I'm in eastern Europe, pay isn't too bad, rent isn't too bad, our city is getting developed, new buildings etc. We have lots of water, May was actually one of the coldest I've ever experienced. We had hardly any lockdowns because of covid, and we were fine.
Then I see all the news from California, the whole economy got closed up, there's a massive drought. Rents have been insane for years in most cities. Huge homeless and drugs problem in LA, San Francisco.
And on top of this, some of the highest tax rates in the US. For what?
What is happening to this paradise state?
And what worries me a lot is, a lot of the culture worldwide is set by people living in these conditions. Not just film, but tech now. I mean I can see why everyone in california is frustrated with capitalism and all the rest of it, but that's california... The conditions of which I've just listed.
A lot of California's problems come from the fact it IS an amazing State to live in. A paradise state as you put it. The weather, the parks, the jobs, and the diverse people. Where California went wrong is that, when people started flooding in looking for those things they didn't build any cheap housing. All they built were stupid luxury apartments and monstrous single family homes. Not enough of them either.
When you look at Eastern European population curves, most are flat. On the other hand, in half a century, California went from 15 million to 40 million people. In addition it built a HUGE agricultural industry that absorbs water from the entire western side of the nation. 1/3 of vegetables and 2/3 of tree nuts in the US come from California.
I wouldn't be surprised if California revitalizes in a few decades when they get their head out of their butts on housing. Getting rid of R1 zoning, building better transit, etc... Water on the other hand is going to be a problem unless South and Central America start growing a ton of tree nuts and drops the prices. (Probably in the smoking crater of what used to be a rainforest)
Luxury apartments doesn't mean anything other than new construction. No one ever build super low end new housing in a desirable area, the land is too expensive. You need new construction like this to push down the value of existing housing.
Not just land, but regulations and building codes are so strict that the base cost of new high density housing is so high that it isn’t economical to offer as lower rent or lower cost than “luxury” without some form of subsidy. So these things need to be built and sold or rented to the relatively wealthy so that 30 years from now they are depreciated enough that they can be offered to lower income groups.
Honestly, they are in fact Luxury apartments. Absolutely gorgeous and well appointed with huge swimming pools and excellent gyms. Maintained to impeccable standards. Beautiful kitchens with excellent appliances. The whole nine yards.
Most of those amenities other than the pool don't add very much to the cost of construction at all, especially interior finishes. When the cost of land is so high and the number of units you can build is artificially capped you have to charge a certain level of rent to hit the 3-5% margin required to get loans for a project. At a high enough rent, your renters will demand some amenities that competing projects will build.
All of the buildings you're linking to are mid-rise developments with VERY low lot coverage dictated by local zoning. The look nice, but not that amazing compared to other new development around the country.
My point being, you can't just build cheap housing on astronomically expensive land, the math doesn't work. Crazy zoning laws add to that cost. Pointing to new development as the problem is simply wrong. If people want new construction at a lower level of affordability, then they need to change laws that drive up the costs of building. If the banks won't/can't loan money to a real estate project with an expected margin of return of < 3%, then what do you expect?
It has great weather, beaches, great food, fun cities, an extremely wide range of biomes for nearby trips, and many extremely well paying jobs.
Sure it has it's problems, but I think what you're describing is an area that's rising (eastern europe) vs an area that rose in the past and is dealing with an equal balance of ups and downs. So it looks like a hellscape. That being said, the governments there do make some weird decisions, and issues with rent prices could be solved by allowing new/higher density construction.
What I'm getting at is income and standards of living are probably rising in your area faster than California, and that makes it feel like its wealthier/more pleasant on an absolute scale when it's in a phase of catching up.
This is a personal hypothesis and I have no sources for my assertion besides my own anecdotes.
I've noticed that Californians have a "we have to do something / we can't just do nothing" mentality when it comes to problems. So what ends up happening is that the California legislature will gladly pass laws which implement new bureaucracies to address whatever issue happens to be trending. This is how Californians end up with so many line items and fees tacked on to every government transaction. You wind up with a very complicated government and some bizarre rules that seem like overkill. And, the more complex a system is the more likely it is to be inefficient and ineffective due to all the moving parts.
I have similar anecdotes. To me it seems like people who pass laws forget that they need to support and maintain them into perpetuity. At first things are efficient but long-term support can fall by the wayside.
I think some laws are passed with expiration dates. I would support more of this to reassess if people still have the will to enforce and support them.
Part of me thinks it's a feature and not a bug. The politicians are artificially creating jobs and getting a reliable source of votes by doing so. And there are also downstream jobs from supporting these laws.
To me it's dumb that the government needs to issue a sticker to know which cars are EV's or Clean Air vehicles. Wouldn't it be more simple to just know that Tesla's and Toyota Prius's are clean air cars than to require people to put stickers on their bumpers that expire every four years in order to get prime parking spaces and HOV access? Additionally, there's a bunch of paperwork involved and qualification processes based on income and other things https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/license-p...
I'm sure that this bass-ackwards system provides plenty of work though.
The reason for those stickers is that they're color coded. My Tesla allows me access to the carpool lane for 2 years and no more. It's a temporary carrot, not a permanent one.
California is this land of plenty that grew so fast that it's almost like a country in of itself. That growth happened at a particular place in time that really colored the governance, and is almost dysfunctional by design to allow everyone to function!
So you have the features of a big state, with some of the quirky weirdness of western governance (propositions, etc). I'm not an expert on California, but looking at it, it feels like a place that selected the best thing and worst thing about governance in Florida, New York, Idaho, New Jersey, Illinois and Virginia, and did all of them.
What drives up prices? Demand. What pushes people out of housing? Those prices.
NIMBYism, density restrictions, etc, are largely "universal" US policies, vs liberal/conservatism splits, so it's the demand that's the difference here between the rest of the country. Note the difference in population density between a Houston and a Los Angeles. LA just ran out of neighboring land to sprawl into first, yet the demand kept coming...
And on top of it, there's a mismatch between where people want to live and where jobs are available, so you've got homeless in CA cities and unfilled jobs in the middle of the country...
Those prices are increasingly starting to cause more and more people to leave, but still predominantly lower-and-middle-income people - and the demand and prices are being driven by the high-income or high-wealth people - so I'm not sure it'll change much.
This is more reflective of the media bubble you are living in; it’s not nearly as bad as you think. Especially if you’re into tech (say you read hacker news) any problem that exists in California (where a lot of tech people live) is a hot discussion topic.
California's a big economy. But it's not (at least superficially) outsized relative to other parts of the United States that contain similar populations.
California is overrated, and now people are seeing it. Things that were easy to turn a blind eye to before are now becoming more and more difficult to deal with: homelessness, drug addiction, forest fires, droughts, wealth disparity, rent, commutes, taxes. I've never found california outstanding or attractive, and the issues that people are starting to point out now have existed for ages. Even in 80s/90s media you can already see a lot of the issues that we're disussing. Whatever the reason, I hope people continue sticking their head in the sand and moving to CA to leave the rest of the country open for people who don't like the californian mentality
Pay might not be "too bad" in eastern Europe but it is certainly not California levels. Not sure what the whole economy got closed up means, but for the average software engineer things really didn't change economically.
I live in LA and while we have our problems, it's still a paradise state. Still 100s of cultures running all kinds of businesses and restaurants. The only thing that's a bit blech is the high number of opiate addicts that roam the streets but it's a complex problem to solve. We really need some kind of mandatory drug rehab and housing without causing individuals rights to be taken away.
I've lived in California for many years, as in 3 other states, and I can say that while the opinion that California is a "paradise state" is common among Californians, it's very far from unanimous, especially if you talk to people who don't live there. Personally, I disliked California quite a lot and I decided to leave it despite the (not too) negative impact on my career.
California is fairly racially diverse, but isn't that ideologically diverse - election results will clearly show that. I have conservative friends (both Trump conservatives and anti-Trump conservatives) who very frequently complain about the lack of diversity in the state. It's great if you are a liberal, not so much otherwise.
The weather in California is indeed good, but not for everybody. Its famed summers are very dry. If you like sun, you will love California summers, but you can get a LOT of dry days in a row. If you like a balanced mix of rain and sun, you will not like the summers in most of California. Also, because of this, a lot of the state's urban areas - especially in SoCal - is very brown and not really that pretty if you like the lush East Coast forests.
California beaches are not that good depending on what you expect from a beach. It's easy to do fun activities at the beach, but the water is quite cold and the sand isn't to everybody's tastes. Parking and driving times can also be brutal in the urban beaches. Very many people would rather go to the beaches in Florida or in the Carolinas than California, not including of course beaches overseas. I personally disliked the beaches there and only went a couple of times over the years.
Overall, I think the reason many people say California is a paradise is that it's a pretty unique state with a lot of personality (for better or worse), so if you are into the things California is good at, then California is the place for you because you won't find their particular mix anywhere else in the US.
But it remains to be seen that this particular mix of traits would be considered a "paradise" for most people.
What I'm saying above is somewhat obvious, as in "If you like California you like California". But when people make grand statements such as "this state is a paradise", one would assume that the vast majority of people who go to California would absolutely love it. But I'm not sure that's the case, especially if you include the enormous number of man-made problems we discuss so much.
Hey, I just want to say, I appreciate your well-thought out response. CA isn't for everyone but I've lived a similar life to you (lived in California, Utah, Illinois, and Georgia) and I loved everything about each place. Chicago was my least favorite due to the bitter cold in the winters but every state has some nice things to offer.
I can't imagine ever choosing a place to live based on what my neighbor's political ideology is. It's a sad reflection on the state of this country that CA is the conservative prime evil and the south is full of dumb rednecks to liberals.
It's amazing what actually going to places reveals - that there are actual human beings that live in these places, and perhaps aren't as unreasonable as twitter makes you think.
There are a lot of hand-waving, speculative answers in the responses to this question, but the reality of the answer is that it actually goes far beyond what is happening in just California.
Firstly, I think its important to note that everything you cite as an issue in California is happening writ large across the United States. Every issue you cite is repeated again and again in every productive economic center across the United States. Absurd rents/ housing prices/ CoL, devastating issues with homelessness and drug abuse, increasing devastation from climate related weather issues. California stands out as particularly addressable because for better or worse (or due to the sierras and the southern desert), California is a bit of an island unto its self.
I grew up in southern California and watched the impacts of the 2007-2009 economic collapse in real time. I was extensively involved in activism related to homelessness at the time. I watched families and communities become absolutely devastated by the economic (and resulting homelessness and drug abuse that inevitably follow) fallout from those events. To summarize, California (and the US through analogy), never actually recovered from the 2008 crisis. The families that fell during that time never really got up again. Working class (labor) families went from thinking they could support their first and second children through community college and eventually four year university, to barely scraping by or living in slow decline. The vast majority of families impacted by the 2007-9 economic collapse never actually recovered, and have basically limped along or tread water since then.
The result has been an ever increasing disparity between the rich and the poor in California. In few places is this as well displayed as in the Bay area. The amount of wealth that has accumulated there is almost preposterous; and yet, it fails to hide an utter epidemic of homelessness and the problems that accumulate in its presence.
Several in this thread cite governance issues in the state of California. I call bullshit on this. The reality is that California is a huge and complex state with more economic activity than most countries. It shouldn't surprise you that it requires a complex bureaucracy to respond to that.
Very simply, the US stopped taxing or regulating wealth in the mid-late 2000's, and in the post 2008 era made it clear it had no intention of holding any one accountable for their actions in financial markets. Almost everything you see politically, socially, and economically in the United States is a direct consequence of that era.
Its my opinion is that the US is in serious decline and on a random walk towards a failed state (if it isn't there already? how do you define a failure mode for a country?). The US is unable or uninterested in taxing wealth or its highest income earners, and as a consequence, the wealth curve has gone asymptotic. The distribution of wealth in a society is key to its stability, and as the kurtosis becomes more and more positive, people begin to lose any incentive to participate.
The solutions to these problems are quite simple and no new technology is required to implement them. Return to a 90% tax burden on highest income earners and tax wealth directly. Force billionaires to spend their money or lose it. IF they want to take their ball and go home, then they lose their seat at the playground. The US has had policies like this in the past and they've shown their effectiveness.
In regards to the specific drought issue, the state was effectively plumbed during an abnormally wet era. What you are seeing here described as 'drought' is not too far off from the historic norms. Coupled with drought, California is also seeing its wettest years on record (2017/18), but due to climate forcings, its all rain and no snow.
I think the final emphasis that I would like to place is that what is happening in California is repeated all across the United States. Climate issues, housing prices detached from reality, homelessness and drug addiction running rampant, and no ability or will from the political apparatus to respond to these issues.
Wish I could upvote this more. Just thinking back on that time and hearing from my parents about multiple middle-aged male members of their church committing suicide during that time. There were more than just economic effects for so many yet once the stock market bounced up again, things were left ignored, left to simmer until we got the craziness of the past 4-5 years. One could say the lack of accountability after '08 set the stage.
In a word, history. If you just look at the last few decades you're seeing only a snapshot of an explosion.
California (the USA state) is young, ~150 years old.
For thousands of years only ~100k-300k people lived here.
> Settled by successive waves of arrivals during at least the last 13,000 years,[40] California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000.
The Spanish only got started in a big way in 1769 or so, then...
> In 1821, the Mexican War of Independence gave Mexico (including California) independence from Spain. For the next 25 years, Alta California remained as a remote, sparsely populated, northwestern administrative district of the newly independent country of Mexico.
Then we Americans got in on the act.
> When Commodore John D. Sloat of the United States Navy sailed into Monterey Bay and began the military occupation of California by the United States, Northern California capitulated in less than a month to the United States forces.[67] After a series of defensive battles in Southern California, the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed by the Californios on January 13, 1847, securing American control in California.
But before anything could really happen gold was discovered.
> In 1848, only one week before the official American annexation of the area, gold was discovered in California, this being an event which was to forever alter both the state's demographics and its finances. Soon afterward, a massive influx of immigration into the area resulted, as prospectors and miners arrived by the thousands. The population burgeoned with United States citizens, Europeans, Chinese and other immigrants during the great California Gold Rush. By the time of California's application for statehood in 1850, the settler population of California had multiplied to 100,000. By 1854, more than 300,000 settlers had come.[70] Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.[71] California was suddenly no longer a sparsely populated backwater, but seemingly overnight it had grown into a major population center.
During the ~150 years since, California has become "the largest sub-national economy in the world" with a population of nearly 40M people.
> The economy of California, with a gross state product of $3.2 trillion as of 2019, is the largest sub-national economy in the world.[14] If it were a country, it would be the 37th most populous country and the fifth largest economy as of 2020.
All this happened in the blink of an eye, and before there was a lot of what we might call "adult supervision", in the sense that things like water supply were dealt with without deep thought about long-term consequences.
E.g. "land subsidence": We have taken so much water from the ground that the San Joaquin Valley has sunk many meters! Here's the classic photo showing the subsidence:
Odd that you blame capitalism - for things like housing that was an entirely self-created problem based on rules and regulations that prevented the free market from actually working.
As a result of the tech bubble popping greenspan lowered interest rates for 10 years to almost 0, effectively meaning banks could lend any amount of money, but also couldn't earn any money from actual interest and needed to find all sorts of ways to make a profit, e.g. repacking and selling bad loans to other banks and pensions.
I'd argue if we let the tech bubble pop properly, have a recession for 2-3 years, but keep interest rates at higher rates, it would have preventing a housing bubble.
And that's down to greenspan, and government intervention, not the market.
Government pushed for higher homeownership by tinkering with mortgages, taxes and regulations which resulted in banks issuing increasingly unsafe loans.
Every failure of capitalism is always the government's fault (as if those are separate somehow?) and any success is always despite government, not because of it. That's always the response to this kind of question.
Ha! This reminds me of being a 20-something on the East Coast during the 1990s. I remember thinking, "Earthquakes? Fires? Landslides? Police Brutality? Gangs? Riots? OJ Simpson??? Who would ever want to live in that hellscape!??" Happily I had a girlfriend at the time who was from California and she patiently convinced me it was the right place for me. I moved here in 1997 and have loved it ever since.
Don't believe all the crazy hyperbolic news - it's always overblown - and definitely don't believe the onslaught of right-wing propaganda.
California is likely the most regulated state and has the most “”socialist”” policies/laws. Not sure why they would be complaining as they are the least “capitalist” state in the US.
The laws and regulations they pass are directly contributing to homelessness and lack of housing.
>There's a similar number of people crammed into a similar geographical area on the east coast.
The east coast has unlimited supplies of fresh water. California does not. The east coast megalopolis is also situated on a coastal plain, with a deep hinterland unconstrained by any mountainous geography. California crams a similar amount of people into a tiny sliver of coastal land in between the mountains and the sea, surrounded by some of the driest deserts in the world.
Well, the decline in precipitation is due to changing air circulation related to climate change. Speaking very broadly, the Southwest is likely to get drier, while the rest of the US will either get wetter or stay the same. We don't pay attention to areas with increased precipitation, although it might lead to some flooding: it's generally easier to deal with than drought. But obviously droughts are not related to the effects of locally determined economic policy in the short term (drought resilience contrasts).
What else is happening is primarily due to the fact that California's population has grown very rapidly in a short period of time. Historically, population transfers like this were accompanied by wars and massacres. By that standard, California has been relatively peaceful and successful since the end of the California Genocide.
We can point fingers at bad policies responsible for specific problems, but the overall immaturity of the political system in California is the general underlying factor. Examples include the minuscule size of the California legislature relative to its population, or the too-big counties in SoCal that were drawn when nobody lived there.
It might hopefully reduce the barrier to entry into state politics; therefore, it might increase voter attention to state politics. A major limitation of the US political system is that a lot of voters today ignore state politics and only focus on national politics. Measures that increase the chance politicians are meaningfully connected to their local community can be one way to improve that. Also, it increases the cost of buying off legislators, although this part has limits.
According to the cube root rule, the natural size of California's House of Representatives is about 340! That's a far cry from its current 80.
Drought has been part of CA's climate history for centuries.
Rents have been insane for years in most cities
Objectively false, unless by "most cities" you mean exclusively the major metropolitan areas like LA, SF, and San Diego. CA has hundreds of cities with affordable rents, some of which are even located within the LA, SF, and San Diego metropolitan areas.
Huge homeless and drugs problem in LA, San Francisco.
Yes, with the caveat that more than 50% of the homeless in LA and SF are not locals. They're out-of-staters that either came to LA/SF or were shipped here by their home states to avoid housing them. (Texas especially is notorious for this; former governor Rick Perry publicly bragged that Texas' homeless solution was to buy them tickets to Santa Monica.)
For what?
Amazing weather. Amazing beaches, and mountains, and deserts, and forests. Amazing food. Amazing people. Amazing culture. One of the world's biggest economies (as a sovereign nation, California's economy would rank ahead of India, a country of more than a billion people, Germany, the economic engine of the EU, and the UK, the former financial center of the world).
Then I see all the news from California, the whole economy got closed up, there's a massive drought. Rents have been insane for years in most cities. Huge homeless and drugs problem in LA, San Francisco. And on top of this, some of the highest tax rates in the US. For what?
What is happening to this paradise state?
And what worries me a lot is, a lot of the culture worldwide is set by people living in these conditions. Not just film, but tech now. I mean I can see why everyone in california is frustrated with capitalism and all the rest of it, but that's california... The conditions of which I've just listed.