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?

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Okay, let’s start with the environment: most of California doesn’t have enough water, and they’re not doing anything to directly remediate that. Environmentally, a lot of the farming is going to be a disaster when the consequences of climate change really set in. Most of SoCal is a desert, but you wouldn’t know it from the expanses of lawns that you see in wealthy enclaves. (…But you’ll figure it out really fast when you try to go mountain biking without puncture-resistant tires.)

    The gun control policy is awful, and likely illegal in light of the last few SCOTUS rulings. But here’s the kicker: California has a Democratic supermajority, and they could do things about the underlying conditions that lead to violence in general, and don’t. They’ve consistently failed to seriously address the economic issues that are closely tied to violent crime, things like economic inequality and poverty, criminal justice reform, systemic racism, and so on and so forth. Instead they’ve opted for policies that make wealthy white people happy without fixing the issues.

    Housing; this is where wealthy “liberals” are directly to blame. Dems say that they believe in housing that’s affordable, but wealthy elites–which are overwhelmingly Democratic in California–oppose zoning changes that would allow for high density, affordable housing. The result is shithole houses that can cost over a million dollars, studio apartments in sketchy parts of town (see point #2, above) are thousands of dollars a month, an exploding homeless population, and fuckin’ awful sprawl.

    Taxation: California has long had the chance to show that it’s progressive with taxation, and to institute wealth taxes. They don’t.

    Education: California still relies on funding largely through property taxes, which ensures that school districts with a poorer tax base will have less funding. Again, this is the product of wealth elites–who are overwhelmingly Democratic in California–working to oppose funding changes that would have the effect of making schools in super-rich neighborhoods less desirable, but would also improve schools everywhere else.

    Public transit: California barely has it, and it’s consistently underfunded. Combined with point #3, it leads to traffic gridlock that’s famously awful in major metro areas.

    Most of these problems can be solved. The problem is that Dems are being hypocritical; they have a NIMBY attitude that means that, even though they say the right things, they don’t do shit.

    • ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      There’s a lot of truth to this, however for public transport, there were plans to modernize the public transport until Musk derailed those plans with a failed hyperloop

  • bouncing@partizle.com
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    1 year ago

    It sort of depends on where you are, but in San Francisco and Los Angeles, the homeless problem is noticeably worse than almost anywhere else in America. It’s bad.

    An ex of mine lives in a pretty posh part of LA (Crestview). She works constantly and really hard to afford to live there. Now there are people literally shooting heroin on the street outside her home and to take her toddler to play at the park, they’re basically walking around the bodies of people high/sleeping.

    I mean, I’m as anti-drug war as they come, but that’s no way to live and the police really should clear it out. Even in the poorer parts of most other cities, that’s not something you see.

    • gonzo0815@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      As far as I understand, the problem stems from the fact that places like skid row provide infrastructure to help homeless people, so more homeless move there to get at least basic healthcare, food etc.

      If all larger cities did that instead of repressive measures, the problem should spread among them, making single places less problematic.

      • bouncing@partizle.com
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        1 year ago

        Well, that’s always been the case with Skid Row, though it might be debatable which came first – the homeless encampments or the aid agencies. And for that matter, there were Hoovervilles in the Great Depression. In any city in America, there are transients milling around the shelters, which is why there’s so much NIMBYism over developing new shelters.

        But what’s going on in California probably has more to do with the fact that LA and San Francisco tend to be very tolerant of the homeless encampments and provide generous aid, thus inducing demand. The homeless population is soaring across America for various reasons, but California is a desirable place to be homeless: better aid, better climate, softer police, etc.

        Maybe California’s big cities really are more humane and generous, but at this point it’s to the detriment of livability in those places.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s more that a lot of people move out from California and trash-talk it to anyone who will listen. This happens with everywhere, but because CA is so populous it has more people doing this than other places.

    Though, IMO, the weather sounds terrible to me.

    • juliebean@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      the weather where? it’s a big state, with quite a lot of variation. there’s a huge difference between san francisco, bakersfield, and truckee. i think most people could find some local weather to hate, but i suspect most people can also find somewhere to appreciate. unless you just want tropics or arctics or something similarly extreme i guess.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The weather is one of the largest reasons people migrate to california.

      Even if your homeless, its of the few states where you could be outside year round and not die due to the more extreme points of weather that you would experience in mamy other states

      • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Exactly. I prefer more variety in my weather. I need the highs and the lows, the sun and the snows, the days when wind blows, y’know?

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Just one example: the state made sale of new internal combustion cars illegal at a certain point in the future, at a time when the electrical grid is unreliable.

    This is a way of trying to use government power to fight global warming.

    But it hurts people. It’s a state where the general philosophy of “sacrifice poor people to save the planet” is being enacted in government policy.

    • zer0nix@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Are the poor buying new cars? With a greater supply of evs, the poor will buy used evs which require less maintenance, other than new batteries that can be financed.

      EDIT: to be fair, you used to be able to buy a used foreign car for $500 (foreign for reliability) and even the cheapest ev (with actual usable range) costs 10 times as much, mostly because of the battery. The fuel costs are lower but the up front costs are higher.

      • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I agree with your edit. Those below the poverty line shouldn’t/can’t finance an EV battery. Combustion cars can be purchased for ~$500 and are usually fixable for only a few hundred dollars with enough time and tools. Most engine problems are more expensive in labor than in parts, so almost anyone can fix for cheap with YouTube tutorials. If all else fails, junk yards are full of parts, including engines and transmissions.

        Even if EVs may have better reliability, when it comes time to sell it, someone in poverty can’t afford to buy and fix it. The raw materials in the battery are worth too much, and the batteries don’t last forever.

        People may not have (or have access to) banking, financing, etc and shouldn’t need to finance everything in their life. Financing is like a tax on the poor.

        Hopefully these things change in the future, public transit improves, we make combustion cars cleaner, or batteries get cheaper, but right now it’s the poorest that will be paying most for this environmental crisis.

  • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Antennas

    You’re selling sexism
    You’re selling racism
    You’re selling anything you get your fucking hands on
    An understanding, you got a plan in a
    Presentation to advertisers who demand it
    When you plan that
    Your antennas are pointed in the right direction
    You make a deal in any situation
    So with no evacuation
    Let California fall into the fucking ocean
    Oh they talk to ya, oh you’re the town man
    High profile Hollywood scum-bag
    It’s a done deal, signed and sealed
    Deal makers making it all happen
    When you plan that
    Your antennas are pointed in the right direction
    You make a dead in any situation
    So with no evacuation
    Let California fall into the fucking ocean
    Let California fall into the fucking ocean!
    Let California fall into the fucking ocean!
    Let California fall into the fucking ocean!!!

    -Tim Armstrong/Rancid

  • huginn@feddit.it
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    1 year ago

    As a very left leaning individual who does not like California my reasons basically come down to all the benign neglect of the homeless (leaving people to rot in the streets with their fentanyl addictions isn’t progressive, assholes) the militant oppositions to building housing anywhere (progress is being made but it’s like pulling teeth) and the huge focus on performative laws that effect 0 actual change.

    … Notably these are all problems in other states too. Most of them just use police to lock them up instead. Not better.

    But California rubs me the wrong way because they act smug about it.

    • Melllvar@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Notably these are all problems in other states too. Most of them just use police to lock them up instead. Not better.

      They don’t always lock them up. Sometimes they put them on a bus to California.

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    California gets trotted out in the conservative media sphere as “liberalism run wild”, a place where being what they consider to be a “real American” is illegal but crime is subsidized by the state, where everything is expensive and dangerous, and homeless people have gay sex in the street. There’s an entire industry focused on filtering for the most extremely awful news they can find in a state of almost 40 million people, packaging that news as though it’s the typical experience everyone there goes through, and then blasting that news into the brains of Americans 24/7. That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.

    • arcrust@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      The liberalism run wild concept is kinda what I’m curious about. Like what things? I know California protects abortions and has stronger gun control laws. But is that really it? There’s gotta be more actual examples

      • PorkRollWobbly@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Nope. Conservatives are a simple people. You tell them something is bad because god doesn’t like it and they won’t question it.

      • ChronosWing@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        A lot of social programs, better employee pay and benefits, legal weed. Conservatives are just jealous that their shithole backwater hick towns will never change so they point at the scary liberal boogeyman that is “Commiefornia” in some vain hope they will get noticed.

    • ZzyzxRoad@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.

      That’s the thing. No one I’ve ever heard who says this kind of shit has ever lived here for any length of time or knows anything about the state beyond what the “news” has told them to believe. There are issues here like there are issues everywhere. So people want to focus on homelessness. Of course we have more homeless people, we have more people. We have two of the largest and most well known metro areas in the nation with an up and coming third.

      The bitching takes away (maybe intentionally) from the homeless issue that is rapidly increasing throughout the rest of the country. This is an issue of inflation and greed masquerading as inflation. Of corporate property owners buying up rentals and raising rents. Of workers not being paid a living wage. Of food and essentials becoming increasingly unaffordable by the month. Of course people are losing their homes and stealing from walmart. But this is a national problem. It gets worse all over the country for the same reasons and at the same time that it gets worse in California.

      But what I will say is, we do have reproductive rights. Reasonable firearms regulations. More tenant regulations that most places, though still never enough. Some cities have social worker response teams instead of sending cops to kill people having mental health problems. We have homeless outreach and a statewide homeless census. Our schools and colleges still have diversity programs and sex ed. The state provides tuition waivers and grants for low income and marginalized students. We have drag shows and pride parades. And our libraries aren’t being purged by fucking nazis. So there’s that.

    • BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I moved from Canada to California a few years ago and spent almost 5 years in the San Jose area. Loved California; the food, the people there, the scenery, definitely the weather. End up hating America though.

  • DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 year ago

      My conservative family still asks if I’m safe here in Seattle because they “hear so much about it on the news”. They still think Seattle is just always being with protests and the libbrerl government is just running the city into the ground.

      Which Seattle and most cities have problems, all cities have crime, but no more than usually. It’s just that people live in cities. Per Capita crime in a big city can and is around the same of a rural area, but people don’t think in terms like per Capita.

      But fox news loves to spin that to keep rural people afraid, keep them thankful for their backwards laws and ideas. Because what really happens when you move somewhere like Cali? You meet people from different backgrounds and religions and suddenly your views might be challenged a bit

      • Triasha@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Crime in rural areas is, on average, higher than in cities, per capita.

        Vermont is safer than large cities, but that’s never what the right wingers are talking about when they say rural.

  • clara@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    california is the largest “sub-national” economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.

    if i had to guess, the answer is “success breeds jealousy”

    • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      If anything, it should be California thats pissed off, having all its tax money go to support the failed red states and their failed policies via the federal redistribution.

  • PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Car-centric, sprawling concrete jungles define most of California. I hate those things thus I hate California. Additionally their water management policies are using a resource that should be reserved for the citizens of the state are instead diverted to grow non-native crops for a handful of rich fuckers.

    California is what late-stage Capitalism looks like.

  • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Politicals, wokeness, crime, shit on the roads, heat, shoplifting, crazy people, etc.

      • Milk@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        Know those annoying people that force you into accepting gay, say you’re a bigot if you don’t wanna date a trans girl and can’t take jokes? Those are woke people.

            • panopticon [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              Sir, I read the news every day and I checked the news just now, and I see news about the Niger coup, the Amazon climate summit, cluster munitions being deployed in Donetsk, and something about a soccer championship. Nothing about accepting gay. No jokes either, just serious business. Where are you getting your news from?

                • panopticon [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                  1 year ago

                  Sir, my main concerns are how to pay my rent and set up my career in the near future. I just got done doing some research on what kinds of mask to wear at my job to protect from the occupational hazard known as air pollution from diesel engine exhaust. I do not sit idly doing research on trans, bigot acceptance, or gay jokes, or whatever nonsense your liberal media is telling you to fixate on. Are you sure you’re not the one who needs to live in real life?

  • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Right now, it’s because Californians are moving to [insert right wing state] and turning it left wing.