The SALT tax deduction wouldn’t matter so much if the state taxes weren’t so high in the first place. Additionally, you neglected to mention the doubling of the standard deduction. SALT deductions were essentially the federal government subsidizing state and local taxes. Rather than the feds paying California taxes, now Californians pay those taxes.
The weird, but predictable thing to me is that those complaining about effectively increased taxes due to loss on the unlimited SALT deduction, don’t complain when there is a clamor to raise federal taxes: in fact, most of those people seem to support higher taxes — except when they have to pay them. There is a lot of intellectual dishonesty with many Bay Area voters — they oppose tax cuts, but then complain when they pay higher taxes. California needs to lower taxes across the board but you don’t see Brown or Gavin suggesting tax relief to account for the now higher tax burden experienced by the upper brackets.
The California economy is booming despite the taxes, not because of it. Apple, Google and Facebook are driving much of the Bay Area economy — and they make the majority of their money somewhere else. Local companies thrive because of the large base of high income people that are present because of the massive tech companies. If you took away Big Tech, the high California taxes would quickly become unsustainable. But since everyone around here can afford a Tesla, people seem to think that high taxes are the cause of all of this “success.”
As far as California quality of life, the weather isn’t a result of tax policy and the beaches and mountains also aren’t either. That’s 80% of what makes California have a higher apparent quality of life compared to Houston. The point is, the higher taxes aren’t the cause of a better quality of life compared to Texas. Outside of some obvious places like Cupertino, California schools aren’t particularly good — and Cupertino’s school success is a function of the culture of 60%+ Asians who tend to value education more highly than other groups. It certainly isn’t because of taxes. Washington, DC spends more per student than almost anywhere and yet have some of the worst performance. So when we talk about quality of life — it’s good in California for sure — but it isn’t because of fiscal policy, the 71 degree temperature is a big part of it.