A "back of the napkin" calculation seems to indicate there is no mass exodus. On mobile, but here is the typical annual CA pop change stats for the past decade, give or take:
That's already a loss of 300K people as a one-time event, and the state is down 450K from a typical year. It's easy to come up with another 150K, it's a trivial not "mass exodus" number.
But possibly a lot of those who left were missed in statistics.
I’m skeptical about counting international immigrants here. International immigration is a function of a very specific thing, in California’s case a measure of H1-B sponsor companies. If Indians come to California so they can get an H-1B from Facebook, but their kids them move to Tennessee because of poor quality of life in California, then that’s consistent with the “exodus” theory in my opinion.
I’m an immigrant from Bangladesh and quite a few people in my family moved to NYC. It has lots of support for people with limited English skills, lots of service jobs, etc. But they moved to Long Island as soon as they got their feet under them. It was a proud moment for them when they made the move!
I also wouldn’t count births or deaths. People don’t choose where they’re born. The exodus theory is generally supported by reference to “net internal migration.” (People coming from other states minus people moving to other states.) That’s really what illustrates people voting with their feet.
It’s not really weird that immigrants start in California and then wind up elsewhere. That’s normal, and they are quickly replaced with new immigrants anyways. California (and originally New York) as waypoints in immigration before dispersal elsewhere is a very old concept.
> That’s really what illustrates people voting with their feet.
If you Google “California population”, you get a graph where Texas and California start at the same population in 1940, then you just see California absolutely booming vs the other, with a meteoritic rise in population. Finally, at the end, you see the boom taper off. If one were to just look at that graph, you’d think something like “no one goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
> I’m skeptical about counting international immigrants here. International immigration is a function of a very specific thing, in California’s case a measure of H1-B sponsor companies.
Most years, California has had more net inbound (not gross) international migration than the national H-1B cap. You are greatly exaggerating the role of the H-1B in California stats.
> If Indians come to California so they can get an H-1B from Facebook, but their kids them move to Tennessee because of poor quality of life in California, then that’s consistent with the “exodus” theory in my opinion.
Lots of California international immigration is family-based, often with sponsors who themselves immigrated and went through the whole process in CA.
What about family visas for folks from Mexico and the Philippines? I’m suspicious H1-B would even be the majority of international immigration in California.
This unfairly discounts the immigrants that California attracts , while counting folks who leave. To be consistent we must look at population growth as a whole, possibly split by age group. California will typically attract younger folks looking for work.
Wouldn't international immigrants who enter the United States in California and then relocate to another state be counted in the domestic emigrants statistic?
> People don’t choose where they’re born.
To varying degrees people choose to have children.
I think when people talk about "exodus" form California, they mean domestic migration mostly. Imagine the most extreme scenario (completely ridiculous in reality, but let's consider it for a moment) - all current California population has moved out, and then has been replaced with fresh immigrants. Would you consider this situation as "population exodus happened in California", in the same meaning as it is discussed now, or it would be more appropriate to say "nothing special happened"? I think it would be the former rather than the latter.
I don't know about these numbers. What I can tell you is that the business exodus from CA is very real. This means less jobs, or, what could be worse, lower paying jobs. I know of entire companies who picked-up and left for places like Arizona and Texas.
I personally cannot wait to be able to do the same. I want nothing whatsoever to do with California in terms of business. After decades of living here I am just sick of it. I can't make the move yet due to deep family ties that we must respect and be considerate of. My mother just passed two weeks ago. My father is in OK health but he is up there in years. Etc. As some of these ties dissolve it will be far easier to make the decision.
And BTW, this isn't about Democrat vs. Republican states. In fact, one of my potential targets is Massachusetts. CA has simply gone looney. I can't even begin to make a list of the nonsense people and businesses living here have to put up with.
I'll give you a few (of likely hundreds):
They passed a tax added to your property taxes that is a function of any surface area on your property that does not allow rain to come into contact with dirt. So, yes, your driveway, patio, pergola, etc. All of it results in an additional tax assessment. For businesses, this means the entire parking lot is now a tax liability. Installed solar panels on a structure over some dirt? You just incurred an additional tax on your installation.
I am currently helping a friend figure out the technical aspects of a business he wants to start. His initial target was Los Angeles. This business would likely bring dozens, if not well over a hundred jobs to wherever it might be located. We met with the building permit folks for LA County. They pretty much told us no less than three years for all the permits to be issued. He is now talking to people in Arizona, Nevada and Texas. He is also moving his existing company (~100 jobs) to wherever the new business will take root.
And then there's the hundred billion dollar high speed train to nowhere that isn't even a high speed train and (if I remember correctly) might not even have ten miles of track built.
The governor signed an executive order asking for 15% water conservation. At the same time we have no problem growing almonds here and providing this high-water-demand crop with all the water farmers need.
Oh, and have you heard of the County of Los Angeles Business Property Tax? No, not what you might think. You have desks? Copiers? Chairs? Curtains? Equipment? Shelving? Yes? Anything inside the building you own or lease for your business is considered "business property" by the County of Los Angeles. And, as such, you are required to pay a tax to the county. Yes, a tax, permanently, every single year, on your chairs, desks, computers, coffee machine, etc. In fact, they call it a "privilege tax" for the privilege of doing business in or THROUGH the county. Yes, that's correct, if your business isn't in LA County but you do business in or DRIVE THROUGH the county, you are required to pay this tax. For companies with lots of equipment (like manufacturers) this could easily amount to $50K to $100K per year. In other words, a few jobs.
There's a lot more. I'll stop there before my blood pressure goes through the roof.
> They passed a tax added to your property taxes that is a function of any surface area on your property that does not allow rain to come into contact with dirt
So they charge you for the externalities incurred by impervious surface cover? How is that anything but rational? Seriously, why do you deserve to add to pollution and drought without incurring any penalty for the cost you inflict on others?
Impervious ground cover is also an issue in Texas, particularly in areas fed by limestone aquifers. In some municipalities you’re simply not allowed to add more impervious ground cover without some sort of exception. The rest of your examples may indeed be ludicrous, but I stopped reading when you opened with something so plainly rational and sensical.
> And then there's the hundred billion dollar high speed train to nowhere that isn't even a high speed train and (if I remember correctly) might not even have ten miles of track built.
The planned max speed for CAHSR is 220 mph, which is faster than TGV or Shinkansen, and well beyond the threshold for "high speed".
Also, nowhere? The initial route is from SJ to Burbank. How is that nowhere? This is absurd.
> They passed a tax added to your property taxes that is a function of any surface area on your property that does not allow rain to come into contact with dirt.
Tamped earth structures. BOOM. When you make your billions, just cite @musingsole in your about page.
The business property tax is for property over $100k. I don't think many offices have that much furniture. Also, it does not appear to be true that this tax is assessed on businesses outside of la county. Just how exactly are the figuring out who is driving "through" the county? They have to send you the assessment forms.
California's larger number of domestic outmigrants tend to be lower income than the smaller number of domestic inmigrants. The people coming in are more likely to be software engineers, the people going out more likely to be the warehouse workers (or, even more likely, retirees.)
So what this tells me is based on migration alone, (since births / deaths are not indicative of intent to migrate) California has been flat at best, not counting an unknown number of international emigrants - so that number is likely lower. Given that those net immigration numbers have been dropping faster in the past couple years, we may indeed be seeing the tide turning on California immigration.
The thing about states like New York and California is the the fringes rot while everything is great in the core. The areas that are doing gangbuster business may be healthy at the moment, but other areas are dying.
I don’t know California well, but I know New York, and that upstate and western NY have been in free fall for years with some exceptions. Industry left in the 80s… cities like Syracuse are husks. Agriculture has been in decline for a long time and dairy, once the strongest ag industry, is in a death spiral as industry consolidation and subsidized fake products take over. Even NYC is not as resilient as it was… financial services pay the bills much more so than in the past.
California is obviously different, but I can’t imagine there aren’t parallels. Once the bell-weather tech giants start diversifying their physical locations that’s going to have a real impact.
Sorry, but "back of the napkin" calculations are quick order-of-magnitude type estimates based on reasonable guesses or first principles, not by looking up numbers on the web (napkin not big enough to write out URLs; maybe use envelope)
- The article says that "millionaire flight" out of California is a myth. This is mostly true and a good point.
- However, the article/research looks at outflow and doesn't find a trend but this is bad methodology. It looks like they are not factoring in the fact that less people are moving into California then had been previously even if the rate moving out isn't too different. It almost feels intentional given how clean and well-covered the data is on that.
This opening paragraph is good
>Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California than moved in from other states. This migration was not spread evenly across all income groups, a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. Census Bureau data found. The people leaving tend to be relatively poor, and many lack college degrees. Move higher up the income spectrum, and slightly more people are coming than going.
The myth (repeated endlessly here and elsewhere) is that high taxes and excessive commercial regulation are driving wealthy founders and other knowledge workers out of California. The truth is that high housing prices are driving low and middle income households out of the state.
California has much lower housing costs outside of major cities. It’s exodus is seen as unusual simply because it’s a a populous state, but rate wise it’s hardly unusual. IMO, people leaving California in large numbers is also a function of how many people move into the state because people who moved long distances once are more likely to move again.
As 2020 was a serious outlier I am sticking with U.S. states by net domestic migration (From July 1, 2018 to July 1, 2019):
Net domestic migration rate per 1,000 inhabitants: Alaska −12.96, Hawaii −9.76, New York −9.29, Illinois −8.28, Connecticut −6.19, Louisiana −5.60, New Jersey −5.51, California −5.15, skipping several places Delaware 7.15, South Carolina 10.30, Arizona 12.50, Nevada 14.03, Idaho 15.31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
It’s the territories that are seeing the fastest changes.
American Samoa –26.1, Guam –11.0, Northern Mariana Islands –15.4, Puerto Rico –14.1, U.S. Virgin Islands –7.5
I guess this is probably the story that gets repeated in places like HN which I agree is common.
However, if you ever talk to uber drivers or your waiters they will complain about how expensive California is. Or even people at parties who are in between jobs and thinking of moving to where they grew up. I guess in real life I just hear more people talk about the general cost of living argument than a than the specific anti-tech one.
Years ago (2007ish) I worked for a startup owned by a guy that relocated to Reno and had a huge property in some mountaintop country club on the edge of the city line. As we stood in the snow, looking out over Reno (where they had none) he was telling me all about how the money he saved on taxes in California 100% financed the property we were standing on. It was a very nice house... guessing about 4000 or 5000 sqft.
Many many years later I was sitting at the bar at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas eavesdropping on a conversation by a guy who started some kind of sanitation or janitorial business. He was trying to impress a woman that he was talking with, and I distinctly remember him saying he'd be eaten alive if he started the company in California, and that he was thankful for the tax situation in Nevada.
> The truth is that high housing prices are driving low and middle income households out of the state.
Also, high housing prices are allowing home-owning retirees to cash out and live the part of their life where they don't need to worry about a job quite well elsewhere.
I think part of the source of that myth is that middle-class Californians look wealthy to the middle class citizens of the more affordable regions they are moving to. Because while the cost of living is lower, salaries and wages generally are as well.
True but I do wonder if there has been a shift in primary residency among the wealthy. You have to have a residence in California if you're rich, it's just part of it.
Just my little data point but I moved into a sleepy little ID town that has a lot of people that have moved here from SoCal, and of the 5 people I asked "what brought all the way up to Idaho from California?" 4 of them commented on how expensive California was and the high cost of living. 3 of them also stated that they didn't like how things were happening in Cali.
Again small anecdotal data point but take it for what it is worth.
"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it." - Jeff Bezos
This is a tricky article because I can tell it's using the term 'exodus' and 'myth' differently than I would. It's abundantly clear there is a lot of migration out of California. Just ask Texans, Coloradans, and Idahoans.
That Bezos quote is pretty dodgy, but to address your point: Ask anyone in Denver and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Chicago. Or ask anyone in Miami and they'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Philly. People move around. I think this is a similar phenomenon to buying a car and "seeing that car everywhere all of a sudden." It's all about perspective. In this sense, data is always better than anecdotes.
If locals are leaving a place and being replaced by international immigrants then it explains the anecdotes. Everyone is more likely to know more people that left a place than moved there.
Also it will show in other stats. People in other states tell me there is an exodus there from California or New England, and their reasoning is based on differences in truck rental prices going either direction, which international immigrants don't need but domestic migrants do.
Crime anecdotes are famously totally wrong, people always say crime has gone up recently even though it's collapsed in most US cities even since 2000 or 2010.
What this actually means is that people are watching too much TV.
No, we'll tell you there's a mass exodus out of Texas and California, because that's the majority of out-of-state plates on the road in the metro area. And also the majority of out-of-state plates on vehicles that have gone into the ditch or median when it snows.
Denver sucks now. Kindly find somewhere else to go, y'all have been sending my rent through the damned roof, and companies insist on paying pre-boom salaries.
> It's abundantly clear there is a lot of migration out of California. Just ask Texans, Coloradans, and Idahoans.
Currently residing in Texas for 2.5 years now, moved from California. Yes, I anecdotally meet "a lot" of fellow NY/CA residents moving here. I also anecdotally have noticed that Whole Foods sells lots of local texan brewery beers. Are Texan local breweries on the rise in popularity or is it just that my proximity to the situation is making me thinking thats the case? (Note - I'm middle aged and work in tech, like lots of the people moving to Austin from CA/NY)
The media's obsession with California, is IMHO, hilarious. I lived there for 3.5 years. The quality of life is incredible, but that is offset by the absurd cost (and thus the economics of your work situation). This experience has, IMO, been in decline. But this is exactly how market dynamics work in a union of states. The more people leave California the cheaper (and thus sustainable) it becomes.
This is an overall good thing for Americans, regardless of where you live. Market liquidity means higher optionality.
This is very funny to read, because I had the exact opposite journey as you.
I love California so much that I buckled the popular media narrative and moved _from_ Texas _to_ California. Funnily enough, people talk about the California-to-Texas pipeline as if it's a new thing, but it's been an observed phenomenon since at least 2005, and it's a lot smaller than the media would have you think (usually net ~40k year leave CA for TX, with about 80k going to Texas and 40k coming from Texas). That is 0.1% migration, and seemingly negligible in either direction.
> But this is exactly how market dynamics work in a union of states
Which would be great if any other state had the weather and beauty of California. And California is fucking huge to boot. Not initially splitting it up into multiple states was one of the biggest mistakes in this nation’s history.
Idahoan here, previously lived in Utah. Just adding to your point. Both Idaho and Utah are becoming inundated with people from California. It's mind boggling how hard it is to find housing here. When we bought our last house we were repeatedly outbid by cash offers from California buyers.
In my current neighborhood there have been 7 families that moved in during the last 12 months. One (us) from Utah, one from Texas, and the other 5 were from California.
40 million people live in California. That’s more than any other state by about 10 million. That’s also nearly almost a sixth of our entire country.
Everyone everywhere in this country feels like it is getting inundated by Californians. Some more than others, sure.
I can see two or three cars with Cali plates right now from my stoop. More people will always be from there. I suspect this has been happening for a long time and just now for some reason people are noticing.
Have you considered that this is a national problem? Californians are snatching up the affordable homes in Utah because others from around the country are snatching up the affordable homes in California.
The issue is the labeling. It adds subjectivity to what can be just as easily communicated objectively.
"Research Shows Percentage of Californians Planning To Leave State Unchanged since 2019"
Once SF Gate adds the subjective labels: Exodus and Myth, we get focused on the accuracy of the labels. The meanings of labels evolve, and that evolution is 'phased' through society. Hence labels will always mean different things to different people, different meanings lead to different reactions and then misunderstandings and in worst cases, conflict.
I intentionally try to filter out labels for that reason.
Californians moving to Texas seems new. But for the rest of the West, California had more people than Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. Combined. A tiny % of Californians coming to town with coastal equity can upset the balance in these much smaller states. It’s a joke not joke that people sell their 60 year old bungalow in LA and buy a 20 acre horse ranch for cash in Boise.
Going out on a limb here, but sfgate.com might have some bias. It's easy for data to be measured incorrectly when there is an incentive to getting it wrong.
California is losing a house seat, while Texas and Colorado are gaining one (or two for Texas). While the census doesn't account for the difference between growth rate and migration, it seems pretty suggestive to me.
California lost a seat in the Congress while Texas gain two seats. California exodus might be a myth but there is no inflow of people while Texas is gaining more people from other states.
Anecdotal data is still data, just not conclusive data. But there is a Chinese saying "无风不起浪", which roughly translates to “If there are waves on the water, there must be wind somewhere".
We are hearing a ton of these anecdotal stories very recently about Californians moving to other states, especially wealthy, higher income individuals. My gut feeling is that there is some material shift behind it and our systematically measured data could simply just be lagging at the moment, or they are measuring the wrong things.
I do not have any data to present. I only have my personal observations and anecdotes from my peers. Which is why something seems off when this article claims the exodus is a myth when I see so many California license plates and when my realtor friend says a lot of Californians are buying up houses in the local market.
I don't claim to be a better researcher than the folks in the article but the conclusion doesn't seem to add up.
I agree. We’re encouraged to trust stats over personal observations, but stats have noise , error and bad narratives . Generally stats are picked and chosen to tell a story .
Among my friends and coworkers I’ve known dozens who left CA in the past 12 months .
Even just this morning as friend surprised me that he will be gone in a week, and I know many more who are actively looking to leave , particularly before fire season
I'll throw in my 2 cents that I can confirm the anecdote. I just moved to a small town in Idaho because my wife was from there. We found our house because several new developments are going up.
As I've been chatting with some people at church* I was told that about 1/3 of the people that attend have moved to our little town in Idaho from Southern California in the past 2 years or so. That might not seem like much, but considering that this is small town in the middle of Idaho it seemed like a pretty big deal to me. It's especially interesting to see many people who have more traditional jobs, often revolving around construction or the cultivation of potatoes interacting with many of the white collar, MBA type Cali expats.
* Note: The church I attend is a world wide church and divides it's congregations based on geographic area, encouraging people to attend the service based on where they live. This point is made to forestall the correlation causation criticism, that would imply the church I attend is particularlye attractive to people that have recently moved in from SoCal,
EDIT:
Just to clarify my wife and I did not move from Cali, we moved from Utah, because it was getting filled up with people from Cali, that resulted in prices for housing going up considerably.
> * Note: The church I attend is a world wide church and divides it's congregations based on geographic area, encouraging people to attend the service based on where they live. This point is made to forestall the correlation causation criticism, that would imply the church I attend is particularlye attractive to people that have recently moved in from SoCal,
If we are talking about movements of people between California and Idaho, we can throw in Utah as well, then there is one church that has traditionally been very strong in those three states (and much of the west). I mean, what other church is so strong in SoCal that it owns a bunch of land (enough for a few sports fields) in LA Westwood near UCLA?
If Mormons are leaving SoCal for Idaho or Utah, that wouldn’t be very surprising at all.
Here's a translation that may be useful: Just because you can't measure your epistemic error (error in your knowledge, worldview, assumptions, or anything else) doesn't mean it's not there.
In my experience it's the #1 source of errors that smart people make.
I assume this is getting downvoted because of its tone, but the sentiment is correct. The statement is nonsense. There can be wisdom in attempting to understand why anecdotes disagree with data, but the vast majority of the time it is simply a combination of selection bias and the human tendency to want to believe things that support your own worldview.
The election wins of Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit and The Liberals in Australia show that data collection really matters. Similarly the financial crisis of 2009 shows that missing data can really matter.
That's the key point of the quote:
> There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it
The thing is that Bezos has very good instincts. So he’s able to distinguish between anecdotes like “my packages are taking longer to get to me” and “Bill Gates has been tracking me through my covid vaccine.”
A (baseless) line about anecdotes - and said by someone with no awareness of the issue at hand or the research - is evidence that this entire research project is wrong?
Why do we even use research? Why don't we just run on anecdotes? There have long been anecdotes about witches and black cats, about prayers to the rain god, etc. I'm pretty sure Amazon relies on research and data.
I think the myth is self sustaining. 200,000 more people leaving than Texas makes California look 50% worse. Ignoring the larger population is easy/accidental in many discussions.
Part of the problem is that when it comes to the wellbeing of a state, financially, one person is != to one person.
If corporations and highly-skilled/high-earning labor are moving out, and low-skill/immigrant labor is moving in, then you develop a major fiscal tax revenue gap that has to support more low-income neighborhoods with the tax revenue from fewer and fewer corporations and high tax individuals.
It can also have a snowball effect where people try to sell their homes before home prices fall further, or try to establish residency elsewhere before taxes are raised more.
In a way, the more we talk about it, the worse it can get. I suppose that's why the denials are so vocal.
Housing is the real problem. I still live in the neighborhood where I grew up in Southern California. Back when I was a kid, we used to have street gangs, but they’ve all been gentrified out. They’re putting up a new housing complex in my neighborhood, and I learned that I qualify for the affordable housing units on a senior developer salary, because it’s below the median income.
Wow, so much good info in two lines of comment, love it. What you don't mention is whether you inherited or at least live in your family home.
A lot of my in-laws have lived in Palo Alto way before the boom times but are considering leaving when they retire, at that point the upsides of staying are suddenly a lot less.
Careful framing of the purported “myth” is critical:
> For one, while residents are moving out of state, they are not doing so at "unusual rates." Similarly, the research found no evidence of "millionaire flight" from California and notes that the state continues to attract as much venture capital as all other U.S. states combined, despite the recent exodus of Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.
Who is saying California is unattractive for rich people and venture capital? The people leaving are middle and lower income people.
> Who is saying California is unattractive for rich people and venture capital?
One potential source: this is a popular conservative talking point about the dangers of liberal government, and the "exodus" is often used as evidence to justify those talking points.
"See, just look at California, they implemented <liberal policy I hate>, and everyone is leaving the state". This kind of viewpoint is rampant on places like /r/conservative, and is often followed by similar mischaracterizations of life in Chicago. This always fascinates me - it seems like people are actually excited about the perceived negative forces driving people out, because they feel it validates their viewpoints about certain policies, even when the evidence to support correlation (never mind causation) doesn’t seem to exist.
I haven’t encountered much serious discourse about California being unattractive to people with means.
Edit: I’ve upset some folks with this comment. I’m curious to know how/why.
> Edit: I’ve upset some folks with this comment. I’m curious to know how/why.
Any mention of politics tends to get downvoted, but in this case, the myth is in significant part a product of a political narrative. I don't know how we can avoid the subject.
We can't talk about the Earth's orbit without discussing the Sun.
In a complex state with millions of people and perspectives, is it not possible that a large group of people from California do feel that way and do express those views when they move to other states?
The thrust of the argument is that what made California great was that it was a great place to move and raise kids in the suburbs with lots of opportunities. The changes in California are hitting those people the hardest. And those people are in fact leaving: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/09/not-the-golden-state-...
The fact that California continues to be a great destination for young single engineers, venture capitalists, and H-1B workers for whom working at a California tech company is a ticket to staying in the US at all, isn’t responsive to that argument.
> Edit: I’ve upset some folks with this comment. I’m curious to know how/why.
The "conservative talking point" mentioned is a bit of a straw man. I doubt you'd hear it much these days by serious commentators (you might hear it from an old guy in a bar or a College Republican).
You're more likely to hear right-wingers these days say that California only works for you the wealthy and well-odd at the expense of the poor and middle classes. Homelessness, petty crime, NIMBYism and even a lot of the environmental initiatives (e.g. $0.10 per plastic grocery bag). All of those things have a disproportionate effect on the poor.
M
From another source, about people leaving San Francisco:
* "Among the 50 most populous U.S. cities, 15 shrunk during the pandemic" Top three: 1) Baltimore (-1.42%), 2) San Francisco (-1.39%), 3) San Jose (-1.3%)
* Of people leaving SF: 72% moved elsewhere in the Bay area, ~20% moved elsewhere in California. The next most popular destination was Washington state, the majority going to Seattle.
That's actually much smaller than I expected for SF. 1.39% isn't really a lot at all; even in absolute number terms it's something on the order of 10,000 people.
The few people I know who’ve moved still “live” there to avoid taking a hit on compensation at review time and just changed their mailing address to a friend’s place or something.
I am a recent transplant to Southern California. In my experience, educated peers are moving to or searching for cities that provide good value based on their fiscal position. Some of them are moving to NYC or LA metros. Others are looking at Raleigh or Denver and a few Austin. What sticks out to me is how many people are relocating en masse at almost the same time.
Are you a recent transplant due to a life event like college graduation or the like? If so the correlative nature of your peers is likely not that actually interesting from a broad social perspective.
Why would you assume that? Without providing too much personal detail. I am 10 years+ of out undergrad, work for a large tech company, own property, and originally from the midwest. I consider my peer group diverse as I am a minority who grew up in a low income area but found success in college and consequently in my career.
Readit News
But possibly a lot of those who left were missed in statistics.
[1] https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265 [2] https://www.ppic.org/publication/immigrants-in-california/ [3] https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-population/ [4] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/state-and-territorial-data....
Edit: learning to format...
I’m an immigrant from Bangladesh and quite a few people in my family moved to NYC. It has lots of support for people with limited English skills, lots of service jobs, etc. But they moved to Long Island as soon as they got their feet under them. It was a proud moment for them when they made the move!
I also wouldn’t count births or deaths. People don’t choose where they’re born. The exodus theory is generally supported by reference to “net internal migration.” (People coming from other states minus people moving to other states.) That’s really what illustrates people voting with their feet.
> That’s really what illustrates people voting with their feet.
If you Google “California population”, you get a graph where Texas and California start at the same population in 1940, then you just see California absolutely booming vs the other, with a meteoritic rise in population. Finally, at the end, you see the boom taper off. If one were to just look at that graph, you’d think something like “no one goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”
Most years, California has had more net inbound (not gross) international migration than the national H-1B cap. You are greatly exaggerating the role of the H-1B in California stats.
> If Indians come to California so they can get an H-1B from Facebook, but their kids them move to Tennessee because of poor quality of life in California, then that’s consistent with the “exodus” theory in my opinion.
Lots of California international immigration is family-based, often with sponsors who themselves immigrated and went through the whole process in CA.
> People don’t choose where they’re born.
To varying degrees people choose to have children.
https://insights.dice.com/2020/10/27/h-1b-policy-how-trump-a...
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I personally cannot wait to be able to do the same. I want nothing whatsoever to do with California in terms of business. After decades of living here I am just sick of it. I can't make the move yet due to deep family ties that we must respect and be considerate of. My mother just passed two weeks ago. My father is in OK health but he is up there in years. Etc. As some of these ties dissolve it will be far easier to make the decision.
And BTW, this isn't about Democrat vs. Republican states. In fact, one of my potential targets is Massachusetts. CA has simply gone looney. I can't even begin to make a list of the nonsense people and businesses living here have to put up with.
I'll give you a few (of likely hundreds):
They passed a tax added to your property taxes that is a function of any surface area on your property that does not allow rain to come into contact with dirt. So, yes, your driveway, patio, pergola, etc. All of it results in an additional tax assessment. For businesses, this means the entire parking lot is now a tax liability. Installed solar panels on a structure over some dirt? You just incurred an additional tax on your installation.
I am currently helping a friend figure out the technical aspects of a business he wants to start. His initial target was Los Angeles. This business would likely bring dozens, if not well over a hundred jobs to wherever it might be located. We met with the building permit folks for LA County. They pretty much told us no less than three years for all the permits to be issued. He is now talking to people in Arizona, Nevada and Texas. He is also moving his existing company (~100 jobs) to wherever the new business will take root.
And then there's the hundred billion dollar high speed train to nowhere that isn't even a high speed train and (if I remember correctly) might not even have ten miles of track built.
The governor signed an executive order asking for 15% water conservation. At the same time we have no problem growing almonds here and providing this high-water-demand crop with all the water farmers need.
Oh, and have you heard of the County of Los Angeles Business Property Tax? No, not what you might think. You have desks? Copiers? Chairs? Curtains? Equipment? Shelving? Yes? Anything inside the building you own or lease for your business is considered "business property" by the County of Los Angeles. And, as such, you are required to pay a tax to the county. Yes, a tax, permanently, every single year, on your chairs, desks, computers, coffee machine, etc. In fact, they call it a "privilege tax" for the privilege of doing business in or THROUGH the county. Yes, that's correct, if your business isn't in LA County but you do business in or DRIVE THROUGH the county, you are required to pay this tax. For companies with lots of equipment (like manufacturers) this could easily amount to $50K to $100K per year. In other words, a few jobs.
There's a lot more. I'll stop there before my blood pressure goes through the roof.
So they charge you for the externalities incurred by impervious surface cover? How is that anything but rational? Seriously, why do you deserve to add to pollution and drought without incurring any penalty for the cost you inflict on others?
Impervious ground cover is also an issue in Texas, particularly in areas fed by limestone aquifers. In some municipalities you’re simply not allowed to add more impervious ground cover without some sort of exception. The rest of your examples may indeed be ludicrous, but I stopped reading when you opened with something so plainly rational and sensical.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impervious_surfacehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13619...
https://www.mit.edu/people/spirn/Public/Granite%20Garden%20R...https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/7/8/99/htm
The planned max speed for CAHSR is 220 mph, which is faster than TGV or Shinkansen, and well beyond the threshold for "high speed".
Also, nowhere? The initial route is from SJ to Burbank. How is that nowhere? This is absurd.
Tamped earth structures. BOOM. When you make your billions, just cite @musingsole in your about page.
COVID was part of this, but Boomers are also reaching dying age.
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So what this tells me is based on migration alone, (since births / deaths are not indicative of intent to migrate) California has been flat at best, not counting an unknown number of international emigrants - so that number is likely lower. Given that those net immigration numbers have been dropping faster in the past couple years, we may indeed be seeing the tide turning on California immigration.
The thing about states like New York and California is the the fringes rot while everything is great in the core. The areas that are doing gangbuster business may be healthy at the moment, but other areas are dying.
I don’t know California well, but I know New York, and that upstate and western NY have been in free fall for years with some exceptions. Industry left in the 80s… cities like Syracuse are husks. Agriculture has been in decline for a long time and dairy, once the strongest ag industry, is in a death spiral as industry consolidation and subsidized fake products take over. Even NYC is not as resilient as it was… financial services pay the bills much more so than in the past.
California is obviously different, but I can’t imagine there aren’t parallels. Once the bell-weather tech giants start diversifying their physical locations that’s going to have a real impact.
- However, the article/research looks at outflow and doesn't find a trend but this is bad methodology. It looks like they are not factoring in the fact that less people are moving into California then had been previously even if the rate moving out isn't too different. It almost feels intentional given how clean and well-covered the data is on that.
This opening paragraph is good
>Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California than moved in from other states. This migration was not spread evenly across all income groups, a Sacramento Bee review of U.S. Census Bureau data found. The people leaving tend to be relatively poor, and many lack college degrees. Move higher up the income spectrum, and slightly more people are coming than going.
Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article136478098.html
As 2020 was a serious outlier I am sticking with U.S. states by net domestic migration (From July 1, 2018 to July 1, 2019):
Net domestic migration rate per 1,000 inhabitants: Alaska −12.96, Hawaii −9.76, New York −9.29, Illinois −8.28, Connecticut −6.19, Louisiana −5.60, New Jersey −5.51, California −5.15, skipping several places Delaware 7.15, South Carolina 10.30, Arizona 12.50, Nevada 14.03, Idaho 15.31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
It’s the territories that are seeing the fastest changes. American Samoa –26.1, Guam –11.0, Northern Mariana Islands –15.4, Puerto Rico –14.1, U.S. Virgin Islands –7.5
However, if you ever talk to uber drivers or your waiters they will complain about how expensive California is. Or even people at parties who are in between jobs and thinking of moving to where they grew up. I guess in real life I just hear more people talk about the general cost of living argument than a than the specific anti-tech one.
Many many years later I was sitting at the bar at the top of the Stratosphere in Las Vegas eavesdropping on a conversation by a guy who started some kind of sanitation or janitorial business. He was trying to impress a woman that he was talking with, and I distinctly remember him saying he'd be eaten alive if he started the company in California, and that he was thankful for the tax situation in Nevada.
So I don't think this is entirely a myth.
Also, high housing prices are allowing home-owning retirees to cash out and live the part of their life where they don't need to worry about a job quite well elsewhere.
Again small anecdotal data point but take it for what it is worth.
This is a tricky article because I can tell it's using the term 'exodus' and 'myth' differently than I would. It's abundantly clear there is a lot of migration out of California. Just ask Texans, Coloradans, and Idahoans.
Also it will show in other stats. People in other states tell me there is an exodus there from California or New England, and their reasoning is based on differences in truck rental prices going either direction, which international immigrants don't need but domestic migrants do.
What this actually means is that people are watching too much TV.
Denver sucks now. Kindly find somewhere else to go, y'all have been sending my rent through the damned roof, and companies insist on paying pre-boom salaries.
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Or, you know, people generally migrate between states and Californians make up 13% of the population.
Currently residing in Texas for 2.5 years now, moved from California. Yes, I anecdotally meet "a lot" of fellow NY/CA residents moving here. I also anecdotally have noticed that Whole Foods sells lots of local texan brewery beers. Are Texan local breweries on the rise in popularity or is it just that my proximity to the situation is making me thinking thats the case? (Note - I'm middle aged and work in tech, like lots of the people moving to Austin from CA/NY)
The media's obsession with California, is IMHO, hilarious. I lived there for 3.5 years. The quality of life is incredible, but that is offset by the absurd cost (and thus the economics of your work situation). This experience has, IMO, been in decline. But this is exactly how market dynamics work in a union of states. The more people leave California the cheaper (and thus sustainable) it becomes.
This is an overall good thing for Americans, regardless of where you live. Market liquidity means higher optionality.
I love California so much that I buckled the popular media narrative and moved _from_ Texas _to_ California. Funnily enough, people talk about the California-to-Texas pipeline as if it's a new thing, but it's been an observed phenomenon since at least 2005, and it's a lot smaller than the media would have you think (usually net ~40k year leave CA for TX, with about 80k going to Texas and 40k coming from Texas). That is 0.1% migration, and seemingly negligible in either direction.
https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/2021/03/03/californians-mo...
Which would be great if any other state had the weather and beauty of California. And California is fucking huge to boot. Not initially splitting it up into multiple states was one of the biggest mistakes in this nation’s history.
In my current neighborhood there have been 7 families that moved in during the last 12 months. One (us) from Utah, one from Texas, and the other 5 were from California.
Everyone everywhere in this country feels like it is getting inundated by Californians. Some more than others, sure.
I can see two or three cars with Cali plates right now from my stoop. More people will always be from there. I suspect this has been happening for a long time and just now for some reason people are noticing.
"Research Shows Percentage of Californians Planning To Leave State Unchanged since 2019"
Once SF Gate adds the subjective labels: Exodus and Myth, we get focused on the accuracy of the labels. The meanings of labels evolve, and that evolution is 'phased' through society. Hence labels will always mean different things to different people, different meanings lead to different reactions and then misunderstandings and in worst cases, conflict.
I intentionally try to filter out labels for that reason.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/2020-census-d...
We are hearing a ton of these anecdotal stories very recently about Californians moving to other states, especially wealthy, higher income individuals. My gut feeling is that there is some material shift behind it and our systematically measured data could simply just be lagging at the moment, or they are measuring the wrong things.
I don't claim to be a better researcher than the folks in the article but the conclusion doesn't seem to add up.
Among my friends and coworkers I’ve known dozens who left CA in the past 12 months .
Even just this morning as friend surprised me that he will be gone in a week, and I know many more who are actively looking to leave , particularly before fire season
As I've been chatting with some people at church* I was told that about 1/3 of the people that attend have moved to our little town in Idaho from Southern California in the past 2 years or so. That might not seem like much, but considering that this is small town in the middle of Idaho it seemed like a pretty big deal to me. It's especially interesting to see many people who have more traditional jobs, often revolving around construction or the cultivation of potatoes interacting with many of the white collar, MBA type Cali expats.
* Note: The church I attend is a world wide church and divides it's congregations based on geographic area, encouraging people to attend the service based on where they live. This point is made to forestall the correlation causation criticism, that would imply the church I attend is particularlye attractive to people that have recently moved in from SoCal,
EDIT: Just to clarify my wife and I did not move from Cali, we moved from Utah, because it was getting filled up with people from Cali, that resulted in prices for housing going up considerably.
If we are talking about movements of people between California and Idaho, we can throw in Utah as well, then there is one church that has traditionally been very strong in those three states (and much of the west). I mean, what other church is so strong in SoCal that it owns a bunch of land (enough for a few sports fields) in LA Westwood near UCLA?
If Mormons are leaving SoCal for Idaho or Utah, that wouldn’t be very surprising at all.
The data must be wrong and all mothers must be as old as my mother.
In my experience it's the #1 source of errors that smart people make.
That's the key point of the quote:
> There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it
Why do we even use research? Why don't we just run on anecdotes? There have long been anecdotes about witches and black cats, about prayers to the rain god, etc. I'm pretty sure Amazon relies on research and data.
In dramatic contrast, in Texas, 450k left out of 28M, or 1.6%
Nationwide, 7 million people changed states out of 324 M, or 2.1%
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geograph...
If corporations and highly-skilled/high-earning labor are moving out, and low-skill/immigrant labor is moving in, then you develop a major fiscal tax revenue gap that has to support more low-income neighborhoods with the tax revenue from fewer and fewer corporations and high tax individuals.
It can also have a snowball effect where people try to sell their homes before home prices fall further, or try to establish residency elsewhere before taxes are raised more.
In a way, the more we talk about it, the worse it can get. I suppose that's why the denials are so vocal.
At least the neighborhood is allowing some amount of new housing supply, however minor, as that additional supply is vital for affordability: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-...
A lot of my in-laws have lived in Palo Alto way before the boom times but are considering leaving when they retire, at that point the upsides of staying are suddenly a lot less.
> For one, while residents are moving out of state, they are not doing so at "unusual rates." Similarly, the research found no evidence of "millionaire flight" from California and notes that the state continues to attract as much venture capital as all other U.S. states combined, despite the recent exodus of Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.
Who is saying California is unattractive for rich people and venture capital? The people leaving are middle and lower income people.
One potential source: this is a popular conservative talking point about the dangers of liberal government, and the "exodus" is often used as evidence to justify those talking points.
"See, just look at California, they implemented <liberal policy I hate>, and everyone is leaving the state". This kind of viewpoint is rampant on places like /r/conservative, and is often followed by similar mischaracterizations of life in Chicago. This always fascinates me - it seems like people are actually excited about the perceived negative forces driving people out, because they feel it validates their viewpoints about certain policies, even when the evidence to support correlation (never mind causation) doesn’t seem to exist.
I haven’t encountered much serious discourse about California being unattractive to people with means.
Edit: I’ve upset some folks with this comment. I’m curious to know how/why.
Any mention of politics tends to get downvoted, but in this case, the myth is in significant part a product of a political narrative. I don't know how we can avoid the subject.
We can't talk about the Earth's orbit without discussing the Sun.
The thrust of the argument is that what made California great was that it was a great place to move and raise kids in the suburbs with lots of opportunities. The changes in California are hitting those people the hardest. And those people are in fact leaving: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/01/09/not-the-golden-state-...
The fact that California continues to be a great destination for young single engineers, venture capitalists, and H-1B workers for whom working at a California tech company is a ticket to staying in the US at all, isn’t responsive to that argument.
The "conservative talking point" mentioned is a bit of a straw man. I doubt you'd hear it much these days by serious commentators (you might hear it from an old guy in a bar or a College Republican).
You're more likely to hear right-wingers these days say that California only works for you the wealthy and well-odd at the expense of the poor and middle classes. Homelessness, petty crime, NIMBYism and even a lot of the environmental initiatives (e.g. $0.10 per plastic grocery bag). All of those things have a disproportionate effect on the poor. M
I recently heard a low performer get hired at a FAANG company and wondered how this person managed to trick that company into hiring him.
* "Among the 50 most populous U.S. cities, 15 shrunk during the pandemic" Top three: 1) Baltimore (-1.42%), 2) San Francisco (-1.39%), 3) San Jose (-1.3%)
* Of people leaving SF: 72% moved elsewhere in the Bay area, ~20% moved elsewhere in California. The next most popular destination was Washington state, the majority going to Seattle.
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/article/Only-one-U-S-city-...