Do the Democratic policies have a huge role in CA being expensive? If yes, what are they and does the Democratic party want to implement them in other states?

45 comments

  2. Nah California is expensive cause there so many people concentrated in the cities there

  4. There has been a large amount of California’s moving out of California over the years.

    However not all go to red states. Washington is an example of a blue state many Californians have moved to.

    Simply put, there are states, mainly in the sun belt, and Mountain West, that have seem high levels of people moving in. This naturally drives up cost of living, especially housing.

    People aren’t just moving from California, there are people moving out of a lot of northeastern and rust belt states as well.

    People focus on California since it’s the largest state and for western states, it’s a common source of people moving in.

  5. California is expensive because housing isn’t being built and the two major population centers have run out of room to build extensively since they’re sandwiched between ocean and mountains (vast oversimplification).

    Also a lot of “Californians” moving aren’t Californian natives.

    Also also most urban areas in any state are Democratic.

  6. Californians moving to Texas voted more conservative than native Texans

  7. I would bet that the environment of California is a larger influence on California cost of living than anything the state government has legislated.

    It’s one of if not the biggest agricultural producers. Silicon Valley is there. The film industry is there. There’s a bunch of military bases. Not to mention all the ports.

    Lots of people want to live there. That’s why it’s expensive.

  8. Two things

    1. California has a massive population of people who moved here from other states, so I don’t think it’s entirely fair for other states to be upset when Californians move to them

    2. A lot of people leaving California are red voters dissatisfied with the lack of any Republican political power here, so even if they’re getting Californians moving to their states, those Californians likely vote the same way they do

  9. Well at least in Montana the Democrats twice tried to run a chick from Berkeley, CA (Kathleen Williams) and one of her promises was to ban AR-15s. She gets beat twice by the likes of Greg Gianforte and Matt Rosendale. All 3 are from out of state and out of touch with what Montana used to value.

  11. All of the fellow Californians that I know that have moved to places like Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Tennessee are hardcore conservatives.

  12. When I lived in Tennessee everyone from California was a hard core conservative who was there to avoid paying taxes and send women back to the middle ages.

  13. Most people I know that moved away from California recently tend to be Republicans so that sounds wrong to me.

    The other people I know that moved away did so because their company relocated to a state like Texas for whatever tax breaks, labor laws, or other business considerations made moving operations attractive. If Texans (or whatever state) don’t want an influx of Californians relocating with their companies, they need to tell their politicians to stop trying entice California companies into moving.

    I always find it funny to hear people from the rest of the country complaining about Californians moving in and making things expensive because things got expensive in California from decades of people from all over the country moving here.

    I also think “Californians are moving here” in most instances is just “People are moving here” and Americans are more likely to be from California than they are any other one state. States that border California are likely to be an exception to this.

  14. Lots of people from Southern California move to Arizona, Phoenix specifically where I live, mostly to escape the high cost of living in Southern California, some maybe for the political climate but 9/10 would tell you it’s about the money.

    For the *most part*, the people I know that have moved here from SoCal are not hardcore democrats and *mostly* are in the middle politically and skew conservative by CA standards.

    A LOT of people, *especially* older folks here, blame Arizona’s shift from hard red to purple on the California transplants. The real answer for this change is two fold:

    1. the voting pool is slowly moving towards the younger crowd as older folks, to be blunt, are dying and no longer voting.

    2. In an odd twist of fate The traditional conservative/republican base here has been slowly turned off with the direction of the party in recent years and don’t feel that the recent GOP up and comers (Ex: Lake) represent their traditional views (think McCain) where as the democratic candidates of late (Sinema, Kelly) are more so in the center and actually represent traditional conservative values.

    I suppose viewing the topic in another light I could say that democrat politicians in Arizona are probably closer to conservatives by CA standards, so it’s possible they’re being voted for by our CA transplants but it’s not because the transplants looking to “bring their politics with them”, they just fall in line with their views on what conservative politics should be, if that makes sense.

  15. California is expensive because they refuse to build housing. San Francisco should not look as dense as Plano, Texas, but it does. Los Angeles should resemble NYC, not a low-rise hour of sprawl. That means only the wealthy can afford to live in the inner cities, and then the price of everything else goes up due to cost and demand.

  16. California having a net-loss in population is technically true as of like five years ago, for the first time in history since literally the Gold Rush in 1849.

    California still has 12% of the nation’s population. A lot of Californians are leaving because we want to like, own a home one day, but people are still moving here in droves because we have jobs, lots of people, and sustain a massive population. For better or worse.

    This headline you speak of, its political culture war BS. One million Californian rednecks could leave the State tomorrow and we’d still have more conservatives, guns and churches than wherever your flyover State pretends to have an economy.

    The Red State Media perpetuating these headlines are often located in Orange County, part our own little Bible Belt.

  17. Policies seem not to be helping CA in terms of expense, Ezra Klein who’s a pretty prominent political commentator has a recent podcast episode about this (I can’t remember the exact title but something like “Ezra Klein $1.7 million toilet”should pull it up) Basically, well meaning policies do often end up complicating building processes of all sorts and Republican states often do better at this because they tend to favor less building regulation. Democratic goals and tools don’t always line up, basically.

    But it’s also true that major California cities have some hard geographic barriers that make it harder to build out than in some other places (San Francisco is on a peninsula, for example) and there are plenty of other factors.

  19. It’s not really even just policies. It’s California money. If you’re getting outbid on 1 million dollar homes in California then you’ll find 600k homes in Texas as a bargain

  20. Most people who leave California are Republicans IME. Or at least the vocal ones are. Although California politics are dominated by the Democrats, California by virtue of it’s population has huge numbers of Republicans. In fact the state that had the most people vote for Trump in 2020 was… California!

  21. Democrats are not moving to Texas conservatives are. California’s expensive because it has the best weather everyone wants to live there. Simple supply and demand.

  22. The people moving to FL were people from New York, mostly, and that was due to them being unhappy with Democratic policies. So it stands to reason that they would vote conservatively, not the other way around.

    I would have to say this is false, and likely people from red states searching for some other arbitrary reason to hate California.

  23. The Californians who move to places like Idaho are more conservative. Idaho has become more red over the last 10-20 years. The Californians who are Democrats move to Colorado.

    It’s not a political party issue, it’s a local one where zoning and environmental regulations (generally good) combined with NIMBYs make housing more expensive. Thus only luxury apartments or condos are built.

    Prop 13 (a measure passed when California was a red state) keeps property taxes capped at the original value so it can be more expensive to give up your home to downsize or upgrade than to stay put. There was a modification passed recently to help seniors seeking to downsize I believe.

    Higher cost of living and regulations make construction more difficult. Most projects have to obtain EIR (Environmental Impact Reports – again this is fine) and follow other rules that are more worker friendly than other states.

    The funny thing is that people move to Texas and find out that while they have no income tax, their property is taxed far higher than in California so the move often is net-neutral or worse for taxes if not for political or business reasons.

  24. Most of the sunbelt states are booming rn and seeing large population growth. These states are mostly Republican run whereas most of the in migration is from Democratic states. California gets blamed for this simply because it’s the biggest state so on a raw numbers level a plurality of the people moving in are often Californians. There also seems to be a trend of people starting to use California and/or Californians as a short hand for a style of people and progressive politics that are seen to be very cosmopolitan, arrogant, and elitist.

  25. My hometown has an average price of 500k for a house. I cannot move back home because the expats have made it unaffordable by gentrifying it to oblivion.

  26. California’s are moving to other states after likely having tried to save a 20% downpayment for a house. Likely they saved between $100k-$250k and around shocked to find that they can buy an actual property for amount of their down payment.

    Someone from Los Angeles selling an inherited, larger home in a nicer neighborhood can buy a McMansion or an actual one in a place like Arkansas or Mississippi. They will have enough money left over to invest in other properties and make cash offers.

    Basically Californians are driving prices up regardless of their politics.

  27. It’s mostly conservatives that are leaving California and other blue states.

  28. Not true.

    So there are two main reasons why the Cost-of-Living is so high in California:

    1. They produce all of their own gasoline, and because they have more stringent rules in regard to refineries, that’s why gas is more expensive

    2. Property values and rent are higher than the average in the US because a lot of people really, really like living in California, and why wouldn’t they? It’s beautiful. The weather is as close to perfect as it can be in SoCal and it’s still fantastic albeit foggy in San Francisco and the Bay area, and that’s where a lot of people live. That doesn’t even mention all the produce, and peacocks!

    The reason why the cost-of-living in a lot of places is increasing faster than others (here’s a hint, it’s going up everywhere) is due to more than just Californians moving to them. With Florida for example, a lot of people from the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic have been making their way to Florida, moreso than even California. I think that there have been surveys that show that Californians who move to states like Idaho and Texas tend to be more conservative than native Texans and Idahoans. A lot of residents like to blame Californians because they do have an advantage when it comes to home-buying. Because home prices in California are so much higher, when they sell their house they end up with more money to put down on a house than most buyers in states like Texas do. What this means is they can usually outbid people on houses, or sometimes even buy the house outright without a mortgage (a house that is worth $1.5 million in California would probably be worth $500,000 if it’s by a major metro area in Texas). Not to mention all that extra money they have tends to go into the local economy in the state, which leads to some inflation now that there’s more money in the area.

  29. California is the 4th stickiest state meaning that the native born population stays put. Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia are the top three stickiest.

  30. The people who leave California and go to conservative states are also conservatives…. The population of California is so huge, that even though they are out numbered in California, California has more conservatives than any other state. For example: Trump lost in California in 2020, but California still had about half a million more trump voters than any other state.

    The main policies that are causing the cost of living to be so high in California are bipartisan policies…. It’s the NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard)… people who block new dense housing projects. No one wants apartment buildings in their neighborhood and fight them tooth and nail…. It creates a massive housing deficit, driving home prices through the roof.

  31. CA is expensive bc it’s beautiful, prosperous thanks to liberal leaders, and everyone wants to live there.

    Conservative haters have bought into fictional narratives created by Fake Fox & co., where CA is some sort of dystopian hellscape bc it’s not conservative.

  32. Red states bragging about getting businesses to move there from blue states, and then shocked that people from blue states follow the work.

  33. No truth at all. Increase in population is increasing costs. I live in Florida and the influx of people moving here is straining the state.

  35. In my experience a lot of people who moved from California to Montana are super right wing.

  36. In northern Colorado it’s Texans and Floridans hand down. Few Californians are actually here

  37. It’s not so much the politics, that’s long term over possibly decades changes that can raise COL and taxes. It’s more the influx of immigration driving up housing prices and increased sales of goods with price increases plus the fear of losing jobs to said immigrants. If those immigrants bring business that create jobs no one cares but if they come to get cheaper housing raising the cost of housing and looking for work competing with locals for jobs then you get the angry reactions.

  38. Californians drive up COL in other areas mostly by moving there with California money and overpaying for houses, which raises the cost of housing overall and prices locals out of the market.

  40. I moved cuz it was close-ish and i already moved states before so why not again

  41. I could imagine in towns like Bozeman, MT that was historically VERY cowboy – the influx of rich Californians has impacted their way of life a bit regardless of the politics.

  42. A quick Google search shows that very many people moved from California and Texas to Colorado, with a large uptick especially during the pandemic. COL has gone up, I can hardly afford groceries, I have exactly 0 hope of ever buying a house, I don’t expect anything to change for the better for me if I stay here, and the state has become markedly more blue.

    This could very well be correlation over causation, I am certainly not an expert on this topic, but that has been my experience living here since 2009.

  44. I’m a member of a fairly conservative church and many people in my congregation are moving to Idaho, Utah, Texas, Wyoming, etc.

    It’s partly because they are conservative, but also largely because they can sell their 3 bedroom 1700 square foot house in California for 1.3 million and buy a veritable mansion in Oklahoma or wherever.

    My neighbors just moved to Idaho, they are renting a 3 bedroom house for the same amount they were paying for their 1 bedroom apartment.

  45. i saw a tiktok from a creator in california who was talking about this…

    apparently polling shows that people who grew up in california very rarely actually leave. the state loses a small percentage of its longterm residents every year. the people moving away from california are people who moved TO california from other places, found out that it was too expensive or they got jobs elsewhere or whatever, and then moved to the place where people complain.

    so most of the “californians” moving to the south or places with cheaper COL are like… double transplants. but they say “i moved here from california” and the residents see red.

    (no pun intended)

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