[HN Gopher] California exodus is just a myth, UC research projec...
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California exodus is just a myth, UC research project finds
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-07-08 21:36 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| cjsplat wrote:
| US census data says about 650k people left California between
| 2018 and 2019, out of a population of 39M, or 1.6%
|
| In dramatic contrast, in Texas, 450k left out of 28M, or 1.6%
|
| Nationwide, 7 million people changed states out of 324 M, or 2.1%
|
| https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/geograph...
| fumar wrote:
| I am a recent transplant to Southern California. In my
| experience, educated peers are moving to or searching for cities
| that provide good value based on their fiscal position. Some of
| them are moving to NYC or LA metros. Others are looking at
| Raleigh or Denver and a few Austin. What sticks out to me is how
| many people are relocating en masse at almost the same time.
| maxclark wrote:
| "Other findings in the UC San Diego survey of more than 3,000
| respondents include"
|
| I really hate polling and surveys.
| rayiner wrote:
| Careful framing of the purported "myth" is critical:
|
| > For one, while residents are moving out of state, they are not
| doing so at "unusual rates." Similarly, the research found no
| evidence of "millionaire flight" from California and notes that
| the state continues to attract as much venture capital as all
| other U.S. states combined, despite the recent exodus of Hewlett-
| Packard and Oracle.
|
| Who is saying California is unattractive for rich people and
| venture capital? The people leaving are middle and lower income
| people.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Who is saying California is unattractive for rich people and
| venture capital?_
|
| One potential source: this is a popular conservative talking
| point about the dangers of liberal government, and the "exodus"
| is often used as evidence to justify those talking points.
|
| "See, just look at California, they implemented <liberal policy
| I hate>, and everyone is leaving the state". This kind of
| viewpoint is rampant on places like /r/conservative, and is
| often followed by similar mischaracterizations of life in
| Chicago. This always fascinates me - it seems like people are
| actually excited about the perceived negative forces driving
| people out, because they feel it validates their viewpoints
| about certain policies, even when the evidence to support
| correlation (never mind causation) doesn't seem to exist.
|
| I haven't encountered much serious discourse about California
| being unattractive to people with means.
|
| Edit: I've upset some folks with this comment. I'm curious to
| know how/why.
| deregulateMed wrote:
| And these people will be replaced by less experienced or less
| talented workers.
|
| I recently heard a low performer get hired at a FAANG company
| and wondered how this person managed to trick that company into
| hiring him.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Maybe he was a sacrificial hire? Aren't some managers
| expected to cull the lowest relative performers every year?
| fumar wrote:
| Is this satire? If it is, spot-on commentary.
| labster wrote:
| Housing is the real problem. I still live in the neighborhood
| where I grew up in Southern California. Back when I was a kid, we
| used to have street gangs, but they've all been gentrified out.
| They're putting up a new housing complex in my neighborhood, and
| I learned that I qualify for the affordable housing units on a
| senior developer salary, because it's below the median income.
| zwieback wrote:
| Wow, so much good info in two lines of comment, love it. What
| you don't mention is whether you inherited or at least live in
| your family home.
|
| A lot of my in-laws have lived in Palo Alto way before the boom
| times but are considering leaving when they retire, at that
| point the upsides of staying are suddenly a lot less.
| plank_time wrote:
| I know several that have left for Texas. I know one that left for
| Michigan. One that left for San Diego. A few that left for
| Seattle. So it's very real. Whether or not it moves the needle
| though is the bigger question. I myself would never move unless
| some sort of environmental catastrophe hit it, like forest fires
| or no more water which is actually a possibility.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data
| disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something
| wrong with the way you are measuring it." - Jeff Bezos
|
| This is a tricky article because I can tell it's using the term
| 'exodus' and 'myth' differently than I would. It's abundantly
| clear there is a lot of migration out of California. Just ask
| Texans, Coloradans, and Idahoans.
| hpoe wrote:
| I'll throw in my 2 cents that I can confirm the anecdote. I
| just moved to a small town in Idaho because my wife was from
| there. We found our house because several new developments are
| going up.
|
| As I've been chatting with some people at church* I was told
| that about 1/3 of the people that attend have moved to our
| little town in Idaho from Southern California in the past 2
| years or so. That might not seem like much, but considering
| that this is small town in the middle of Idaho it seemed like a
| pretty big deal to me. It's especially interesting to see many
| people who have more traditional jobs, often revolving around
| construction or the cultivation of potatoes interacting with
| many of the white collar, MBA type Cali expats.
|
| * Note: The church I attend is a world wide church and divides
| it's congregations based on geographic area, encouraging people
| to attend the service based on where they live. This point is
| made to forestall the correlation causation criticism, that
| would imply the church I attend is particularlye attractive to
| people that have recently moved in from SoCal,
|
| EDIT: Just to clarify my wife and I did not move from Cali, we
| moved from Utah, because it was getting filled up with people
| from Cali, that resulted in prices for housing going up
| considerably.
| deaddodo wrote:
| > It's abundantly clear there is a lot of migration out of
| California. Just ask Texans, Coloradans, and Idahoans.
|
| Or, you know, people _generally_ migrate between states and
| Californians make up 13% of the population.
| teachrdan wrote:
| Do you have data to back that up? Do we know that the number of
| Californians leaving is higher than before, and if so, by how
| much?
| Cookingboy wrote:
| Anecdotal data is still data, just not conclusive data. But
| there is a Chinese saying "Wu Feng Bu Qi Lang ", which
| roughly translates to "If there are waves on the water, there
| must be wind somewhere".
|
| We are hearing _a ton_ of these anecdotal stories very
| recently about Californians moving to other states,
| especially wealthy, higher income individuals. My gut feeling
| is that there is some material shift behind it and our
| systematically measured data could simply just be lagging at
| the moment, or they are measuring the wrong things.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Anecdotal data that you do not collect yourself is subject
| manipulation (both deliberate and incidental) by the people
| who do collect it. There are over 300 million people in the
| US, you can collect anecdotal data for just about any
| narrative you want.
|
| Anecdotal data you collect yourself is subject to your own
| biases, but is probably a decent reflection of the bubble
| you live in.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| California lost a seat in the Congress while Texas gain two
| seats. California exodus might be a myth but there is no
| inflow of people while Texas is gaining more people from
| other states.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I do not have any data to present. I only have my personal
| observations and anecdotes from my peers. Which is why
| something seems off when this article claims the exodus is a
| myth when I see so many California license plates and when my
| realtor friend says a lot of Californians are buying up
| houses in the local market.
|
| I don't claim to be a better researcher than the folks in the
| article but the conclusion doesn't seem to add up.
| [deleted]
| alanbernstein wrote:
| California is losing a house seat, while Texas and Colorado
| are gaining one (or two for Texas). While the census doesn't
| account for the difference between growth rate and migration,
| it seems pretty suggestive to me.
|
| https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/2020-census-d.
| ..
| deaddodo wrote:
| You know, you gain seats by gaining population. Just
| because one state is growing faster doesn't mean another is
| losing people. Those are hardly dependent nor even expected
| (California gained it's massive population despite an
| overall high growth rate of the rest of the nation).
| gameswithgo wrote:
| what a dumb quote by bezos
| lostinquebec wrote:
| The election wins of Trump, Boris Johnson, Brexit and The
| Liberals in Australia show that data collection really
| matters. Similarly the financial crisis of 2009 shows that
| missing data can really matter.
|
| That's the key point of the quote:
|
| > There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it
| commiepatrol wrote:
| you're right, none of my friends have moved out of CA ;)
| handmodel wrote:
| - The article says that "millionaire flight" out of California is
| a myth. This is mostly true and a good point.
|
| - However, the article/research looks at outflow and doesn't find
| a trend but this is bad methodology. It looks like they are not
| factoring in the fact that less people are moving _into_
| California then had been previously even if the rate moving out
| isn 't too different. It almost feels intentional given how clean
| and well-covered the data is on that.
|
| This opening paragraph is good
|
| >Every year from 2000 through 2015, more people left California
| than moved in from other states. This migration was not spread
| evenly across all income groups, a Sacramento Bee review of U.S.
| Census Bureau data found. The people leaving tend to be
| relatively poor, and many lack college degrees. Move higher up
| the income spectrum, and slightly more people are coming than
| going.
|
| Source:
| https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article136478098.html
| xadhominemx wrote:
| The myth (repeated endlessly here and elsewhere) is that high
| taxes and excessive commercial regulation are driving wealthy
| founders and other knowledge workers out of California. The
| truth is that high housing prices are driving low and middle
| income households out of the state.
| Retric wrote:
| California has much lower housing costs outside of major
| cities. It's exodus is seen as unusual simply because it's a
| a populous state, but rate wise it's hardly unusual. IMO,
| people leaving California in large numbers is also a function
| of how many people move into the state because people who
| moved long distances once are more likely to move again.
|
| As 2020 was a serious outlier I am sticking with _U.S. states
| by net domestic migration (From July 1, 2018 to July 1,
| 2019):_
|
| Net domestic migration rate per 1,000 inhabitants: Alaska
| -12.96, Hawaii -9.76, New York -9.29, Illinois -8.28,
| Connecticut -6.19, Louisiana -5.60, New Jersey -5.51,
| California -5.15, skipping several places Delaware 7.15,
| South Carolina 10.30, Arizona 12.50, Nevada 14.03, Idaho
| 15.31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_
| territ...
|
| It's the territories that are seeing the fastest changes.
| American Samoa -26.1, Guam -11.0, Northern Mariana Islands
| -15.4, Puerto Rico -14.1, U.S. Virgin Islands -7.5
| xadhominemx wrote:
| Suburban and housing costs in California are very high by
| national standards. Is your argument that the people who
| are moving out of California overwhelmingly non-native
| Californians?
| Retric wrote:
| I clarified, I am saying the net migration from
| California is hardly unusual as a percentage of the
| population. However, the magnitude of exodus is a
| function of both the size of the state and the number of
| people who recently moved to California.
|
| It's not that an overwhelming percentage of people
| leaving recently moved in, but they do represent a larger
| percentage of people moving out which is normal.
| hpoe wrote:
| Just my little data point but I moved into a sleepy little ID
| town that has a lot of people that have moved here from
| SoCal, and of the 5 people I asked "what brought all the way
| up to Idaho from California?" 4 of them commented on how
| expensive California was and the high cost of living. 3 of
| them also stated that they didn't like how things were
| happening in Cali.
|
| Again small anecdotal data point but take it for what it is
| worth.
| fumar wrote:
| > How things were happening
|
| What does that mean?
| [deleted]
| handmodel wrote:
| I guess this is probably the story that gets repeated in
| places like HN which I agree is common.
|
| However, if you ever talk to uber drivers or your waiters
| they will complain about how expensive California is. Or even
| people at parties who are in between jobs and thinking of
| moving to where they grew up. I guess in real life I just
| hear more people talk about the general cost of living
| argument than a than the specific anti-tech one.
| 0x0nyandesu wrote:
| If anything it's easier for tech people to ignore the high
| costs of living.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Here is another article with a chart:
| https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/05/california-populatio...
|
| It shows a population decrease of around 0.5% in 2020.
|
| Probably won't put much of a dent in traffic or housing costs,
| even if it continues for 10 years. But I still have fond memories
| of the 1990s, when things were more sane.
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