything i heard. It was such a horrible experience. The heat, the bugs, the lack of density. So few days of good weather. Maybe worth it to some, but a bigger house was not worth it to me at all. We moved back in 6 months. So many people want to live in California which causes more issues

High temperatures? Air conditioning. Low temperatures? Heating. High humidity? Dehumidifiers. Low humidity? Humidifiers. Particulate matter? Air filters. Bugs? Pest control. Bug screens. Traps. Mosquito treatments. High energy use? Solar. Lack of density? Sign me up. More privacy, less noise, lower crime rate, and fewer problems in general. No rude people constantly in a hurry. The stuff there are no solutions for: h…

Being outside most of the year? Overrated.
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