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California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

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Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about these numbers. What I can tell you is that the business exodus from CA is very real. This means less jobs, or, what could be worse, lower paying jobs. I know of entire companies who picked-up and left for places like Arizona and Texas. I personally cannot wait to be able to do the same. I want nothing whatsoever to do with California in terms of business. After decades of living here I am just sick…

> They passed a tax added to your property taxes that is a function of any surface area on your property that does not allow rain to come into contact with dirt So they charge you for the externalities incurred by impervious surface cover? How is that anything but rational? Seriously, why do you deserve to add to pollution and drought without incurring any penalty for the cost you inflict on others? Impervious ground…

You should have finished reading before getting offended. Some of his examples were very valid.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idahoan here, previously lived in Utah. Just adding to your point. Both Idaho and Utah are becoming inundated with people from California. It's mind boggling how hard it is to find housing here. When we bought our last house we were repeatedly outbid by cash offers from California buyers. In my current neighborhood there have been 7 families that moved in during the last 12 months. One (us) from Utah, one from Texas,…

Have you considered that this is a national problem? Californians are snatching up the affordable homes in Utah because others from around the country are snatching up the affordable homes in California.

because others from around the world are snatching up the affordable homes in California.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#285
"In fact, only 23% of California voters said they were seriously considering leaving the state, which is lower than the 24% who said the same in a 2019 survey conducted by UC Berkeley."

That's because we already left, so we're no longer in their survey population.

When I moved out of California, a uhaul was ten times as expensive going from SF to Phoenix as vice versa. When a survey or research project contradicts market prices, believe the market prices. Rates now are $400 AZ->CA, and $2500 CA->AZ.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#286
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Bezos quote is pretty dodgy, but to address your point: Ask anyone in Denver and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Chicago. Or ask anyone in Miami and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Philly. People move around. I think this is a similar phenomenon to buying a car and "seeing that car everywhere all of a sudden." It's all about perspective. In this sense, data is always better than anecd…

Crime anecdotes are famously totally wrong, people always say crime has gone up recently even though it's collapsed in most US cities even since 2000 or 2010. What this actually means is that people are watching too much TV.

Not sure crime is the best choice of example given the statistically low rates of crime in SF combined with firms shutting up shop because there is so much (unreported) crime.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#287
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what a dumb quote by bezos

I assume this is getting downvoted because of its tone, but the sentiment is correct. The statement is nonsense. There can be wisdom in attempting to understand why anecdotes disagree with data, but the vast majority of the time it is simply a combination of selection bias and the human tendency to want to believe things that support your own worldview.

Bezos is making a subtle point here that I feel people are overlooking.

1. Anecdotes that you notice, by their nature, tend to come from reasonably sized groups of people.

2. "Data" as the term is normally meant in business and government does not. It may originally consist of many individual data points that represent something about large groups of people, but by the time it reaches a decision maker it has been filtered through normally just one or two people who have selected it, normalized it, and analyzed it in various ways.

In other words, "data" is often not being used with its dictionary definition of a raw CSV file but rather it means "analysis". And unfortunately the nature of data analysis is that not only is it easy to make genuine mistakes but it can also be very easily manipulated in all sorts of ways to present whatever the analyst wants to be true.

Academic research is an especially prevalent form of this problem because people don't hesitate to claim they've made a "data" based decision then cite an academic paper that presents a model with some absurd assumptions, or where the model outputs aren't visibly connected to the paper's conclusions at all, or which shows signs of P-hacking, or where the dataset is unusably small and so on and so forth.

Hence why I find myself agreeing with the other posters - if you find yourself strongly disagreeing with Jeff Bezos about something that seems to be within his domain, think twice.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#288
post #225

One thing I'm interested in is, regardless of whether more californians are leaving or not, are californians driving up housing prices in the various obvious targets (oregon, idaho, montana, colorado, nevada)? I'm part of the "exodus" in that earlier this year I finally bailed on the bay area after living there my whole life for vegas, and the cost to buy a house here seems insane compared to renting and to similarly…

Just one data point, but a friend of mine who lives in Boulder, CO tells me that home prices have gone up a lot in the last year or so, and his belief is it's largely driven by people leaving CA. Might not be the full cause though.

Main reason is the fed printed trillions and folks are looking to get out of cash. Assets are up everywhere.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#289
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Bezos quote is pretty dodgy, but to address your point: Ask anyone in Denver and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Chicago. Or ask anyone in Miami and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Philly. People move around. I think this is a similar phenomenon to buying a car and "seeing that car everywhere all of a sudden." It's all about perspective. In this sense, data is always better than anecd…

Crime anecdotes are famously totally wrong, people always say crime has gone up recently even though it's collapsed in most US cities even since 2000 or 2010. What this actually means is that people are watching too much TV.

There is an assumption in your comment: that crimes get reported and recorded uniformly.

There is a good reason why international comparison of crime tends to concentrate on murder. Crimes are neither reported not recorded the same way. Murder sorta-kinda comes closest in this regard: it is pretty hard to ignore violent deaths.

Things like endemic petty theft have the potential to make people move to another city, while their official record is pretty low.

Re: California exodus is a myth, UC research project finds

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime anecdotes are famously totally wrong, people always say crime has gone up recently even though it's collapsed in most US cities even since 2000 or 2010. What this actually means is that people are watching too much TV.

Not sure crime is the best choice of example given the statistically low rates of crime in SF combined with firms shutting up shop because there is so much (unreported) crime.

On the east coast I used to buy snacks passed to me through a pulletproof wall. Yes, the entire store was behind plexiglass. Why they don't do this in tweaker central, I don't understand.
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