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Why I’ll Be Leaving California
I grew up in California, left for nearly a decade before moving back a few years ago. I can tell you from experience: there’s plenty to dislike about California. However, it’s the smarmy, self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude that will finally motivate me to leave California.
In the above article, Joe Ferullo asks that those who left California for Texas return. He states that Texas laws on voting security, firearms, abortion, minimum wage, and critical race theory violate the mission statements of the tech companies that have vacated the sunshine state. Of course, Hewlett-Packard must defend late-term abortions. How could they make laptops otherwise?
When I finally leave California, it won’t be that my wife and I pay six figures in state income tax. It won’t be that despite (or because of) paying all that money to the government, we still can’t afford to buy a house. It won’t be that, as doctors, we make less in California than we would make elsewhere in the country.
It’ll be due to our smug neighbors tell us we are lucky to pay insane rent for a house with a leaking roof and a rodent infestation (we actually got a good deal considering the alternatives). It’ll be to escape the “tenant advocates” who don’t understand why draconian rent control and tenant protections drive up rents. It’ll be the NIMBY homeowners who refuse to allow new construction, perpetuating discrimination and a housing shortage while proudly displaying a “Black Lives Matter” sign in their all-white neighborhood.
It won’t be the human feces on my front doorstep. It won’t be the aggressive homeless who assault my wife and expose themselves to my daughter. It won’t be piles of syringes next to the drooling addict passed out at my office door.
It’ll be the self-righteous public health officers that insist they care about the homeless, the drug addicts, and the mentally impaired while refusing to actually provide any meaningful treatment or housing. It’ll be the shrill leftists insisting we confiscate private property and redistribute even more to the poor.
I won’t leave because private school is the only option for my kid. I’ll be leaving because of the sanctimonious school board that is more interested in renaming schools than re-opening them. I’ll move because our Governor lies to us about the differences in public and private school rates of in-person teaching.
I’m no economist, but I’ve read enough Hayek, Friedman, and Sowell to understand why the cost of living is so damn high in California. That won’t be why I leave, though. I’ll leave because the Marxists smugly tell me about class struggle and greed.
I’ll leave because they openly state that they will eat me first.
Published in Culture
Liberty is quite important to me. I already admitted in my second sentence that living in a big city almost always means the Democrats will be in charge. My point is that not everything else that comes with big cities is inherently progressive. It’s just correlation, not causation. You make the point above that having fancy wine stores or even just the ingredients for avocado toast (which is what? Bread and avocados?) at your grocery store is cause for concern. I dispute that. I don’t think that being a conservative means eating like the residents of a nursing home.
Rolling blackouts etc can’t be good for someone who’s trying to make podcasts and stuff.