Bye Bye Soy Lattes!

There are some pretty red counties in California – drive north well past San Francisco or inland towards any of the larger agricultural regions, and Trump rules. Farmers overlook their need for undocumented farmworkers, many believing that California’s antipathy for immigration restrictions, demands to keep state and local law enforcement from helping federal authorities identify those undocumented aliens are downright unamerican. Staggering state and local taxes, from property and sales tax to income tax, compound some of the highest levels of unaffordability for home ownership, and now even rental properties, in the country. Red tape, environmental regulation and nasty traffic round out the list.

Sarah Parvini, writing for the November 7^th Los Angeles Times: “Just over half of California’s registered voters have considered leaving the state, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for The Times… Republican voters were nearly three times as likely as their Democratic counterparts to seriously have considered moving — 40% compared with 14%, the poll found. Conservatives more frequently mentioned taxes and California’s political culture as a reason for leaving than they cited the state’s soaring housing costs.”

There are blue states, like Washington, and red states, like Florida and Texas, that have no personal income tax. Washington more than makes up for it with property and sales taxes, but there are nice places in all of these tax-free states to buy property for a reasonable price. Biotech, healthcare, hard and soft tech and energy sectors are robust… green in Washington, not so green in Texas. And strangely, for the most part, larger cities in the red states, particularly those with international airports, tend towards blue while the countryside tilts red. Texas and Florida slide into purple now and again, but Washington, particularly the coast, is pretty blue.

If lots of fine restaurants, tons of sport and cultural activities, in nice weather, are your choice California is expensive but worth it. “We just don’t “do winter except at our ski resorts!” But if you are straining at the pocketbook and believe immigration is clawing away at the job market, California is not particularly going to make you smile. Unless you are a surfer!

“Between 2007 and 2016, California lost 1 million residents to domestic migration — about 2.5% of its total population, according to a 2018 report from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. Texas was the most popular destination… A 2019 relocation study by Texas Realtors found that 63,175 Californians moved to Texas in 2017, while California was the top destination for Texans to move — nearly 41,000 relocated here.

“Despite overall out-migration from the state, California has been gaining people with higher incomes. The Bay Area has absorbed most of the influx of those residents… Over the last decade, the Legislative Analyst’s Office report said, the state added about 100,000 residents with household incomes of $120,000 or higher. About 85% of those higher-income earners moved to the Bay Area counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara…

“Academic specialists say that though it’s easy for people to talk about wanting to move to like-minded communities — or to ‘sort’ themselves politically — it’s not clear how often their migrations are based on politics alone.

“‘Actually moving is much more high-cost,’ said Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard University. ‘That doesn’t mean some won’t eventually move, but the evidence that people move solely based on politics is low.’… Most people, he added, care more about the quality of schools, affordable housing and the overall quality of life when they consider a move.

“Clayton Nall, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, said it’s “very possible” that the Republicans who want to leave California may decide to move for the reasons Enos noted — such as affordability — while blaming Democrats for those problems they see in the state.

“‘But it’s important to put in context that they are not the only people who are leaving,’ Nall said. ‘Their reason may not be the main reason people are leaving California.’… Indeed, the Berkeley IGS poll found that 82% of the 18- to 29-year-olds considering leaving the state cited housing costs as a reason, as did nearly 80% of 30- to 39-year-olds.” LA Times. When $1 million buys you an average of 800 square feet in San Francisco, where $3000/month gets you a closet, unless you’re pretty sure about a lucrative future… yeah… time to move. But remember, if you want red, virtually all the large cities in Texas are already blue… maybe gerrymandered into red. Sooner or later… And as for those soy lattes, you can get ‘em all over Texas these days!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and except for political diehards, moving to another state is seldom based on the political culture, no matter what people say.