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 absolutely has a lot to do with Right wing/Republican propaganda, California, Chicago, and New York represent everything they hate so they constantly use both states and that city as negative talking points.
One point they constantly make is that New York City is a crime riddled hellhole, meanwhile NYC has one of the lowest crime rates in the entire country, and one of the lowest murder rates, it’s just a massive city with a massive population and everyone there has cameras so when stuff happens it goes viral. Also the Red States tend to have much higher crime and murder rates.
All in all this is usual conservative/right wing tactics, they constantly want to isolate and segregate themselves from other ideas, and aren’t afraid to take over where other people live to exclude the people already living there. This is why Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah have similar campaigns about “don’t California my state” and by “California” they mean don’t bring your “liberal/socialist/Communist/woke/progressive/democratic” outlook to their states, because they don’t want to be responsible for cleaning up the racism and various other problems that the red states seem to have adopted as their identities.
Also I know quite a few conservative Californians and New Yorkers that recently moved to Texas and Florida, and as conservative as they thought they were they actually talk about moving back to where they came from because of how it is in their new states, except for the fact that they moved to the new states because they can afford so much more than what they could in California.
Overall my point is, if you consume right wing media then you are conditioned to hate blue states, and particularly those blue states are Cali, NY, and the city of Chicago as well as DC, I’m not saying these places are without flaws, but I am saying that the propaganda and disinformation about those places has amplified the hate towards those places and their residents.
I believe this is true. Progressivism is just one thing I like about the state. It’s also gorgeous. Big Sur, San Francisco, Yosemite, sequoias, numerous vineyards, craggy beaches, and scenery that can transition from valley to plains to desert to mountains in just a couple hours’ drive.
California is the target of conservative fear mongering.
As California goes, so goes the nation. Conservatives don’t like this.
If it wasn’t for the high cost of living, I’d move to California as well. Still hope I’ll make it there some day.
Poor republicans are butthurt
Same reason people don’t like Florida. Lots of targeted negative media coverage. Conservatives think California is a shithole where homeless people are everywhere and people don’t get arrested for robbing a store at gunpoint. Non-conservatives think Florida is full of hard-core Trumpers who want to ban all gay people from existing and is like a redneck 1984.
Reality is more nuanced. Both states are very large populations with a diverse makeup. But nuance is hard to convey in headlines. I personally live in Florida and love it, even though I hate DeSantis with a passion. The people here make up for the shitty politics. And the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the other side.
But nuance is hard to convey in headlines
This 100%. I’d also like to bring up that population distribution has a lot to with it. Across America, rural communities tend to agree with each other and urban communities agree with each other. A person living in Miami and someone living in LA would probably agree with each other politically than someone from LA and someone living in a rural community in North California.
The main issue comes from whether or not the majority of the state’s people live in cities or the countryside. I live in a mid-size city in TN and almost everyone I know, including our
governormayor and local leaders, are very left-leaning. But because most of the state lives outside the cities, it doesn’t really matter. Sorry, this comment turned into a rant haha 😅Are you trying to say Governor HVAC is left leaning? What are you talking about?!
Whoops, meant mayor. No, fuck Bill Lee for a hundred and one different reasons
Yeah wtf is this dude smoking? Bill Lee isn’t on the Trump or DeSantis level(yet). But he’s wayyy right leaning. Outside of Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville this state is as red as it gets.
Yeah meant to say mayor, I corrected it in the original comment haha my bad
Ah yes, makes sense then.
Is there an alternative to DeSantis?
Not this last governor election but the one before it was a close race between DeSantis & Andrew Gillum. Gillum lost by a very small margin although some months after the election he was caught having sex with a male prostitute in a hotel room smoking meth. This was obviously unpopular, especially since he espouses family values and is married with kids.
The next election DeSantis won more or less unopposed and the electoral map of Florida looked like one of Reagan’s maps where he painted the whole country red.
DeSantis’s popularity seems to be dropping like a rock, however. A) he’s trying to challenge Trump, which has been a bad idea for any Republicans who want to be elected in the last few years B) he’s engaging very heavily in culture war which is financially hurting Florida and people are starting to see it
He’s trying to fight Disney, one of the main reasons Orlando is a major city. He’s passing anti-illegal legislation where Florida has some of the highest rates of illegals and Latinos in the country - essentially guaranteeing price increases and inflation for all sorts of manual labor intensive services. Ie construction, landscaping, etc
And of course housing prices are skyrocketing with Florida having the highest inflation in the country, topping 10% last year.
And while Floridians are struggling to pay rent, his messaging is focusing on “anti-wokeness” and he’s turning down federal aid money.
Essentially DeSantis had a chance to be relevant nationally and he’s throwing it all away while also pissing off his entire base in Florida. He thought he was untouchable and his overconfidence, I think, is backfiring.
So going forward what will happen in Florida? It’s hard to say. If there’s a good candidate from the Democrat side, they have a chance. However Gillum did stain the Dem reputation for a while in Florida.
Covid brought a lot of “anti-vaxxer / anti-lockdown” migrants so the Republicans have a good ~400k highly politically motivated new voters. However like I said, the Republicans policies are hurting Florida economically and that’s never a good way to win elections.
There really isn’t a left or centerist champion in Florida right now to my knowledge, but two people to keep an eye on might be the former agriculture commissioner and the new mayor of Duval county.
They watch a lot of Fox Entertainment.
I don’t live in California but visit the bay area frequently for business. Here’s a typical experience:
Depending on travel budget, I’ll either stay at a motel for $400/night, or a regular hotel for around $800/night. It’s not my money, but it’s still ridiculous to need to file a budget exception to stay at a Motel 8.
When I arrive in the evening, I try to watch Netflix but the cellular bandwidth is so shitty I can’t even watch at the lowest resolution, and the hotel wifi isn’t much better. I boot up a wifi scanner and find nearly a hundred different base stations in range all stomping on the spectrum, so I just play Switch for a while and go to bed. When I get up in the morning, I go down to the free breakfast which is plastered with Prop 65 signs indicating the food served at the establishment is known to the state to cause cancer.
On the walk to the convention center, I have to sidestep multiple people strung out on who knows what. A person riding by on a bike yells “FUCK YOU” to all passers-by, including myself. Multiple vans with oversized LCD screens advertise a variety of AI and Blockchain startup “solutions”. One company has set up a 20-foot display on a parked “van” opposite the convention center to advertise to conference-goers despite being unaffiliated with the conference. Conference staff call the police but apparently the van has a permit, and it’s public parking so there’s nothing they can do.
When I arrive, I’m stopped by staff because I’m carrying my own demo machine. They tell me their union contract requires that all hardware setup must be handled by contracted staff. I leave my machine in the area they designate, and fill out the form indicating it must be ready in room 1005 by 2pm for my presentation.
After attending several morning sessions, I walk to find lunch. A local sandwich shop doesn’t sell Diet Coke or Doritos, but they do have cucumber water for $8. I decide to go to CVS for my Diet Coke fix, but almost every product is locked behind a door. Overhead speakers announce “Security, walk the floor” as several people enter the store, casually stuff their pockets full of M&Ms, and walk out without paying. Nobody stops them, including the security guard who just watches them until they leave. I decide to skip the soda.
When I return to the conference center to prepare for my presentation, my demo machine is there but is not connected to any of the room equipment. The contractors who plug in the machines are apparently different than the ones who move the machines, and they are on strike.
On the way back to my hotel, someone asks me for money for a bus ride. I ignore them, but they begin following me. I tell them no but they follow me back all the way to my hotel, where a security guard turns them away.
I get my bags and head to the airport. My driver thinks he’s in the Indy 500 despite being in stop and go traffic. It’s about 78 degrees and humid inside the terminal - The AC is off because PG&E is having capacity issues due to wildfires, which were incidentally caused by downed lines (owned and poorly maintained by PG&E).
This feels like a copypasta
It may seem like it, but I promise this is wholly original, authored by me just now while taking a shit.
Shitposting?
Precisely.
You sound like you are reviewing all of california like its a hotel/motel. I just would like to say that i work San Fransisco, and you are correct. it sucks. I drive 120 miles away past sacramento every weekend to escape that place. but smaller cities and towns in california can be very nice.
The company I work for is based out of San Diego (I’m from the deep south) and they fly me out there occasionally for work. I also lived there for about a year a little over 10 years ago. Downtown San Diego is somewhat similar to what you mentioned but the rest of it is basically paradise. Granted, I couldn’t afford to live there (especially the paradise parts) but none of the stuff you mentioned has been a problem to me as an out-of-towner.
I rented a car so I can’t comment on taxis, but I’m willing to bet that’s not a California specific thing. In fact, if you’ve ever been to Seoul or Busan you would probably wish you had a California driver. The nice hotel I stayed at was around $250 a night I believe and it was around some nice shops that I visited for food. Never saw anyone steal anything and don’t recall seeing stuff locked up (at least not nearly as much as I do where I’m from in the south).
I went to Pacific beach, didn’t see anyone (noticeably) on drugs and ate a wonderful dinner and ran around on the beach at night with some coworkers. We also went to a Padres game (they lost) and had a blast. Parking sucked and was expensive. There were a good bit of homeless people packed downtown and it wasn’t nearly as nice as it was 10 years ago. The worst thing about it is it’s super expensive and things are really far a part and car centric, but I don’t know any place in the US that’s not really like that.
However, I absolutely believe every thing you said. I don’t doubt any of it. In fact it sound vaguely similar to my experience in San Fransisco many years ago. California is a massive state, like, super duper big. Some parts are better than others but overall I think it’s a pretty sweet place if you could afford it. There are definitely places I’d choose to live over California but it wouldn’t be too far down the list.
The bay area has degraded significantly in the last ten years. There are ardent defenders claiming it’s not that bad, but it’s one of the few places in the US that you can regularly see human shit on the sidewalks.
I was homeless in SF and Marin County a while back in the early eighties. Spent many years in southern California. Now 20 years in Georgia. That was a lot of back story to say I was expecting crazy and annoying homeless people and feces everywhere when I went back on vacation three years ago. I couldn’t find anything like that, to the point we took a few walks specifically to search it out.
From what I’ve observed it has to do with the fact most people do not know how to party, something California knoes how to do very well.
Never been to California, don’t hate it, but don’t exactly have a super high opinion of it as an outsider either. My personal reasons are
Much of the state has had a water crisis to one degree or another for most of the last century. That seems like a pretty clear sign that the environment can’t really sustain the amount of people and industry it has, and yet we keep at it.
A lot of the state is prone to earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and other crazy shit. Again, seems like a less than ideal place to live.
The climate really isn’t for me, I personally like cold winters with snow, that’s not really a thing in a lot of California.
I’m from the northeast, I happen to like the overall vibe of people from this part of the country, west coasters have a different vibe, not necessarily a bad one, but it’s not one I want to surround myself with full-time. Some (but not all) people get really snooty about the East vs West Coast thing, and while it definitely goes both ways, and I’m certainly biased because my experience is pretty much entirely from the east coast perspective. It seems to me like when that happens west coasters activity dislike the east, whereas the east is more indifferent towards the west.
Politically I overall tend to agree with the trends in CA in broad strokes, but it feels like they go weirdly overboard in some things (like the prop 65 warnings) and take weird half-measures in other. That’s not a unique California problem, but because they’re such a political and economic powerhouse their missteps have bigger ripple effects than most other states. I think overall most of the country could stand for our laws and policies to be more California-like, but we shouldn’t be holding California up as some sort of gold standard to copy exactly, and I think that’s a distinction that is lost on some people.
It’s also expensive.
California has more snow than any state but Alaska IIRC.
Yeah good fucking god it bothers me how people just think California is just Palm Springs and LA. It’s has the most micro-climates in America and the Sierras get shit tons of snow.
I mean you have to live on a mountain to have a cold winter. Thats not exactly realistic.
Basically all of California is on, around, or surrounded by mountains so discounting that is just being arbitrary about what counts. Is California like the plains states? No, but it has snow, it has ice, and it has a lot of it and in more places than you think. The deserts even get snow and can be colder than anywhere.
Cold winter isnt when it snows sometimes. Its a type of climate. Which doesnt exist in california except at the tops of moutains.
I was in the Mojave desert last winter and it was 15° F not including wind-chill. Cherry picking some irrelevant map doesn’t work. I know where I live, and certainly know it better than you and your terrible Google-Fu. I’m leaving this slap fight now. Enjoy your real winter ☃️ 💪
You did it; you confused weather for climate. Next, you can disprove global farming by watching it snow.
It only gets down to like 40-50⁰ where I live. I drove an hour north to my buddy’s house and took the fam to spend some time in the snow.
Or I could drive 2 hours to the ocean.
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.
As a tourist from Canada, my wife and I drove through parts of the US for about three weeks in 2018, and we absolutely hated California. It was our least favourite part of the trip. It is clear that LA is struggling with massive homelessness. The roads were the worst ones we encountered on our road trip. The beaches were littered with garbage, to an amount that we just found disgusting. They were also incredibly overcrowded, though that is what happens in heavily populated places. We went to Disneyland, and that was nice. However, we did cut our California stay short and moved on.
Now, I don’t have many places to compare California to, as we were only in about four states. However, we have travelled extensively in Canada, where we have been to most of the provinces. We enjoyed the states and provinces we have visited. However, California is definitely in our no-no zone for vacations.
Again, this is a tourist perspective. I do not really know what it’s like to live there.
You visited the worst parts. No wonder.
Try Yosemite, Oakhurst, Morro Bay, or Monterey.
Went to San Francisco and California in general for the first time this past May. I’ve grown up in the suburbs on the East Coast with a very conservative family.
They were all losing their minds when I told them I was going to go. They were convinced I was going to get 16 times a day.
The city and state as a whole was absolutely beautiful (visited Yosemite and got engaged). There was so much to do that I had never experienced as someone who grew up in the suburbs. There was only one time we felt a bit uncomfortable but we were aware of the situation and had plans to get out if need be.
We rode public transportation (the horrors!) the whole time without any problem.
I know it’s not perfect by any means but to me the problem is fear mongering by the likes of Fox
I don’t know that California is super disliked (maybe politically if you’re conservative?) - I think its among the great states in the US and while I may have some political disagreements with what California has done (Prop 13 for one has distorted the housing market despite good intentions) and it has awful mass transit and zoning, its the vast majority of the US west coast. It’s got amazing scenery, food, people, and its an economic powerhouse. I am from NY, and love NYC, but its not nearly as important to the country as California and the economic disparity between urban and rural isn’t nearly as bad as in NY state.
Everyone is just bringing up economic reasons, but none of them are really policy directly. The economics are a good reason to hate California, but they dont have policies that really drive this. The real key is that California is a massively desirable place to live. The beaches are only second to Hawaii. The weather is arguably the best in the world. Some of the most beautiful state parks. It’s one of the only places you could surf in the morning and snowboard in the afternoon. Supply is limited, and demand is high, so you get high prices.
As for actual policy, California has a progressive mindset. This leads to a lot of progressive policies. The problem tends to be that the policies that get enacted are often designed to sound progressive, but actually just limit the citizens without fixing the problem. Examples:
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Coal rolling was bad for the environment. So they outlawed a large amount of car tuning. This causes damage to the car culture and a good hobby for a large number of citizens.
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Water, being a limited resource in California, made it finable to water your lawn or wash your car in a drought, even though farming and business use 96% of total water usage. Normal people water usage isn’t going to solve the problem
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Gun policies that dont allow suppressors, short barrel rifles, etc, but in reality, the vast majority of gun crime and accidents are all based around handguns.
I have oversimplified all of these, but essentially, California is very good at making policies that annoy their citizens, but dont solve the problem just to make it appear like they are doing something.
Coal rolling was bad for the environment. So they outlawed a large amount of car tuning. This causes damage to the car culture and a good hobby for a large number of citizens.
the “downside” you state is actually a benefit to society
Water, being a limited resource in California, made it finable to water your lawn or wash your car in a drought, even though farming and business use 96% of total water usage. Normal people water usage isn’t going to solve the problem
i do agree that agricultural and business uses are a bigger deal than lawns or car washing in terms of water use, and the fact that almonds are farmed in california is a goddamn travesty, to name but one example. however, lawns cause or exacerbate way more problems to a much greater extent than you probably realize, and reducing how many of them we have, ideally in favor of local ecology if not just denser land use patterns, is a much greater benefit than you’re giving it credit for. california’s zoning codes have also been improving in this regard, though they’re still… not great. point is that i do agree with you that that policy doesn’t focus where it’s really needed, but it’s also not as useless as you think.
Gun policies that dont allow suppressors, short barrel rifles, etc, but in reality, the vast majority of gun crime and accidents are all based around handguns.
a fair critique, but also, far fewer californians per capita die to gun violence vs. the national average. i’m sure other factors play into that, but it certainly isn’t evidence that the policy hasn’t helped.
now, i’ll give you two examples of my own. early in governor gavin’s term, he was given a bill called “complete streets” that would have dramatically improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure throughout the whole state, and he vetoed it. and that sucked major ass. but then he went ahead and signed sb50, which forces all municipalities in the state to build some actual goddamn housing, and specifically dense housing near transit. and i’m a huge fan of that. san jose has really jumped on it with gusto and has actually had their average rent drop somewhat, although the bill is still relatively new and its benefits aren’t likely to really be felt for a while yet. my main criticism here is how tons of the cities here are so nimbyed out the ass that it took the state government’s intervention to do literally anything about the housing crisis.
there is much to critique about california, but not all california critiques are created equal.
California sounds like if you bought a European Union from wish.com
I can’t afford a real EU, but I’d gladly move my poor southern self to California if I could. Wish.com is good enough for me.
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California is cool, I just don’t like LA. It’s dirty, crowded, has traffic 24/7, and everything is expensive just to name a few reasons.
Granted i only spent 10 days there in March last year (our air bnb was in Silverlake), but I fuckin loved it. Not so much Downtown, didn’t spend any time in Hollywood either.
