California is expensive for a reason and that's because so many people want to live there.
California has it's problems, especially with the homeless. However, California can and should improve.
Conservatives solution to California's problems will not solve it. Cutting taxes and regulations will NOT lessen poverty. If that was the cases then states like Mississippi and West Virginia would have the lowest poverty rates in the country (they don't, they are the poorest states).
Better solutions need to be made. No California is not being "turned into Venezuela" as many conservatives suggest but it's not the 100% problem free utopia that many liberals envision. More work needs to be done.
"Conservative" solutions didn't seem to harm California while it was becoming the California "everyone wants to move to."
Tbf, a lot of California's problems have their roots in Republican policies like Prop 13, NIMBYism from both conservatives and liberals, and unwillingness to to raise the gas tax to maintain roads. Not to deny the state has major problems – low housing stock being first and foremost – but I think a lot of the developments of past couple years have been encouraging. All of the candidates for governor were pretty adamant in the need to build millions of new units. Admittedly the proposals have been underwhelming, but I do think Scott Weiner's proposals show that the Overton window is shifting wrt significantly downsizing zoning and local control laws in housing. There have also been a lot of encouraging referendums in LA on homelessness and public transit referendums and you're starting to see signs progress on the former. The state also managed to pass a gas tax increase to fund road maintenance and hopefully that survives a referendum in November.
So, yeah, the state has a lot of major problems and there should be some more self-reflection among liberals for why it became the way it did, but imo there are reasons to be optimistic about the state's future at least in comparison to other states with similar issues.
That's because of Hollywood. Hollywood is the main thing people moved to California for. If Hollywood didn't exist then I'm not so sure about that statement.
A small subset of people moved to LA because of Hollywood, but it was primarily because of good weather, cheap and plentiful land (lol), and other larger, stronger industries (manufacturing, aerospace, oil). The state's problems are rooted in the fact that the people who moved here effectively tried to close the door behind them. And considering the state has an outflow in domestic migration, I guess they were successful in a way?
Also consider that California gives $60 billion more to the federal government than what they get in return. All that money could easily pay its pension and debt costs.
Poll
