Well despite all that regulation, they're an economic powerhouse, they must be doing something right. CA is far from perfect but at least they occasionally aspire to do something for the benefit of their citizens - not something I can say for my 'least regulated' state that mostly just saps money from the federal government.

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solenoid0937 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

N=1 but I make a good amount of money and left California for a zero tax state.

I feel like the quality of life is similar between the two. I don't feel like I was getting anything for the 13%+ extra taxes I was paying in California.

Nearly every California program has a huge amount of wastage. Take:

- High speed rail - 10x the cost of comparable European programs, still haven't built anything. Deadlocked by regulation, lawsuits, and poor planning.

- Or all the fraud in the hospice program, unchecked for years until some YouTuber just... went up to one and made a video.

- Or spending over $1M/homeless on housing the homeless and not being able to do so.

California is a lot of talk (regulations, state programs, taxes) coupled with extremely poor execution.

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OptionOfT an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I moved out of CA and overall, I myself get more for my money. All of those taxes didn't benefit me.

And just like you describe, it would've been ok if all of the tax money went to the people it was meant to be, but unfortunately CA is built upon n number of middle man companies who each take something off the top.

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andybak an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I don't feel like I was getting anything for the 13%+ extra taxes I was paying in California.

Some people might argue that it's not meant to be about what you personally get back. Social contract and all that...

I get your other points but this part was phrased in an unfortunate way.

	▲	solenoid0937 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Of course you expect to get something back. Cleaner streets, better public transit, fewer homeless, less crime, etc. For example, I would be happy paying those 13% taxes in Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore! (Some even have lower taxes.) But I felt that money was being totally wasted in California. I genuinely think CA is something like <10% as efficient with tax money as these countries, and it's largely because certain groups take it as a personal attack when you imply tax inefficiency is a problem.

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Whoppertime 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Despite all their problems, Detroit was an economic powerhouse. Motor city was a world class city, and they bid to host the Olympics eight times between 1944 and 1972. Detroit was far from perfect, but it seems like eventually their bad choices caught up with them. Detroit is no longer the world class city or economic powerhouse it once was.

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roenxi an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They're sitting at the centre of a web of software services that coordinate some unreasonable amount of the internet. They've definitely done something right, California might be hosting one of the most impressive economic clusters outside of China.

But that doesn't tell us much about the relationship between that thing and their regulations. The regulations might be supporting the thing, or the thing might be so successful that the damage being done by the regulations becomes tolerable. It's entirely plausible that if other states attempted that level of regulation they'd crumple like tissue paper because they don't have the economic power of California's IT sector to balance out the excess demands being placed on businesses.

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lostmsu 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> they're an economic powerhouse

Could be inertia.

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fhdkweig 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I know nothing about nothing, but I always assumed that all the money was from Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Outside of those two highly localized industries, is there really much more money than other states have?

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matwood an hour ago | parent [-]

It has it's own wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

	▲	fhdkweig an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks for providing it, but Sectors chart seems wrong. "The Information sector includes some of the nation's largest technology and entertainment companies like Apple, Meta, Disney, and HP." Putting Disney in the Information sector rather than the Arts and Entertainment sector seems like a really bad categorization. I have to wonder if that severely under-counts the Arts and Entertainment sector.