California my whole life. I live in SF. Considering moving to Washington. I can live on the west side of Puget Sound and take an express ferry across the Sound and get to downtown Seattle for work. What a condo goes for in SF you can get a beach front house with some land. I once saw a property on one of the islands with a dozen acres for less than a million. Farm house on it and it’s still commutable to downtown Seattle via the ferry.
Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
381–390 of 718 posts
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#382Besides the usual issues with SF, Bay Area .. really California: homeless, cost of living, fires (health), earthquake one of the most concerning aspect for me are taxes! You pay tons of state taxes to get pretty much nothing in return.
I and my wife have 2 years of run away. Wait for my kid to finish the pre-school cycle, after which we are out of here.
We have already begun to look into alternatives and evaluating pro/cons and yes Texas comes as one of the top choices along with Colorado.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worse than that. With the passage of the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" California has open primaries (anyone can vote for anyone on the ballot in the primaries) and only the top two get to be on the main ballot. So many times only two Democrats are on the ballot with no Republican candidate at all. Not a good situation in my opinion.
It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself. By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.
only beneficial during the primary after the top candidates have been selected, which can both be extremely left-wing due to the caucus
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
California has largely become a single party state. I'm not trying to start an argument between Democrats and Republicans here, but we can clearly see a pattern everywhere in the world. Once single party rule is institutionalized the politicians are no longer accountable to voter interests.
Not really. The farm valleys are very, very red, while the major cities are very, very blue. I would say CA is a very politically polarized state.
The valleys are mostly irrelevant due to their lower population.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#385Sonoma County, CA here. We've lost more people from our county than any other in the state between 2017-2018 [1], and it is only continuing. From the few of these people I have spoken with - anecdotally: - None left because of the fire risk, specifically. [though some obviously did - 2] - Most left because of the cost of living: $600k avg home price. - Some also left because of political and human environment: We hav…
Can you talk more about the state laws? Are they not discouraging homelessness or are they too weak on petty crime?
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#386As an European, what's the difficulty to get a citizenship for the US in 2020?
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#387[flagged]
Actually one of the things I miss the most in the Bay Area is conservatives. I don't know a single one that's out of the closet! To me, that's really really broken. I'd love to live somewhere "purple", where people of all opinions coexist peacefully. Do places like that still exist?
Anecdotally, Denver and Austin were both pretty laissez-faire prior to the demographic shifts of the past 10 years.
I would guess Vermont, NH, or Maine still may have places with the same purple politics.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as no Prop 13 gets voted in it should be much better than California. Everyone complaining about policies in California make it sound like Texas is perfect. I'm pretty sure it could use a lot of improvements on its policies. There are some large factors that have had a disproportionate effect on the housing problems California faces and one of those is Prop 13 so it is much better to focus on avoiding repeati…
Prop 13 does produce some distortion in the market, but much bigger problem is the sheer inability to build anything. If California had similar zoning and building rules as Texas, Prop 13 would not really be relevant, since houses would not be appreciating in value fast enough for Prop 13 to make any difference.
It would require some pretty big shifts in Texas, though. Since most revenue comes from property taxes, the government has an incentive not only to avoid things like Prop 13, but to also encourage building.
Sure, Texas could start imposing an income tax, and raise the sales tax rate, but that would be a huge political hurdle to jump in order to be able to enact CA's terrible housing policies.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is worse than that. With the passage of the "Top Two Candidates Open Primary Act" California has open primaries (anyone can vote for anyone on the ballot in the primaries) and only the top two get to be on the main ballot. So many times only two Democrats are on the ballot with no Republican candidate at all. Not a good situation in my opinion.
It would actually work in favor of Republican-inclined voters, though not necessarily the party itself. By allowing anyone to vote, Democrat candidates are incentivized to be more moderate, because a vote from a Republican is as good as another from a Democrat. Without open primaries, a Democratic-only primary pretty much decides the winner, and a candidate only has to appeal to fellow Democrats.
Yeah, no. Reality doesn’t bear out with your theory.
Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
My takeaway from a visit to Austin a few years ago: "Everything seems so liberal, except for all of these massive pickup trucks that keep trying to run me over!"
To be fair, in CA it's massive SUVs that keep trying to run me over.