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Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

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Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#511
post #119
post #79

I 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…

> Taxes have gone down. Are the kids school age? If so, what do you think of the public schools?

The schools are very good compared to what they had in California. We live in one the top 500 school districts in the country (there are about 10,000 of them).

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in California are this way though. All of my family who still lives out there pay a premium to watch the same TV shows I watch and to watch Netflix while sitting on their behinds indoors. Very few people are out hiking every possible minute or going out to the coast even when living nearby.

I'm inclined to agree with you, and would say that many folks living in the expensive parts of California aren't even leveraging the majority of what makes it so expensive to live where they do. I lived in the SF bay area for over a decade, and when employed by the tech industry and spending all my free time outdoors it was very worthwhile. But whenever I stopped working in the lucrative positions there, the math sto…

Just don’t try to send your kids to the schools in the affordable parts of the state. Low cost of living = lower property values = low property taxes = poorly funded schools.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#513
post #494
post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very pronounced trend of people migrating away from states that are controlled by Democrats for reasons that are potentially ideologically driven policy failures. This raises a a very real and material question for the new host community - do the migrants understand why the situation became so intolerable that they felt they should move? Migrants bring new ideas so a certain amount of discomfort and change…

Statistically, people are moving from rural areas and to urban areas. Rural areas tend to be conservative and economically depressed. Urban areas tend to have high paying jobs and be liberal or progressive. Aside from a few state/city couplings(Omaha, NE comes to mind) a US "State" is a poor indicator of differentiated policy or ideology. People in Atlanta or Miami or LA or Seattle have a lot more in common with each…

Up until recently Dallas / Ft. Worth and Miami where conservative. The Cubans that fled communism held Miami as a conservative metro up until about 15-20 years ago. Orlando and Tampa where the same. Orlando for different reasons but Tampa was largely due to the conservative Cubans as well.

Texas and Florida are two of the states that are experiencing meteoric growth and to imply that those moving in are not shifting the political climate to that in which they came from is to ignore the fact that both went from solidly conservative states, with conservative large metros. To toss up states where the metros became in flux. To ignore that those moving in are not voting in the same failed policies that they are fleeing ignores the fact that both states policies are in fact starting to trend towards taxation, lowering of property rights and large scale social programs. The spade is a spade.

The same happened to Denver over the past 20 or so year.

On a note related to the main topic, I live in FL in the Florida Keys, it is a paradise I spearfish on the weekends and am usually out on a boat. Prices have gone up here, but one can still purchase a home on the water for under 500k. I could barely get a decent apartment in the valley for what I paid for my 7 acres of oceanfront land and home. I mention this to make the point that I can certainly see the draw, you get so much more for your money if one sells out of a major CA metro and moves to one of the growth states.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#514
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Houston. It is very humid. Most of the time. But we have air conditioning. Every place has air conditioning. And it run's constantly. But still my power bill is just a fraction of what it was in California. From late fall through early spring the weather is very California-like: cool and crisp in the morning and warm and dry in the afternoon.

If you accept a life spent indoors in air-conditioned spaces you weren't taking advantage of what you were paying for in California.

I don’t mean to imply that you can go outside. You can. And we do. Just that when it’s 85 at night and 85% humidity, you run your A/C all night, every night.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#515
post #64

Earlier 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…

If your salaries can't sustain a workforce they're still not high enough no matter what you say.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main difference I see between Illinois and CA/NY is that the cost of housing is MUCH more reasonable so that the overall cost of living in the area is MUCH more reasonable.

It's not more reasonable when you consider the property taxes. A $350,000 house looks great until you factor in $10,000 annual property taxes.

3% FMV property tax is pretty rough, but do you get a tolerable school system as part of that bargain?

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#517
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property taxes are paid on the sale price. No, property taxes are paid on the assessed value, and assessments don't just happen at sale time. Only CA has this weird freeze-taxes-at-time-of-sale thing. > It is not a punitive tax to fund new entrants. No one is claiming it is. Hell, it isn't great even for homeowners who are "protected" by Prop 13, because if they want to move (say a widow/widower whose kids have mov…

What’s wrong with never wanting to move? Out of homes people paid off after 30 years of mortgage? Why should we promote the notion that tax paying citizens should become transients due to tax burden? So tax the descendents. Property rights are one of the reasons why this country was founded..primary homes need to be protected from predatory taxes and redistribution of wealth.

If those who had lived in their house for 30 years sold their property, they will have made more in capital gains from that sale alone than the average American has made in their entire life. I'm not exactly awash in sympathy here.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#518
post #55

Every 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…

I'll chime in and say that I just moved from California to Washington in September of last year. While its not a huge change, its enough to make a difference. Factors on why I did it: - Housing costs #1. I got into a rent controlled 2 bedroom 1100 sqft duplex unit. It was ok, but the landlord sucked and the place was very unmaintained, and i was paying $2800 a month. No yard, no garage, tons of homeless around diggin…

Washington is quickly turning into California in terms of politics. Lots of liberals moving in and trying to take their broken views with them.

Downtown Seattle is looking like SF/Bay Area in terms of crime and lack of police enforcement due to what/whom people vote for.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#519
post #302

Earlier 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.

This is why I really wish we had ranked choice voting (or approval voting). That way we'd have more political parties and a healthier political climate.

We have something different in California, apparently you don’t know about it? Hard to have a conversation when folks are unaware.

Re: Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?

#520
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of these conversations are about families and older people than me, so an anecdote from the POV of a 26 year old I just moved from Durham, NC back to New England after a year (Moved to NYC specifically, this is my first time in a truly large city) I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone in my age group (and in tech) would want to move to Durham/Raleigh from NYC, except for raising a family The c…

90% of people become parents [0]. Raising children is difficult in a city where single people struggle. [0] https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-paren...

Yeah... I specifically prefaced the comment with "most people in these conversations are talking about families" and specified in tech.

Even if it's just for a few years, the amount of money you can save up by living in these high COL cities is insane (for tech workers at least)

Honestly, part of it is I don't know how long that's going to be true. If we have a sudden tech bust, I'd rather be sitting on a large amount of savings and trying to find work anywhere it pops up than on a smaller amount that won't sustain me if I have to move to a high CoL area

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