Posted on 11/01/2025 5:36:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Let’s say you paid top dollar to go to a fancy, five-star restaurant, and the waiter served you warmed-over McDonald’s. Would you ever go back?
Maybe, if you didn’t know any better.
I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%.
Over the course of the year, I will pay California $2,115 more than I’d been paying in Virginia, which is hardly a low-tax state (Virginia has the 14th highest income tax burden in the country). Not only are income taxes higher, California’s sales tax is 66% higher, and the gasoline tax is almost double Virginia’s. Those are just the ones I know about.
So, I decided to look into what exactly I’m getting for the five-star cost of California’s government for basic services governments are expected to provide.
It’s infuriating. California is ripping off its taxpayers big time. Consider:
Crime: Despite having roughly the same number of police officers per capita, California has a “crime index” that is 47% higher than Virginia’s, and California has the sixth-highest rate of violent crime of all 50 states. Virginia has the 14th lowest.
Education: If you’re a teacher, California is a great place to live. They are the highest paid in the nation and have the fourth-lowest student-to-teacher ratio. But if you’re a parent? Your children are getting screwed. Eighth-grade reading, math, science, and writing scores are significantly below the national average, while Virginia’s are significantly higher. Virginia ranks 7 in average SAT scores, and California comes in 23rd.
Infrastructure: Despite having the nation’s highest gasoline taxes, California ranks in the bottom three when it comes to road conditions, with more than 25% of its roads in serious need of repair. In Virginia, just 9% of its roads are in poor shape.
Opportunity: How much economic opportunity are California’s sky-high taxes buying? None. The state ranks dead last in U.S. News and World Report’s “opportunity” ranking. And it ranks 47th in the Rich States, Poor States ranking of economic outlook.
It has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.5%, the most people on welfare, and the most homeless people.
It has the most progressive income tax yet is the fifth-worst state when it comes to income inequality. (Virginia comes in 29th on tax progressivity and 22nd on income inequality.)
It is the least affordable state for housing. Virginia is 35th.
Fiscal responsibility. Incredibly, despite the fact that California is one of the highest-tax states in the nation, it ranks No. 42 in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking for fiscal stability.
And it’s getting worse as out-of-control costs and the flight of hundreds of thousands out of the state have left yawning budget gaps. A new Reason Foundation study finds that California is almost half a trillion dollars in debt, which is more than twice New York’s. (Virginia is $35 billion in debt.)
And then there is the criminal amount of waste and fraud.
Gov. Gavin Newsom spent $37 billion to fight homelessness only to see the number of homeless climb from 151,000 in 2019 to about 187,000 today—prompting a federal criminal investigation.
The state’s Medicaid spending nearly doubled in six years, and almost one-half of that was due to free health care given to illegal immigrants.
The state lost $20 billion in COVID-19-related federal unemployment money—the most of any state.
In 2014, California voters overwhelmingly approved a $7.5 billion water bond proposal, nearly $3 billion of which was set aside to build new reservoirs. More than a decade later, not a single new reservoir has been built.
In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a $1 billion bill that was supposed to improve land management to “prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians.” In 2019, Newsom’s wildfire “strike force” said, “Over the next five years, the state will commit over $1 billion for critical fuel-reduction projects to support prescribed fire crews, forest thinning, and other forest health projects.”
Apparently, that money was completely wasted, as anyone looking at the burned-out Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods can attest.
And just this year, the state decided to dump $282 million it doesn’t have for a special election to gerrymander its congressional districts—a completely pointless exercise that will disenfranchise California voters and have no impact on the control of Congress. And then it spent another $2 million to correct a typo in its original voter guide.
So, the question I have for every Californian is: “What is wrong with you? Why do you put up with this? Why are you content to let California be a one-party state?”
Most of your leaders should be in jail, not winning reelection.
It’s true that over the past four years, more than a million more people moved out of the state than moved in. But what about those who can’t or don’t want to leave?
Why do you keep electing the same class of criminals to steal your money?
I think part of the problem is that Californians don’t know how badly they’re getting screwed, because, while everyone knows which restaurants are worth the price, it’s not easy for average citizens to make direct comparisons between life in one state and another.
I can leave the state just as easily as I came. But most can’t pick up and move. Nor should they have to. California is a beautiful state with enormous potential. Its citizens just need to refuse to pay Wolfgang Puck prices for Hamburglar-quality service.
They get what they voted for.
Preach it brother!!!!
40% of us did not vote for what most characterize as “Californian.”
The way the dnc has elections rigged, probably 70 percent didn’t vote for these corruptoid ripoff artists
I always thought people would have to shoot their way out of these kind of governments but the voters here just might be addicted to where it’s too late. All these presented facts won’t change anything.
“I could have saved 2,000 if they knew they were slaves.”
-Harriet Tubman, who saved 1,000 slaves.
—— I will pay California $2,115 more-——
The extra payment is a de facto privilege fee. The whining article author is paying a mandatory tax for the privilege of living in California
Whild dragging out a list of negatives, the positives were not mentioned. When set side by side, the positives were greater than the negatives and the $2,115 fee is thus justified /S
Well that post right HERE ought to get Californians all filled with GLEE, start a glee club and have Aunt Nancy do a jig. Those reports and numbers make about as much sense as men playing and competing in women’s sports. Karen Bass will smile for sure and copy and paste this report on her FACEBOOK page. Good for you California......
of late with ballots floating around, absurdly late counting, it’s hard to know what’s Real and what is Memorex.
Right now, there would be little reason for anyone to want to move to Calif. Now, it USED to be a great place to live, then along came Democrats & other things & ruined that. I don’t live there, although I used to way back when it was good, but I hear enough about it now that I’d be scared to go back even to visit. I do sincerely hope that Californians moving to other states don’t try to change those other states to California ways.
Y’all are pissing in the wind.
Most all decent, smart, and moral
Californians have left the state.
All that is left is the Dregs.
Dregs being Democrats and
their slaves(tax payers).
Profound statement, by Tubman.
So the question I have for the author, is why are you there?
He freely moved into this shithole of a state and then denigrates every one that is living there.
Screw the author and he should STFU.
I knew that we were getting ripped off, who was doing it, and why when I wrote that article in 2003, but I did not know the degree quantitatively. In 2010 when our family took the obligatory transnational vacation by car it was easy to see what gasoline cost and how far it would take us. What surprised me was that octane ratings were no indication of mileage. There is so much ethanol in California gas that, by the time one calculates the total cost per mile, we were paying DOUBLE what they were in Texas.
Sub-Mexico Couldn’t care less. As long as they keep getting the free stuff, it all good.
Please: what tell is the reason(s) you moved INTO the abyss of stupidity and treachery?
“I started thinking about that after I recently changed my residency from Virginia to California (for reasons I won’t go into) and noticed that my state income taxes had gone up by more than 33%.”
He didn’t quite move to California because he wanted to live there. “For reasons I won’t go into” can mean a lot of things.
6 million plus Californians voted for Trump - about the average size of many states. they added importantly to national popular vote totals. you over-generalize. it’s wrong to do so.
Somebody has to pay for all that free stuff.
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