[m4ck_]

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.

[solenoid0937]

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.

[OptionOfT]

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.

[andybak]

> 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]

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.

[hackeraccount]

Just because I'm buying something for someone other then myself it doesn't follow that I don't care how the money is spent. If my tax dollars are wasted it's no comfort to tell myself that the money would have been spent by someone else for someone else in any case.

[tencentshill]

The tax you pay isn't about you, frankly. Health insurance would be a socialist policy if administered by the government.

[solenoid0937]

> The tax you pay isn't about you

Already addressed in my other reply.

[gumby]

> left California for a zero tax state.

Where, pray tell, is this state with zero taxes? Próspera?

[Cider9986]

They likely meant zero income tax. Off the top of my head that's New Hampshire, Texas, and Florida.

[gumby]

The taxes are collected one way or another, since places need roads and such. OP might find income taxes to be better than property taxes or sales taxes, depending on where they choose and what they get for their money.

[solenoid0937]

> The taxes are collected one way or another,

Incorrect. For high earners, tax burden differs dramatically between states, even when you consider all kinds of tax.

[RickJWagner]

South Dakota, too.

[Cider9986]

Thanks, Rick.

[Whoppertime]

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.

[roenxi]

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.

[slowmovintarget]

"Past performance is no indicator of future success."

They did something right fifty years ago. Now? No. They're doing nearly everything wrong.

Top-two elections coupled with rigged ballots so voters can't really choose, and no one can prove anything (and it's against the law to try). Government program after government program that fails to solve basic problems because the money seems to up and disappear, and when the public calls for an audit the person doing the stealing gets to say "No."

187,084 homeless in California in 2024. 181,934 homeless in California in 2025 after 2024 spending of more than $2.5 billion (with a B) on homeless programs. They would have done better if they had just given every homeless person $13,363. It's the same expenditure.

Instead they spent $485,437 per person helped (5,150). The median household income in California in 2024 was $100K. So they spent four times the median household per person helped. Those are bad results.

They're driving out businesses. They're destroying the infrastructure that let them build the economic juggernaut of agriculture and tech (reservoirs left dry, water management mishandled deliberately, forest mismanagement contrary to decades of evidence).

Generally speaking, I've liked their food and consumer product safety regulations, and most of those have been emulating Europe, but most of the rest they've gotten wrong. They're still rich because of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, but they're driving away tech, and while Hollywood has a long way to tumble, it's on its way to doing that to itself.

[yencabulator]

> 187,084 homeless in California in 2024.

California has a significantly better climate to be homeless in, so you'd want a bus ticket from Minnesota or whatever to there too if you were homeless.

[lostmsu]

> they're an economic powerhouse

Could be inertia.

[fhdkweig]

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?

[pandaman]

California also has ports and railways, servicing the vast majority of trade with China. It has the strongest agricultural industry in the union. Aerospace industry from manufacturing to space launches. Worth mentioning the the oil and gas industry. It will take a long time for all these to be gone. It's easy to move Twitter or Tesla HQ to another state, but physical production is not as mobile, the same Tesla's factory is still in California.

[tzs]

Its agriculture industry is about 50% larger than that of the #2 agricultural state. It also has the largest manufacturing industry. It is #3 in defense (about 20% behind Texas and 12% behind Virginia, and almost twice as big as #4 which is Florida). It is #2 in financial services behind New York.

[matwood]

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

[fhdkweig]

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.