California continues to chase away its population | Hacker News Reader

California continues to chase away its population

ocregister.com

19 pointsStratoscope15 comments

Read the article by curiosity, but looking at the numbers, California lost a bit less than 0.00035% of its population, and that’s the excuse for this whole rhetoric about taxes and lawn mower regulations etc.

Perhaps the author has a point, but from a external point of view I’m not sure there is anything of value to take away from this rant. Is the population decline of any significance in the first place, and while I see people caring about housing prices and potentially wages stagnation, do people leaving really care about lawn mower laws ?

You are wrong by 3 digits.

You’re right, I got the wrong years (took 2020 -> 2021 instead). The 2021 -> 2022 give a 0.29% decrease

Checked the corrected numbers from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/PST045221

No. They don't. Florida and Texas are both cheaper and don't typically get remotely as cold as much of the mainland. There could be so many reasons for this, but it was basically just another excuse for a deluded, self-entitled US citizen to use CA as an example of "look how the Dems/progressives/libtards/whatever-the-latest-insult-to-their-fellow-citizens are screwing up everything."

It's just more brain vomit to try convincing others we need to roll back the clock to the "good ol' days" when women and minorities were second/third-class citizens, because the world was so much better... for a single demographic.

Remember, these people are buying cardboard cutouts of the face of a man who dodged military service, likely hasn't done a bit of exercise in the last 30+ years and would end up accidentally killing himself and/or his own children if given an M60 machine gun superimposed onto Sylvester Stallone's body. Nothing they say should be taken seriously.

It must be frustrating for you to be so sure of what your opponents think and feel, yet never able to understand what made them vote for the Orange Man.

You are the reason the Orange Man was foisted upon the US. We are going to get more of this, and not less, if you do not learn to communicate with your ideological opponents.

I think you're missing the author's point about the mower laws. It was specifically in the context of lost livelihood, not that people are offended at mower laws. The same applies for the vehicle manufacturing mandate 13 years away.

If you want to understand the author (and maybe you don't, what do I know?), you should ask yourself if you can conceive of ways that such policies would contribute to loss of livelihood (specifically of small business owners).

I'm not saying that this critique is factual. I wouldn't know.

On the mower laws:

> For instance, they’ve banned the use of gas-powered yard equipment, which limits our ability to do yard work (or forces us to buy pricey new mowers and blowers).

Aside from the author putting it as a “costs money” type if inconvenience, professional landscapers would also move to electric equipment.

Companies manufacturing those engines will be impacted, but also the writing was on the wall for years and if they had no plan B they’d have gone under sooner or later. They sure would wish it was “later”, but in the current climate helping gasoline engine makers keep producing engines is clearly not a societal goal however we turn it.

The author is pretty explicit on all his points, I’m not sure there was much subtlety lost on why he doesn’t like current CA policies.

I left California near the end of last year.

I’d say crime was my # 1 concern, the high cost of living was #2, and the general dirtiness of public places like mass transit, sidewalks, etc was #3.

Breaking down the cost of living, the biggest single issue was high taxes (not just on income but leading other things like food, gas, and other goods to cost an additional 50% or more than the same items in Colorado, where much of my family lives. Housing is also a significant additional financial burden.

And what do you get for that cost? A place where restaurants put passkey locks on their restrooms and entire aisles of goods at CVS are locked behind glass barriers.

The proximity to both the ocean and the mountains is great, but the cost/quality of life tradeoff isn’t very competitive, except possibly for the wealthy.

From the article:

«Texas gained an astounding 471,000 people last year and Florida gained 417,000, while California lost 114,000. […] Those Census net-domestic-migration numbers show that 343,000 Californians left for other states.»

Reasons stated in the article:

- Endless regulations

- Punitive tax rates

- Untouchable public-sector unions that are ransacking budgets and opposing reforms

- Shoddy school systems

- Decrepit (but pricey) public services

- Traffic congestion

- Absurd housing prices

- Growing crime rates

- Failing efforts to provide basic infrastructure

- Sprawling homelessness crisis

- Lack of political competition

- Problems are met by raising taxes and creating new agencies

- Old agencies are not held accountable

- Environmental policies

Lol, anything that doesn’t say “housing crisis” as the first bullet point clearly was written by someone who does not live in California.

I'm sure it was, but "Absurd housing prices" is 7th on their list

I'd like to see who is migrating away, and why. Intuitively I'd say it's housing prices, lay-offs, wages and the increased labour mobility due to remote work.

I doubt it's because the state being less laissez-faire on climate change than the GOP.

People seem to be concerned about this, but isn’t this what we want?

If states get too expensive to live in, or decide to increase taxes and people don’t agree with that, they leave.

That was pretty much the intent of the 50 states - 50 different experiments.

If nothing else, it is capitalism at its finest and the invisble hand of the market at work.

Yes! Unfortunately we keep adding experiments at the federal level so the state choice matters less.

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