SF and NYC in a nutshell: High taxes to fund entitlement programs like "affordable housing" and the homeless industrious complex, high regulations that only allow mega corps to succeed, landlord unfriendly laws so no chances taken on good borderline tenants, and no firearms for law abiding citizens so criminals are emboldened.
On the flip side: high taxes means access to things like public transportation, meaning that you don't need to own and maintain a car. And crime rates in NYC, at least, are at absolute historic lows. The firearms part of your statement really makes no sense at all. Some other pluses: a huge concentration of culture, entertainment, dining. Regional transportation hubs to travel to other cities is relatively quick.
Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
181–190 of 718 posts
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question:do you still vote Democrat?
Tongue-in-cheek comment that I've read somewhere is that folks flee Democrat-run cities due to high taxes and mismanagement and move elsewhere, but then continue voting Democrat to bring back the same policies they wanted to escape from.
This does seem to be the case.
If you look at the voting statistics for cities where Californians are fleeing -- Boise, Las Vegas, Reno, Salt Lake City, etc -- those cities are rapidly turning blue.
But I don't know if they continue voting Democrat "to bring back" their old laws and lifestyle so much as they're just used to voting a particular way and continue to do so.
There don't seem to be a lot of people who put effort into making informed voting choices on a candidate-by-candidate basis and just go for whatever party they voted for last time.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#183Well, no. At least California (about which I see a lot of these stories) is gaining residents. Yes, it has negative net interstate migration. But it has both positive net natural population growth and positive net total migration, because the positive net international migration more than offsets negative net interstate migration.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#184Every person I know who's left California did it because of housing costs (except for one, who did it to get away from "the damn liberal government that wants to take my guns"). We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part beca…
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work remotely but just moved to Sonoma county because my partner got a job here. The house prices are really insane. Seems most people here are either rich retirees or people whose families have lived here for a long time and made a ton of money with real estate bought before prices exploded. I don’t see any jobs here that would even remotely justify the house prices. It’s a beautiful area but the economy is pretty…
I'm born and raised Sonoma County (as is my wife) and we are about the only people we grew up with who still live here. We saved/worked through college bought a house at a decent time (2014), and our mortgage payment for 3BR/2BA is less than many friends pay for a room. If my wife wasn't a winemaker we would most likely not be living here either. I cannot begin to understand how or why people would move here, and man…
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#186I grew up in Central California and then lived in the Bay Area from 2001 until 2010. Had kids, and a online job, so we next moved to the Sierra Nevada foothills, where we lived for a decade. We moved to a suburb of Houston, Texas about a year ago. Best decision ever. In a nutshell: Overall, quality of life has gone way up. Taxes have gone down. Wages have gone up. Everything is cheaper, which means we all get to do m…
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#187I grew up in Central California and then lived in the Bay Area from 2001 until 2010. Had kids, and a online job, so we next moved to the Sierra Nevada foothills, where we lived for a decade. We moved to a suburb of Houston, Texas about a year ago. Best decision ever. In a nutshell: Overall, quality of life has gone way up. Taxes have gone down. Wages have gone up. Everything is cheaper, which means we all get to do m…
Serious question:do you still vote Democrat?
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#188Every person I know who's left California did it because of housing costs (except for one, who did it to get away from "the damn liberal government that wants to take my guns"). We have a major housing cost crisis in this state, as well as a big NIMBY problem. There have been good solutions run up through the state house, that either fail to pass or get so watered down they are no longer effective, in large part beca…
> There have been good solutions run up through the state house What are the best solutions you've seen? > They only want to help poor people if it doesn't affect their property value. I'm sure there are some unsavory high net worth individuals who are happy to support policies keeping housing expensive just to keep assets inflated even if it means access to housing is harder for everyone. But I'd guess for a lot of…
SB 827 was pretty good. [0]
SB 50 was a good idea with a bad execution [1]
> if the story of net outflow is true.
The article says that California still saw a net inflow due to births and incoming foreign migrants.
> Either the existing supply is being manipulated in some way,
It is, via rent control, which has shown time and again to only help people who already have housing at the expense of those who don't already have it when it's enacted. It also helps wealthy people more than poor people by constraining rent raises even though they could afford market rates.
It is also manipulated by prop 13, which allows people to rent out properties they've owned for a long time at a profit when similar properties can not be. The natural market rate of rent is all inclusive of current costs including tax. But if your tax rate is artificially low, then that difference is increased profit for you, which encourages people not to sell their properties.
For example, I'd had my home for 10 years, and if I were to rent it out, my profit would be about $1,200 a month at current market rates. My property tax is artificially low by about $1,100 a month. So my entire profit would come from Prop 13. Why would I sell my house if I can rent it for profit only because of the lower tax rate?
> or some portions of the demand pool can offer a lot more than others pricing the rest out of the market.
Yes, there is a lot of foreign investment in California real estate which just sits empty. I get ads from agents that "specialize in finding Chinese buyers" which is code for "people who will pay more than asking and not care what condition the house is in".
[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Serious question:do you still vote Democrat?
Tongue-in-cheek comment that I've read somewhere is that folks flee Democrat-run cities due to high taxes and mismanagement and move elsewhere, but then continue voting Democrat to bring back the same policies they wanted to escape from.
It's all been positive with anecdotes like inviting "the new neighbors" to real TX bbq's and things like that but it's definitely real.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#190[flagged]
FYI - Austin is as blue as they come (and way less of the neoliberalism you see in SV). Houston from what I can tell has become much more liberal too (partly because a large influx of Katrina refugees). Hot take - with all of the migration to Texas, this state will be blue in the next 10 years. The only "conservative" things you find in those areas is (1) big trucks (2) guns (3) tobacco (4) sports. Not much different…