As we head toward the end of another year, I’m remembering several friends who left in 2022 for cheaper states. And I’m thinking about several other friends who are planning on leaving in 2023 or 2024.
The fact is California is difficult, often impossible, to live in if you’re in the middle class. The wealthy can afford to live here, although they often leave too, because that 13.3 percent top income tax rate really digs in, especially when they dream of moving to zero percent Texas, Florida, or Nevada. The poor suffer, but California has a generous welfare state, so it’s easier in many ways for low-income residents than living in another state.
It’s the middle class, the rock bed of any society, that bears the brunt of California’s brutal living conditions—amid the sublime weather. There are three areas where the middle class is hammered: taxes, high housing costs, and a broken education system. Let’s look at them as we peer toward 2023: a little winter organizing of our political mentalities.
Here are the five states after California with top income tax rates above 9.3 percent: Hawaii at 11 percent; New York 10.9 percent; New Jersey 10.75 percent; Oregon 9.9 percent; and Minnesota 9.85 percent.
- California 9.30
- Oregon 8.75 (and no state sales tax)
- Minnesota 6.80
- New Jersey 6.37
- New York 5.97
- Hawaii 5.86
But those states have much lower taxes for the middle class. And it’s easier to be in the middle class in those states because most things, especially taxes and property, are cheaper.
I came to California just before that, in 1987, and rented a nice one-bedroom apartment in Huntington Beach for $600 a month. In 1993, I moved to a nearby place and the price was about the same, $700 in the late 1990s. The rent crept up over the years to $1,000 in 2010, still tolerable. Then the rent started soaring, and I had to move. Today, those two places rent for $2,429. My income sure didn’t go up by four times in that period.
- Hawaii $636,451
- Massachusetts $422,856
- Oregon $361,970
- New Jersey $335,607
- New York $321,934
- Washington $409,228
- Nevada $301,753
- New Hampshire $296,163
- Florida $ $245,169
- Texas $207,301
Which makes me wonder why I’m still living here. These two things—the highest taxes and second-highest housing prices—make it almost impossible for the middle class to accumulate capital to buy a home, start a business, or even raise a family.
No wonder several of my friends left because they didn’t want their kids indoctrinated. A couple of other friends with toddlers are planning to leave in the next couple of years before the kids go to kindergarten.
Private schools are an option but cost money the middle class doesn’t have. Homeschooling is another option but that takes dedication some families don’t have, and is next to impossible if both parents are working—itself virtually a necessity in this expensive state.
Conclusion: Adios, Middle Class
It’s simply impossible to be in the middle class in California, especially if you have kids. It’s no wonder more people keep leaving. At the Chapman Forecast, Doti provided the latest data, “Net domestic migration has been negative since 2011,” meaning more people leaving for other U.S. states than came here.“For the most recent year, 2021, it was negative 280,000.” If that keeps up, during the 2020s decade, California would lose 2.8 million people to other states.
Gov. Gavin Newsom touts his “California Way” as a contrast to the policies of the conservative governors of Florida and Texas.
“They’re doubling down on stupid, and we will not follow their path, we’re going in a completely different direction,” he boasts. But the out-migration shows the state’s middle-class residents themselves are going in a completely different direction from Newsom—out of the state.