I misread you, fixed my comment. But I'm still confused, what is not good about the business climate? It is the #1 GDP in the country, #5 GDP per capita, larger than all but 5 or 6 countries in the entire world. Home to a huge number of companies in the S&P 500 like Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Chevron, Intel, Walt Disney, HP, Cisco, Oracle, and the list goes on. Why haven't they moved to other states?
What, specifically, is bad about the business climate in California? And I'm talking about things that can't be easily refuted with basic facts.
The sentiment is as old as the gold rush and it’s nonsense. I’ve heard people proclaim the end of business in California since the day I moved here and the only notable example I can think of in 30 years is Tesla moving their HQ… and they just announced this year that they’re building a new “engineering HQ” in California anyway.
A lot of the downsides that people like to complain about California like regulatory burden, bureaucracy, and high taxes are mostly true, but until housing cost skyrocketed in the last decade none of that mattered to most people. The vast majority of California’s problems stem from unbalanced supply and demand across a number of goods and services.
Ever since the budgetary woes of the 2000s, the state government has really turned it around and with all the laws tackling the housing problem passed in the last few years, California is going to keep on trucking just like haters gonna keep on hating (which they should, we’re overpopulated enough as it is).
The bureaucracy is exaggerated, too. Every large municipality and state has it. California isn’t unique and the idea that they are an extremely high tax state is also bunk (nobody seems to make a stink on the national stage about the high taxation status of Minnesota, Rhode Island, or New Jersey, 3 of the 9 states with higher overall tax rates than California).
California is just a political target by a certain party that fumbled their previous dominance of elections in the state and remains butthurt about it, and they can make the entire state into a scapegoat because they know they’ll never control the state again anyway. https://www.ocregister.com/2019/12/02/the-decline-and-fall-o...
The taxes also vary widely depending on your circumstances. Rich people complain loudly for obvious reasons but everyone I know who’s done that found the difference to be far less significant, or even negative since they needed to pay more for private alternatives to state services. There is a difference but it’s not what popular mythology would have you believe.
There’s also a huge life stage variation: subsidized pre-k of aftercare, for instance, are either worth nothing or a hefty amount depending on whether you have small children. A big one I’m hearing about from extended family is elder care - once someone can’t safely drive everywhere, living in a minimal service area is not saving money, and I think we’ll hear more about that as the boomers who retired somewhere scenic get a bit older.
> they know they’ll never control the state again anyway.
California is the state of Schwarzenegger, Regan, and proposition 8. Like every other state, it's an archipelago of blue cities in a sea of red. Democrats are in power today; do not mistake that for forever. I don't think Republican party's current strategy of badmouthing California at every turn is going to earn them votes needed to flip the state; but their strategy in the US House of Representatives is an even more spectacular failure. Rather, the party's lack of coherent strategy seems to be the source of its manifold failures today. I do wonder what a post-Trump Republican party will look like, but it will come, and I wouldn't presume to predict its future.
Democrats (and Republicans) need to understand that the majority of immigrants lean conservative but the Dems have successfully captured them. If Repubs would position themselves differently they would be a natural option for those fist gen families.
> Democrats (and Republicans) need to understand that the majority of immigrants lean conservative but the Dems have successfully captured them
Trump improved among Hispanic voters by roughly 10 points between 2016 and 2020 [0] - and in some areas his improvement was a lot bigger than that - e.g. some heavily Hispanic border regions of Texas saw Trump improve his vote by over 20 points
(Of course, much of the increase of support among Texan Hispanics is strictly speaking not immigrants, rather people who have lived in the area since back when it was still part of Mexico-but I’m not sure if that’s a significant factor or just a quibble.)
Similarly, there is evidence that the GOP may have significantly improved their share of the Muslim vote over the last few years [2]
