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Comment by Anon_Forever | Hacker News Reader

>There is lots of housing outside of the Bay Area and other expensive cities.

And they're similarly more expensive than the majority of the US. Housing in Stockton [0] is more expensive than Houston [1].

>As in the rest of the country. Climate change and soaring energy costs isn't a California-specific problem. Look at the TX grid for example.

It most definitely is a California-specific problem. California is only bested by Hawaii for total energy prices, and is the most expensive in the continental US [2]. California also has the second highest hours of power outages.

California power is hilariously expensive compared to every Southern and Southwestern state. More than double in most cases.

[0] https://www.zillow.com/home-values/7266/stockton-ca/

[1] https://www.zillow.com/home-values/39051/houston-tx/

[2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...

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There is no point comparing costs on an absolute basis. Yes California is more expensive than a lot of other states, but those states in turn are more expensive than Mexico and South/Central America, which are more expensive than parts of Asia and Africa, and so on. The point isn't to simply chase the cheapest prices, but to compare them with the purchasing power in the immediate area. Homes and utilities in California have to be affordable for Californians, not the rest of the world.

Is it really affordable to Californians though? Or it is affordable only to the upper class there? Not everyone is making 200-300k a year.

If you look at the median household income pre-tax, CA is 84k while TX is 67k. Not that big a difference especially when you consider TX do not have income tax while CA does. Meanwhile everything in CA is nearly double the price. Is everything really affordable to the average Californians or it only affordable to the SWE circle?

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/CA/INC110221

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/TX/INC110221

Pretty disingenuous to use data for one side of the argument and a subjective "everything in CA is nearly double the price" for the other. From the same table you linked, the percentage of people living in poverty in Texas (14.2%) is higher than California (12.3%). If everything really is so much more unaffordable in CA than TX, why is that?

Perhaps you can check the big warning sign on the page about the poverty number:

> Estimates are not comparable to other geographic levels due to methodology differences that may exist between different data sources.

Here is a better source with comparable numbers also by the bureau for 2021, same year we are talking about:

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Relevant numbers for states can be found on page 77.

As for the "why"...

Officially, poverty level is counted by triple the cost of food compared to income. Of course, that is now obsolete since people need more than just food. They need housing, utilities, etc. Most of those are much higher in CA than TX.

That is why the census bureau has SPM which accounts for these needs. Based on the SPM calculated by the bureau, CA has higher poverty rate than TX, 13.2% compared to 10.4%.

Using the official, i.e. the food cost only, then CA is 11% while TX is 12.9%.

Here is a nice SPM figure by states on reddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/123s1k3/oc...

Up to you how you want to take it. I was wrong in saying "everything" is double the price so let me take that back. Only housing and utilities are double or more, everything else is still more expensive but perhaps not to the 200% depending on where you live or get them from.

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