The recent passing of Brian Wilson caused me to look back wistfully on my former infatuation with California. To a 1980’s teenager in Georgia, California was the place of palm trees, sports cars, bikini-clad girls, and limitless possibilities. In my mind, it was the California of a Beach Boys fantasy.
In 1999 I wound my way to the Golden State to chase the Internet boom and the promise of riches so many of my peers had fulfilled — some seemingly overnight. For over 13 years in San Francisco and another 6 in Los Angeles, I hustled from one start-up company to the next. I didn’t hit any jackpots, but I started a family and made a reasonably good living.
Another opportunity brought us to Arizona in 2017. Here we made our home and launched a thriving new business. For so many reasons, the California we left behind is no longer the one that inspires hopes and dreams.
Cost of Living
For one, consider the dysfunctional governance that has pushed a comfortable middle-class life out of reach for most people in California. From housing, to gasoline, to utilities, to taxes, to childcare, to healthcare, to insurance – everything is more expensive for the average family in California than in the nation as a whole. More than any other factor, this neglect of middle class cost-of-living concerns has caused people to follow my example and decamp for more affordable lives, especially in Arizona and Texas.
We’ve certainly been happy to pocket the savings that come with lower taxes, lower prices at the pump and grocery, and an affordable house with a yard. But we were more than willing to pay a premium to live in California when it felt like it granted us a premium lifestyle. Today not so much.
Quality of Life
Recent years have shown Californians are getting a lot less for their top-dollar cost of living. Most visibly, homelessness is hitting record highs. 24% of the nation’s homeless now live in California, despite the state having only 12% of US population. More than 2/3 of these people are unsheltered, overtaking public spaces and creating public health and safety hazards, which local governments refuse to reel in. People using parks and sidewalks as bathrooms and drug bazaars have made neighborhoods intolerable for everyday residents. No one wants to push a baby stroller past an addict shooting up or a mentally disturbed person shouting obscenities.
While you don’t want to fight for space with these people on BART or Los Angeles Metro, is it any better behind the closed doors of your private vehicle? If you can dodge the encampments under freeway overpasses, good luck keeping your alignment in check. California lays claim to some of the worst road quality in the nation, driving up costs and creating more painful commutes. Not that these challenges are keeping drivers off the road. Despite exorbitant public expenditures on maintenance and repair, roads in Southern California and the Bay Area remain gridlocked and performance of the state’s highways ranks 49th in the nation. I certainly don’t miss the hours I spent idling my car’s engine on the 405.
All that said, people will put up with a lot to access great schools for their children. Unfortunately, there’s not much of that to go around in California either. California spends more than $18,000 per pupil each year, but has next to no progress to show for its investment. While my kids at publicly funded schools in Arizona were back in class and mask-optional in the fall of 2020, California students remained in Zoom school and fell further behind.
Business Opportunity
Ok, but with such a big economy, isn’t California still a land of opportunity? To be sure it boasts a large market, abundant natural resources, and great public and private universities that churn out a superior pool of talent. Yet California seems to be doing everything it can to shed its Golden State moniker. The costs that weigh on consumers – real estate, taxes, utilities, insurance, etc. – likewise weigh heavily on businesses, especially smaller or early-stage companies. Add to this overhead high labor costs due to an $18/hour minimum wage and mandatory sick and family leave benefits. Even when these costs can be factored into a sustainable business model, the state kneecaps entrepreneurs with the most cumbersome regulatory burden in the nation, including over 420,000 regulatory restrictions.
This framework has become a playground for plaintiffs’ lawyers, who feed off the complexity and drive up defensive legal and compliance costs, draining resources and hamstringing productive investment. The California addendum to our company’s employee handbook has more pages than the rest of the handbook combined. Who in their right mind wants to build a business with that sword of Damocles hanging over the company?
Diversity and Tolerance
Many of my California friends would scoff at these critiques. For them, the kitchen table challenges do not outweigh the core virtues of California as the beacon of progressive thinking and policy. Only California brings together extraordinary geography with extraordinary demography. In any California community, they say you can encounter a rainbow of cultures and ethnicities and a spirit of inclusion.
Perhaps on the surface this tolerance for differences rings true, but it comes with a huge caveat. California tolerance only extends as far as your compliance with the prevailing leftist doctrine. Question the urgency of global warming or the virtue of green mandates that are driving up the cost of living? You are a climate denier. Have your doubts about “gender-affirming” body-altering treatments for minors? You are a transphobe. Second guess the sanctuary city polies that undermine the rule of law and put officers at risk? You are a xenophobe. Support Israel’s self-defense against bloodthirsty jihadists? You are a warmonger and an apologist for genocide. For most of my 19 years in California, I kept my political opinions on the down low. It just wasn’t worth the stress of speaking freely.
Life in State 48
Here in Arizona, I’m no longer a conservative outlier, but I’m also among friends and neighbors who see things differently. Last fall my street sprouted as many Kamala signs as Trump banners, and that’s okay by me. I’m more comfortable having an open conversation with Arizonans because we can all give and get respect for different points of view. Of course, it helps when fewer of us are stressed out from a brutal commute or wondering how we’re going to secure affordable insurance. It helps when we can choose to enroll our children in any public school, within or beyond our home districts. It helps when we can count on the police and district attorneys to enforce the laws of our communities. It helps when the Arizona Commerce Authority supports entrepreneurs with innovation grants, educational programs, and operational guidance.
Life in Arizona is more affordable, more flexible, more welcoming, and just plain easier. We may be far from the ocean waves of a Beach Boys fantasy, but making our home in the desert has given us a second chance at the American dream.
rubenthoughts 