California exodus accelerates in 2022

A year ago, the exodus from our lovely state was news as we discussed here.  The trend has accelerated which should accelerate the review of the state's housing requirement numbers as noted here.  The odd thing about the faulty RHNA numbers is that no one wants to talk about them.  I have mentioned it to several electeds and a watchdog news organization and all I get is crickets.  As a city, try to ignore them and Rob Bonta will be all in your face, but question them and he's silent.  You would think when a state auditor says this about the calculations, someone would go "hold on":

“Overall, our audit determined that HCD does not ensure that its needs assessments are accurate and adequately supported. …This insufficient oversight and lack of support for its considerations risks eroding public confidence that HCD is informing local governments of the appropriate amount of housing they will need.”

If someone is saying "hold on" they are doing it quietly behind closed doors.  But this is what is occurring in California out in the open from the WSJ:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom boasted this week that his state is poised to become the world’s fourth largest economy. Perhaps, thanks to Germany’s economic struggles, but a new Hoover Institution report documents an accelerating business flight from the Golden State.

The report by Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and Spectrum Location Solutions President Joseph Vranich finds that 352 companies moved their headquarters from California between 2018 and 2021. Twice as many businesses left last year (153) than in 2020 and 2019 and three times as many as in 2018. The top destinations: Texas (132), Tennessee (31), Nevada (25), Florida (24) and Arizona (21).

California’s high top marginal income-tax rate (13.3%) punishes small pass-through businesses that pay income taxes at the individual rate as well as managers in C-suites. Manufacturers get slammed by high electricity costs from the state’s climate policies. The Mercatus Center ranks California as the most highly regulated state in the U.S.

Human capital is also becoming more scarce. The report notes that California’s net out-migration to other states increased to 277,000 in 2021 from 34,000 in 2012. Over the last 10 years, California has lost 1.625 million residents to other states—more than the population of Philadelphia. Foreign migration has compensated, but less so in recent years.

Tally that up with the layoffs and hiring slowdowns being reported at the major firms in the Bay Area, and you could say my "confidence is eroded" in the RHNA numbers that drive all of the residential building being jammed down our throats.  And the electoral response?  Raise the top marginal tax rate some more (Prop. 30) under the guise of fighting wildfires and encouraging more electric cars--like we don't already have enough subsidies and browbeating for EVs. 

Comments

[Joe]

Speaking of things that don't get much press. Check this laundry list of wildfire perpetrators out; courtesy of a little weekly paper in North Lake Tahoe--Moonshine Ink:

A father/son duo and PG&E reportedly caused the 2021 major wildfires in our region. What’s the status on these cases? And what about the professor?

The Dixie Fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres in Northern California last year and sent smoke to the Lake Tahoe Basin for weeks, was caused by a decayed tree falling on a PG&E powerline, which then remained unaddressed by staff for 10 hours. PG&E has since expanded powerline safety settings across the state and is working to underground other powerline stretches this year.

In the vicinity of the Dixie was alleged repeated arson by Gary Stephen Maynard, a former faculty member at Santa Clara and Sonoma State universities (according to The Sacramento Bee). The U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of California reported Maynard was responsible for 2021’s Cascade, Everitt, Ranch, and Conrad fires. “Some of the fires Maynard set were new fires behind the firefighters fighting the Dixie Fire,” the report included. Maynard remains in custody, with a status conference set for Nov. 29.

David Scott Smith and his son, Travis Shane Smith, are accused of reckless arson in connection with last year’s Caldor Fire, which burned 221,835 acres across El Dorado, Amador, and Alpine counties. The Smiths attended their preliminary hearing on Oct. 11 (after Moonshine’s press date) in El Dorado County.

In case CR000038 (the Butterfield fire), Ellen Lindsey Walters is charged in count one with a felony violation of Penal Code Section 451(c), arson of a structure or forest, and charged in count two with a misdemeanor violation of Penal Code Section 148(a)(1), willful resistance, delay and/or obstruction of a peace officer. The defendant remains in custody with bail set at $100,000. The next court date is Oct. 18 at 1:30 p.m.

[Everything's jake]

There are so many homeless people (addicted/mental illness) existing in the parks and BLM lands--fires are inevitable. Also, Newsom hesitated on controlled burns throughout the state which contributed to the problem we faced in the last few years.
We are a one party state and politicians do not worry about their constituents. Vote them all out next week!

[Spurinna]

So easy to fix this.
Vote them out for people who will work for their voters.

[MBGA]

“So easy to fix this”.
I-don’t-think-so.

Voting out democrats is only the first step. And it will do effectively nothing if the republican alternatives turn out to be of the Republicans In Name Only type, like we got with Arnold.

But even if we were somehow able to get people with common sense traditional values back into the elected political positions the whole government is fetid with employees that will be working against the corrective changes necessary. We will still be fighting the entrenched non elected progressive appointed-for-life judges that are sitting on the bench making our streets more dangerous, and woke teachers that will continue to indoctrinate children, and administrators that encourage that, and the teachers union to protect them, and all types of resistance from everyone who gets a guaranteed paycheck from this broken (D) system, and massive amounts of bureaucrats and public servants who work to serve themselves not the public. (it’s too depressing to try to structure that previous sentence.)

I have yet to hear a game plan for how to remove them.

Certainly voting out ALL Democrats is absolutely necessary as a first step but we will have to figure out ways to rip out those rotting the system from within if we are going to fix things. I’ve yet to hear how this can be done because it takes talking about defunding a lot of institutions, services, agencies, and government departments, otherwise without doing that those people will never willingly go away. And that's where the real fight is going to be.

But yes, never vote for a Democrat.

[Joe]

From today's news we get the funny thought that people who have been working at Twitter, get laid off, get recruited to work in SF city government---WOW!

Starting today, Twitter CEO Elon Musk is planning to cut roughly 50% of the company’s jobs, according to Bloomberg — and San Francisco Mayor London Breed is trying to recruit some of those employees to fill nearly 5,000 vacant posts in city and county government. Other Bay Area companies are preparing for mass layoffs: Ride-hailing giant Lyft is slashing 13% of its workforce, or nearly 700 workers, while Stripe — the country’s second most valuable private startup — is cutting 14% of its staff, or more than 1,000 workers, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Amazon, meanwhile, is putting a pause on corporate hires.

[resident]

Is it just me or does it seem like a lot of the residential projects in town have stalled? In the last week I have gone past at least six or seven where no work has happened in a week or two or more.

[Joe]

Dan Borenstein at the Bay Area News Group (as published in the Merc on 3/17):

California’s years of major population growth have ended, and a state forecast suggests that the numbers might peak by as early as 2030 and then start to decline.

At the turn of the century, when the population was about 34 million, state forecasters were predicting 45 million by 2020 and 59 million by 2040. That isn’t happening.

Instead, California’s population hit 39.5 million in 2020, dipped down to 39.0 million in the first two years of the pandemic and, according to data published by the California Department of Transportation, will max out at about 40.5 million by the end of the decade.

Whether it’s talk of a new BART transbay tube, keeping underutilized schools open or continuing to sink billions into high-speed rail, it’s time for local and state government officials to recalibrate. Projects that were conceived based on the assumption of an expanding California population will no longer make sense. We shouldn’t keep planning and budgeting as if the state’s numbers will continue to grow significantly.
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Time to rethink a lot of things including the "housing crisis".