Also a California resident here.
A lot of the banter about CA is unkind, but so be it.
What is true about CA is that it is an unkind place, no longer as much the land of opportunity as most of the rest of the US, and certainly not the place someone without specialized education and skills should consider. Its cost of living consumes its median income to the degree that the ordinary person is better off in South Carolina.
There are some industries that do well here, but most don’t and many have been deliberately driven out. There used to be a great deal of precision machining done here, for instance, and Los Angeles and the South Bay were something of an incubator for German style “Mittelstand” tech companies, but no more.
“A lot of the banter about CA is unkind, but so be it.”
I don’t take the “so be it” attitude. That nasty post was just dripping with bile. I think it’s important to remind people that they are hating on OTHER AMERICANS.
No other state engenders the kind of vitriol on Free Republic that California does. And why? California is bankrolling the entire country. The biggest economy. The best farmland. Silicon Valley, where, as I said in another post, the future of the entire planet is literally being invented right now.
I despise the politics of the Northeast. And my experience there is while you meet plenty of decent people, the number of abject racists is shocking. Way worse than the South. But do I hate them? Do I wish them out of the Union? Hell, no. They’re Americans.
And if California is responsible for its own slow-motion Mexican conquest and colonization, then New York is responsible for its attack on 9/11. And that’s simply crazy talk. Nobody thinks that. So what’s the difference between the two Ground Zeros? Why is New York the victim, while California is the one who asked for it, perpetrated it, and had it coming?
And to your point — all states have lost their heavy industry, to China and Mexico. Nobody here is making anything anymore. So why is that on California?
And why no bile directed at Hawaii, New York, and Washington, D.C. for how expensive it is to live in any of those places? Way more expensive than California.
I just don’t get it.