From Reason:
Urban theorist Joel Kotkin talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley about why people with opportunities are leaving the Golden State.Including this bit:
While a lot of the material will be familiar to regular readers, Kotkin, a sometime Reason contributor, makes a point worth singling out: Although Republicans predict the state’s steeply progressive tax rate will result in millionaire flight, the evidence suggests it’s really the middle class taking it on the arches:
"Basically, if you don't own a piece of Facebook or Google and you haven't robbed a bank and don't have rich parents, then your chances of being able to buy a house or raise a family in the Bay Area or in most of coastal California is pretty weak," says Mr. Kotkin.
While many middle-class families have moved inland, those regions don't have the same allure or amenities as the coast. People might as well move to Nevada or Texas, where housing and everything else is cheaper and there's no income tax....MORE
...In broader terms, Viallraigosa has managed one result you wouldn’t have thought possible: L.A.’s population has been flat and GDP has been falling since he took office, yet its traffic problem has gotten worse. There’s no way anybody with practical experience of trying to survive in L.A. on less than $92,000 a year could have written the deathless lines to the left....Be careful what you wish for
-From our 2010 post "Adios California: Adobe, EA Games and Ebay will do Their Expanding in Utah (ADBE; EBAY; ERTS)".
