I recently moved to California. Before i moved, people asked me “why are you moving there, its so bad?”. Now that I’m here, i understand it less. The state is beautiful. There is so much to do.
I know the cost of living is high, and people think the gun control laws are ridiculous (I actually think they are reasonable, for the most part). There is a guy I work with here that says “the policies are dumb” but can’t give me a solid answer on what is so bad about it.
So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?
It’s all nonsense created by right wing extremists. California is an amazing state for a huge, long list of reasons.
The people here are amazing (not you, LA) and we have some of the most beautiful beaches, coasts and forests in the world.
Okay, let’s start with the environment: most of California doesn’t have enough water, and they’re not doing anything to directly remediate that. Environmentally, a lot of the farming is going to be a disaster when the consequences of climate change really set in. Most of SoCal is a desert, but you wouldn’t know it from the expanses of lawns that you see in wealthy enclaves. (…But you’ll figure it out really fast when you try to go mountain biking without puncture-resistant tires.)
The gun control policy is awful, and likely illegal in light of the last few SCOTUS rulings. But here’s the kicker: California has a Democratic supermajority, and they could do things about the underlying conditions that lead to violence in general, and don’t. They’ve consistently failed to seriously address the economic issues that are closely tied to violent crime, things like economic inequality and poverty, criminal justice reform, systemic racism, and so on and so forth. Instead they’ve opted for policies that make wealthy white people happy without fixing the issues.
Housing; this is where wealthy “liberals” are directly to blame. Dems say that they believe in housing that’s affordable, but wealthy elites–which are overwhelmingly Democratic in California–oppose zoning changes that would allow for high density, affordable housing. The result is shithole houses that can cost over a million dollars, studio apartments in sketchy parts of town (see point #2, above) are thousands of dollars a month, an exploding homeless population, and fuckin’ awful sprawl.
Taxation: California has long had the chance to show that it’s progressive with taxation, and to institute wealth taxes. They don’t.
Education: California still relies on funding largely through property taxes, which ensures that school districts with a poorer tax base will have less funding. Again, this is the product of wealth elites–who are overwhelmingly Democratic in California–working to oppose funding changes that would have the effect of making schools in super-rich neighborhoods less desirable, but would also improve schools everywhere else.
Public transit: California barely has it, and it’s consistently underfunded. Combined with point #3, it leads to traffic gridlock that’s famously awful in major metro areas.
Most of these problems can be solved. The problem is that Dems are being hypocritical; they have a NIMBY attitude that means that, even though they say the right things, they don’t do shit.
Housing; this is where wealthy “liberals” are directly to blame. Dems say that they believe in housing that’s affordable, but wealthy elites–which are overwhelmingly Democratic in California–oppose zoning changes that would allow for high density, affordable housing.
It’s not so much wealthy elites that are the problem here as everyday homeowners.
Because of the zoning ladder-pull people started decades ago, there’s a lot of older middle class homeowners that bought an affordable house that’s now worth millions. They’re incredibly afraid of their house losing its value because it’s probably the single largest part of their net worth, so they have a ton of cognitive dissonance over affordable housing.
They want affordable housing in the abstract, but they’re 100% opposed to anything they think might lower the value of their house. And you can’t really make housing more affordable without lowering the value of houses; they’re kinda synonymous. So they come up with all kinds of bullshit special pleading to justify NIMBY policies.
It’s not so much wealthy elites that are the problem here as everyday homeowners.
The problem is that in most of the neighborhoods that are consistently rejecting plans to build high density housing, the ‘everyday homeowners’ are the wealthy elites. As you note, they’re people that bought houses when they were affordable in an area, and their home has appreciated in value to the point of being worth millions; that does make them millionaires in the classic sense (e.g., assets worth more than a million dollars on paper).
My town recently closed down a homeless shelter because they were afraid it was ‘attracting’ homeless people and would lead to drug problems. Which, yeah, that’s true; it was pulling them into the homeless shelter instead of them living int he woods, out of sight. The homeless people are already here, and the drug problems (meth and opiates) are there too, they just can’t see them. Opening a homeless shelter? Try that in a small town, amirite?
There’s a lot of truth to this, however for public transport, there were plans to modernize the public transport until Musk derailed those plans with a failed hyperloop
The people that were elected could have entirely ignored Musk; they always had that power.
I’ve seen opposition to expanding public transport near me; Atlanta was trying to expand MARTA north (into Fulton county, IIRC), and the measure was overwhelmingly rejected by people in Fulton because it would have made it easier for “those” people from Cobb county (Atlanta proper) to move to Fulton. Certain wealthy people view public transport as something that only the poors use–rather than as a benefit to the entire public–and oppose it because of fears that it will devalue their property.
California is the target of conservative fear mongering.
Which is silly considering how many conservatives there are there. The current speaker of the House is from California.
Doesn’t matter. Cali and NYC are the epitome of librul chaos and if those places aren’t made out to be smoldering shitholes with 2.7 homeless people to every citizen the gullible nitwit voluntarily angry dopes in the party (most of them) might actually vote in their best interests
I was told California had a “one party system”, have I been lied to? 😱
Same with Chicago
Alley ways!? Ahh! I’m scared!
I lived there and made $90k a year. Lived like 50 minutes from work, still paid $2.5k per month for a 500sqft studio and qualified as low income for the area. If people making that much are considered low income, something has failed.
Was it an occupation that would have made half that amount elsewhere in the country? Cost of living and salaries typically go hand in hand. Issues of essential workers having to live far outside of where they work notwithstanding.
People who live in a much lower cost of living society could say the same thing about Americans making $30k. “If people making that much are considered low income, something is wrong” it’s all relative.
If California were a country by itself it would have the 5th highest GDP in the world, literally more than the UK or India, but 40 million people instead of 1.4 billion. It’s not that crazy.
I moved to VA and took basically the same job. I technically make less that I did in CA, but here I can actually own a home and save. California needs to do something about their CoL crisis.
California gets trotted out in the conservative media sphere as “liberalism run wild”, a place where being what they consider to be a “real American” is illegal but crime is subsidized by the state, where everything is expensive and dangerous, and homeless people have gay sex in the street. There’s an entire industry focused on filtering for the most extremely awful news they can find in a state of almost 40 million people, packaging that news as though it’s the typical experience everyone there goes through, and then blasting that news into the brains of Americans 24/7. That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.
I moved from Canada to California a few years ago and spent almost 5 years in the San Jose area. Loved California; the food, the people there, the scenery, definitely the weather. End up hating America though.
I live in the Bay Area and love all the natural beauty in all directions. We can hike a different trail every weekend during the months when it’s not unpleasantly warm or chilly and never repeat. The tragedy of it all is that it’s attached to the rest of the country, by which I mean red states.
That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.
That’s the thing. No one I’ve ever heard who says this kind of shit has ever lived here for any length of time or knows anything about the state beyond what the “news” has told them to believe. There are issues here like there are issues everywhere. So people want to focus on homelessness. Of course we have more homeless people, we have more people. We have two of the largest and most well known metro areas in the nation with an up and coming third.
The bitching takes away (maybe intentionally) from the homeless issue that is rapidly increasing throughout the rest of the country. This is an issue of inflation and greed masquerading as inflation. Of corporate property owners buying up rentals and raising rents. Of workers not being paid a living wage. Of food and essentials becoming increasingly unaffordable by the month. Of course people are losing their homes and stealing from walmart. But this is a national problem. It gets worse all over the country for the same reasons and at the same time that it gets worse in California.
But what I will say is, we do have reproductive rights. Reasonable firearms regulations. More tenant regulations that most places, though still never enough. Some cities have social worker response teams instead of sending cops to kill people having mental health problems. We have homeless outreach and a statewide homeless census. Our schools and colleges still have diversity programs and sex ed. The state provides tuition waivers and grants for low income and marginalized students. We have drag shows and pride parades. And our libraries aren’t being purged by fucking nazis. So there’s that.
The liberalism run wild concept is kinda what I’m curious about. Like what things? I know California protects abortions and has stronger gun control laws. But is that really it? There’s gotta be more actual examples
Nope. Conservatives are a simple people. You tell them something is bad because god doesn’t like it and they won’t question it.
A lot of social programs, better employee pay and benefits, legal weed. Conservatives are just jealous that their shithole backwater hick towns will never change so they point at the scary liberal boogeyman that is “Commiefornia” in some vain hope they will get noticed.
their shithole backwater hick towns
Ronald Reagan began California Gun control as a response to the Black Panthers. supported by the NRA.
Pretty broadly speaking, it’s a population center and they’ll always have a problem with those. There’s more to it than that, but fact of the matter is even if the shit they tend to latch on to wasn’t a thing they’d just find something else.
It’s just because they don’t put enough homeless people in concentration camps. That’s the entire thing. Mind you, California, like the rest of the country, still treats homeless people like they’re less than human, but the weather’s nice and the housing prices have skyrocketed in the past decade, so there’s a lot of homelessness, and therefore a greater call for mass executions.
california is the largest “sub-national” economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.
if i had to guess, the answer is “success breeds jealousy”
If anything, it should be California thats pissed off, having all its tax money go to support the failed red states and their failed policies via the federal redistribution.
I maintain that if red states want to end government handouts, we should respect their wishes, for them.
100% agree.
All accusations are confessions, and quite possibly the biggest of them all is their calling everyone welfare queens… When republicans rely on federal welfare to keep states above water so they can continue to convince those very same idiots that welfare bad and federal gubmint bad.
If its so bad, turn the faucet off and let them see how bad it really is under republican rule.
The problem is that policy hurts the poorest who have the least say in thr policy
Two words: Techbro Ethnocracy
Perhaps you should use more than two words.
Better to be concise.
It’s a left-leaning, progressive state. Everyone who talks shit about this state in anything other than the cost of living generally doesn’t have an answer because their actual reason for disliking the state is that it’s not a republican state.
There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.
Full disclosure, I’m Canadian but travel to San Diego often for work.
Downtown San Diego is not as I remember it from before the pandemic. It’s quite clear to me that California is struggling with a massive mental health and addiction issue. The cost of living compounds these issues and amplifies the worst in people. Even “normal” working class folk are quick to anger and explode at the slightest inconvenience and people just do not give a shit about each other. I pin it to everyone being stressed out because they live paycheck to paycheck and the future is always uncertain.
Things that I think could help: universal healthcare, increased public housing, and the execution of the sackler family.
There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.
The Napa Valley liberals are staggeringly arrogant when you meet them in person.
Antennas
You’re selling sexism
You’re selling racism
You’re selling anything you get your fucking hands on
An understanding, you got a plan in a
Presentation to advertisers who demand it
When you plan that
Your antennas are pointed in the right direction
You make a deal in any situation
So with no evacuation
Let California fall into the fucking ocean
Oh they talk to ya, oh you’re the town man
High profile Hollywood scum-bag
It’s a done deal, signed and sealed
Deal makers making it all happen
When you plan that
Your antennas are pointed in the right direction
You make a dead in any situation
So with no evacuation
Let California fall into the fucking ocean
Let California fall into the fucking ocean!
Let California fall into the fucking ocean!
Let California fall into the fucking ocean!!!-Tim Armstrong/Rancid
Expensive, will be hit hard by climate change, subject of right wing propaganda portraying it as a hive of removed debauchery(lgbt people and abortion rights)
It’s endless soulless suburbia interspersed by twelve-lane traffic jams, what’s there to like?
It’s not “endless suburbia.” It does end — the state is just huge!
You can hop on a bike in downtown San Francisco after breakfast, and end up in the middle of nowhere in the Mt. Tam watershed before lunch.
And if that’s too urban, go hike the Lost Coast. Or check out Yosemite.
SF is the only part of the state that can be considered an actual city and the actual city part of it is confined to 3 square miles.
Yeah but in the end I still have to go back to suburbia.
Granted pretty much the same applies to the whole of the US and Canada, either you’re in the wilderness or suburbia but CA is especially egregious because you’d think with that kind of density they would’ve thought about building, you know, a couple of four-storey apartment blocks or something somewhere. The kind of density that enables public transport to work.
I can go surfing in the morning, hike beautiful mountains in the evening, and experience the TJ nightlife, all in a single day. The next day I can go offroading in ocotillo or take a stroll through a park bigger than NY’s Central Park. idk, my section of California is heaven.
San Diego?
close 🏆
The fucking ridiculous natural beauty everywhere? I live in the most soulless of the soulless suburbs of Los Angeles and if I left my house right now and didn’t stop for anything I could be standing beneath the biggest tree in the world in just 4 hours. Or if I want to see the oldest trees in the world I can go roughly the same distance and do that instead. I could be at the trailhead to climb the highest peak in the contiguous US in 3 hours and on my way there I would see an ancient basalt waterfall where obsidian litters the ground, the Grand Canyon of the Mojave where semiprecious gems flow out of the mountains, lakes, rivers, the Sierra Nevadas, Death Valley, it’s ridiculous. Every fucking state has traffic and suburbs but I’ll go to my grave arguing that we can’t be beat for scenery.
What if I want to walk five minutes to a cafe? There’s trees there, too. Fuck biggest and oldest and grandest if I can’t be there without incurring one of those twelve-lane traffic jams.
lol welcome to America.
I live here and it’s all propaganda. From my lefty perspective there are no shortage of things to criticize about California, but most of the criticism in the mainstream comes from the right and more or less 90% of it is made up.
Example: last year San Francisco elected a DA who said that they wanted to reform the justice department, used Black Lives Matter rhetoric, etc, and the conservative media sphere drummed up a propaganda campaign against them and against San Francisco generally that convinced everyone that a spike in crime had occurred even though there was no actual evidence that crime had gone up (and even if it had the new DA hadn’t been in nearly long enough to be the cause of it). This resulted in that DA getting recalled and replaced and everyone outside the state thinking that San Francisco is Mad Max, even though statistically things are basically exactly the way they’ve been for the past couple of decades.
The real problems are what other people said, things are expensive and the cities have a lot of inefficient sprawl which makes the cost of living worse and starves the city governments of funds for social services. We’ve been staring down the barrel of a water crisis for like two decades and the state government is seemingly incapable of taking any action on it, we spend way too much money on cops, the government is completely captured by the local industries, the only thing we seem capable of doing to homeless people is systematically brutalizing them - but none of those problems are unique to California.
