[strikhedonia]

Your link doesn’t support your argument. California’s COL index will be dominated by the fact that it’s one of the nations most urban states, with two of the largest and wealthiest metro areas.

Indeed, my experience is that there are parts of CA that aren’t significantly more expensive than my Midwestern home state.

[handmodel]

I'm not trying to be that annoying - but are you sure the cheap parts of CA are comparable to the cheap parts of your state?

The cheapest parts of CA are probably going to be as expensive as right outside a Cleveland or Pittsburgh.

[unishark]

Certainly if one's goal is to live somewhere cheap while remotely-working at a high-paying tech company, you'd pay the highest state income taxes in California at the top bracket.

If we're just talking about random middle class (and below) people ability to retire in the same house they've lived in for decades, a few other states may be worse at the moment, e.g. NJ and CT and perhaps others raising property taxes fast. But the days of prop 13 protecting Californians from this same fate may not last forever.