One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that half the country seems to make it their personal mission to wage a propaganda war against California. You barely need Russian bots when so many Americans seem willing to paint Cali as a post-apocalyptic hellscape where hobos run wild shitting on the streets and littering the street with used needles.
So what gives?
Some of it is jealousy. I had a guy in Tulsa tell me some of the awfullest things about California (a place he has never lived in or visited).
“People shit in the streets” is a popular one…“There’s all these damn bums everywhere” is another… “You can’t even buy fruit without taking out a second mortgage” cost of living complaints.
I’m not sure people understand what they’re saying, but they’re essentially arguing contradictory things: California is an undesirable hellhole that can’t master basic things like hosing feces off the streets…but it is also the wealthiest state in America, the biggest economy in the world (5th biggest in the world by itself), and the most populated state where people clearly want to live. [I’m not sure you can say that about Okie.]
There’s not a city in California that is among the 10 most violent in the country.
And even though there are homeless people in SF and LA, that’s partially because rent is so high, but why is rent high? Because you have some of the wealthiest people in the country fighting for real estate. [You’ve also got a lot of international billionaires buying up California real estate—which has put a real squeeze on housing. But they wouldn’t be buying those properties if they didn’t believe they’d be worth something in the future.]
You don’t get that with places that are dying out or anything approaching “hell hole” status.
Despite the inequality, standard of living is pretty good in California, and you can’t say that about most of the red states criticizing CA.
I think people are especially irritated that “The Governator” Ah-nuld mismanaged the state into near-bankruptcy and Jerry Brown immediately turned the state around—even though it was 6 months from insolvency once he took over.
It’s almost like Republicans were trying to mismanage it into ruin, and Democrats saved it, and now voters are pretty unlikely to try out Republican management in the future–which really irritates them since they can’t take credit for what California’s become.
Truthfully, most of America’s GDP comes from blue cities and blue states, and I think there is an unspoken bitterness that the “party of business” doesn’t actually drive America’s businesses, even though they’d rather eat a bullet than admit that.
I think it also especially irritates the ultra-corporatists that California has national influence on economic matters. For example, they have pretty much controlled fuel mileage standards, since the big automakers in Detroit won’t make cars they can’t sell in CA, the biggest car market in America.
“Damn California, making all of our fuel mileage standards better. Fuck them!”
Well, I was thinking the same thing as the title of your article today, which is why I found it. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought this, but it’s always after seeing some new article or YouTube video pointing out how terrible CA is and how everyone is leaving. And yet, every day after seeing those, I go out and think about how great it is to have lived here for the last 31 years, and how happy most people are who live here. I’ve also commented to others that I think the reason so many people are so happy is because they just we generally let people do what they want as long as they don’t hurt other people. I served in the U.S. Army years ago, and I guarantee you the minute I need a weapon/rifle/gun, I’ll go out and buy one, but in the 31 years I’ve lived around San Jose, CA, I’ve never felt the need to have one to protect myself or my home.
Hey, if people want to leave CA as they have from 2020 to 2021 (we lost a congressional seat), I’m happy to wave goodbye, but I am going nowhere. It just makes it easier for the rest of us to get around to do the stuff that makes us love living here. I grew up in the midwest (South Dakota) until I was 20 when I moved here, and there have always been so many things better in California, to the point that I’ve always felt panic when I go back to visit South Dakota. Or, it took about 15 years before I stopped getting that panicked feeling when I went back to South Dakota, once I had fully established myself in CA.
I’ve also lived in Oklahoma and Texas for short periods, and I can’t count the ways that CA is better to live in. The only parts of Texas I might consider moving to are areas like Dallas or Austin that look (and are) exactly like California.
All the points in your article are true from the point of view of those of us living here — things cost more because there are so many people in California willing to pay the price to live here. Anybody who aren’t just leave. It’s possible for people to get stuck here, but it’s a lot easier to sell everything you have and leave here for a place that’s cheaper to live in than it is to go the other direction. When I moved to CA, it was only after about a year of saving every penny and coming here with practically nothing as a result.
I could sell just my house today, 31 years later, and move back to South Dakota to retire, living off the money for 40 years . But, I don’t want to, because the standard of living would be so low. Today the Internet makes things much better in such places, but that doesn’t solve inequalities like healthcare or harsh weather.
My sister died 3 years ago from cancer at about 61, and I’m quite sure she’d be alive today if she had moved to California when I did. In fact, I’m positive I would be dead today if I hadn’t moved to California. No hospital in South Dakota would have paid $100k for the computer implant for my heart’s defect, which is what my healthcare provider in California did 9 years ago. That device didn’t even exist 15 years ago, and I’m not sure it’s available in South Dakota even today, but it was in CA nearly 15 years ago. Unfortunately, people in South Dakota just die when they can’t pay for things like this.
Thank you for reading, and sharing your comments.
I don’t want to put South Dakota down, but I certainly can’t blame you for wanting some warmer weather or perhaps just better opportunities.
There’s much talk of a “Calexit” or a whole bunch of people leaving the state in droves, but I share the same view that that may not be the worst thing in the world. Some of those people might help make other states purple or even blue (it’s been rumored this is the cause of Arizona’s changing politics). If you really look at the biggest Democratic gains in the last decade, they’ve mostly been in the non-coastal Western states that are relatively close to California like Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. Many think that’s partially due to Californians moving to those states, and that the same thing might one day flip Montana, Idaho, and even Texas.