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Comment by EricE | Hacker News Reader

New York State and California have lost enough population that they are likely to loose at least one representative in the house of representatives.

This "too big to fail" argument is BS - they are failing and once cities start to go into death spirals they can accelerate in astonishing ways.

And just to make things extra spicy, thanks to COVID job mobility has never been greater. This isn't your fathers economy. Any of these cities taking anyone for granted do so at their own peril. San Francisco's insane policy of supporting shoplifting up to $900 has caused Wallgreens to pull out entirely, Target closes at 6PM now - what do small businesses do where their only locations are in areas afflicted with these sane policies? When losses exceed revenue they go out of business. As if COVID wasn't bad enough :p

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Both New York State and California grew in population between the 2010 and 2020 census (by 4.25% and 6.13%, respectively [1]).

They will each lose a seat in the house because they grew less than the U.S. as a whole (7.35%) and due to rounding.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_census

Growing less than the average is pretty much shrinking though.

> … they are failing …

Do you have the data for this? I just saw a story showing that CA flight is largely a talking point more than an actual phenomenon. Would love to see the numbers here.

https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/2020-Migration-Trends-U...

> 2020 Migration Trends: U-Haul Ranks 50 States by Migration Growth

...

Growth states are calculated by the net gain of one-way U-Haul trucks entering a state versus leaving that state in a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul truck customer transactions that occur annually.

...

California ranks last by a wide margin, supplanting Illinois as the state with the greatest net loss of U-Haul trucks. California has ranked 48th or lower since 2016...

Please correct me if I am wrong, but this appears to be a common mistake; they aren't reporting a per capita number, but a total number. When this happens, California will rank near-first (most of a good thing) or near-last (most of a bad thing) because it has the largest population.

Doesn’t the higher population affect both numbers? More UHauls are leaving CA than entering, even if both numbers are large. I think I see what you’re saying, that if you normalize per capita, they could be anywhere in the “net leaving” cohort. But it’s still a high number of UHauls going out for 5 years running.

There might be other factors. Maybe people leave CA with more belongings than they arrive with. Maybe new CA jobs pay for relocation, then people eventually do a self-serve move out of CA.

Still, I found it to be an interesting data point. The UHaul outflow date starting in 2016 corresponds to the SALT deduction reforms and the worsening annual fire conditions. Both seem like plausible “tipping point” factors to kick off an exodus, among other commonly cited issues.

New York’s population loss isn’t coming from downstate, it’s people leaving dying economies in the southern tier and north country and not coming back.

California is a huge state. And led the US economy during COVID. And had the largest and fastest post-lockdown recovery. Oh, and during that time actually strengthened its position as the world's 5th largest economy.

Yes, SF is having serious, self-inflicted issues. But SF/tech is actually a tiny portion of the CA GDP (since most tech revenue a la Apple doesn't actually get booked to CA). CA either leads the nation or is in the top 5 (states) for the following industries: movies, video games, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, aerospace, biotech, government contracting, and energy.

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