alt Hacker NewsDo you live in California?
I mean sure it might be wasteful (name one entity private or public that doesn’t suffer from assholes and corruption), but the quality of life here is far better than in Texas or any other state.
We have labor rights, environmental protection, hell even the ethical farming practices like how eggs are produced. Life here is objectively better for the people.
It’s obviously more expensive. There’s demand for people to live here. Even if some people leave more want to move here or wish they could. Shitting on California is 90% of the time some form of cope for many people. They know they could never make it here so the best they can do is complain about it from whatever **hole they’re in.
Replies
Lived in California for 30 years -- it's an amazing place. But it's hubris to assume your definition of quality of life is objective or universal.
California has seen negative net domestic migration for over 20 years. So multiple things can be true:
* It's a desirable place to live and work, for some. * For others, the net quality of life is higher elsewhere.
Triumphalism ("They know they could never make it here...") isn't a good look whether you live in Silicon Valley or Dallas.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying. But the rise in spending per capita, even if you adjust for inflation or population growth or other factors, doesn’t make sense.
I agree the demand drives up certain costs like housing. But those are in the private markets. But I don’t understand is what the state government and local governments are spending all of the money on. And there are certainly some prominent wasteful programs such as the high-speed rail project or various programs for homelessness. I expect there’s more of those kinds of waste.
In the end, I think simply giving people money is an effective way to make society better. I’m not against the taxation as much as the low return for the additional spending that has happened in the last few decades.
The major reason California is expensive isn't because of the things that make it nice to live here, it's because a faux-environmentalist love of sprawl and protection of single family zoning from denser, more sensible housing options for those that want them.
Instead, Californians with high incomes, but not enough to pay the outrageous price for ownership, pay outrageous rents to landlords that repackage unupdated 1970s starter homes at extreme luxury prices.
Once we stop letting landlords exploit productive labor by removing the regulatory capture, the quality of life will increase, merely through allowing more people to experience the higher quality of life. However, reversing that trend is proving extremely difficult, despite fairly widespread support among the voting population.