From sfgate.com:
Californians are bummed out.
The Golden State’s residents rated their quality of life at its lowest mark in almost 20 years, citing the economic downturn and stagnant personal finances, according to a joint UC Berkeley and Field Poll.
“Residents are reconsidering the image of the Golden State and showing more ambivalence toward it,” said Jack Citrin, a Berkeley political science professor who co-wrote the report. “The changes going on – socially, culturally, economic – have made people here less Pollyannaish about the reality of life here.”
The poll, based on a telephone survey of 898 registered voters in February, showed that only 39 percent considered the state “one of the best places to live,” compared with the glory days of 1985, when 78 percent gave the state the highest rating.
Californians’ self-assessment has gradually declined since then, with occasional spurts of optimism, until the appraisal rock-bottomed in 1992 at the tail end of a national recession.
Jon Christensen, the executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, said while the poll reflected personal financial woes. Californians are also bothered by a dysfunctional state government mired in a budget crisis.
“The state’s dysfunction as a whole feeds into this worry that this is far from one of the best places to live,” Christensen said. “One would think that a criterion for someone to say, ‘This is one of the best places to live,’ is that it’s well governed.”
At risk is the concept of California – land of world-class universities, beautiful open landscapes, perpetual job growth, and opportunities for immigrants, Christensen said.
“I say this in a positive way: When the myth of California gets questioned, when all of those things become disconnected, people begin to consider the reality,” he said. “This is a wake-up call to fix all of those things.”
The report also asked residents whether immigration had an impact on their quality of life. Most voters – 47 percent – said immigration had no real impact. Yet of those who said immigration had changed California, 39 percent said it lowered their quality of life, while 10 percent said immigration made life here better.
Brian Peterson, 45, a landscape gardener in Yreka (Siskiyou County), said that if he had been polled, he would have answered Option B, “California is a nice but not outstanding place to live.”
In the past 20 years, Peterson said his community near the Oregon border has lost jobs in the timber and mining industries because of more stringent state regulations and pressure from environmentalists.
“The location is excellent,” Peterson said. “I love my local community. But the state politics suck. It comes from either Sacramento or Washington, D.C., and they don’t know what’s best for us up here.”
Peterson said illegal immigration – as opposed to legal immigration – has negatively impacted the state’s quality of life. That’s part of the reason he’s the unofficial spokesman for the State of Jefferson, a group of secessionists who would like to see Northern California counties create their own state.
“Our county is rural, poor, but big,” Peterson said. “If we could make decisions on our local laws and business rules that work for us – then our quality of life would increase.”
Hundreds of miles away at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach, surfer Mark Massara, a lifelong Californian, said he would have voted that California is still among the best places to live.
Massara, who’s a general counsel attorney for O’Neill Wetsuits, said the downed economy, ironically, had a positive impact on the shorelines. “The worse the economy is, the better off the coast is because people don’t have as much money to think up dumb development ideas,” he said.
Massara said the growth of California during his lifetime has presented challenges, but in his experience, it’s all been relative.
“There’s more people now, more congestion, development, more everything,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that you could allow to reduce your so-called quality of life. The flip side is, the older you get, you tend to appreciate what’s left. I can be at any beach in California, no matter how crowded or polluted, and still be stoked.”
Born and raised in CA for over 30 years. Born in the SF Bay area, went to college in SoCal, moved back to SF for work, and now I am back in SoCal for work.
The only thing keeping me here is family, but they are slowly leaving the state. Pretty soon, there won’t be any of my family left in the state.
Prop 13 has really screwed my generation that is looking to buy their first home.
I think there is a conflict between the romantic view of immigration and the day-to-day reality of heaving immigration largely from poorer areas.
At this particular point in time I think people should consider the more realistic view as the influx from poor nations seems to be the dominate factor in the quality of life debate here in CA.
I have kids in schools and even the better districts are affected by kids with parents from poorer countries. California test scores are almost the worst in the nation despite just below average per pupil spending.
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/articles/article.asp?title=california%20comparison
That is not a recipe for a bright and prosperous future.
And taxes are a whole other debate that we will probably be having again very soon.
How has prop 13 ‘screwed my generation’???
Can you imagine what the CA government would do to property taxes if they could get their greedy paws onto them and raise rates (or add a state fee/tax).
They wouldn’t think twice about doubling the rate by noon today if they could.
California has lowish property taxes with high income and sales taxes.
Overall taxes are higher than average based on income, but not at the top.
How you view this depends on how you live.
I will say this about property tax – in most states the property tax states in the city in which it is collected.
So, if you live in a city with high property taxes you for the most part get good services and especially good schools with high per public spending.
In the end I think I prefer this.
California has to subsidize each city with state funds so you get flat average spending across school districts (unless you pass a special assessment).
All the districts are … average.
As someone with kids in school and whose assessment is still about what the house is worth I would probably prefer that prop 13 be modified so that “legacy” people have their property taxes set based on the current value of their house.
But I don’t see that change coming anytime soon.
I moved here to Carlsbad 10 years ago after 30 years in Miami. 10 years in, there is still no place in the country I would rather live. As I like to say, I haven’t been stabbed or killed one single time since I moved here. 🙂 Nor have I been pelted by bags of Burger King flung out of car windows, nor have the police been ripping off drug dealers, killing them, and dumping their bodies in the river. Nor have police been conducting organized home invasion robberies. Nor have radio commentators and art galleries been bombed by political enemies. Nor have many of the local politicians earned the nickname “Crazy”. Nor have Vodou and Santeria offerings containing dead animals been often found at or near the courthouse, in order to assist criminals beat the rap in their court trials.
I count my blessings now.
Not to say I don’t recognize the problems with the California state government, the cost of living, or the dire unemployment situation. I am lucky to be surviving those things and realize that others are unfortunately not as lucky. I also realize that North County Coastal San Diego is an exceptionally nice area, and that much of California is not as pleasant, and may be much more badly affected by the economic catastrophe.
But if I had my choice of picking one region in the U.S. to be in during the type of economic catastrophe we have experienced, North County Coastal would be at the top of the list.
And so I am here, and glad of it, and you’ll have to pry me out.
I’m with Rick. I Lived in Florida, a taxpayer’s dream destination, for the last 40 years. I just hope that my home value here in NCC San Diego drops by half because 30% of the population leaves for Texas or Florida. They are gonna LOVE Port St. Lucie and Cape Coral! Cheap, violent, boring and 9 months of living inside an airconditioned cube. Real “business friendly” though. The Palm Beach County Commission has 3 members in jail on “Pay to Play” charges. And we had the pleasure of having former West Palm Beach Mayor Nancy Graham sucker punch San Diego for CRA money funneled to her former employer. Hit Florida with a fat bankroll, and watch the politicians pick you clean.
I can’t remember where I read it, but about 20 years ago a long time observer of California talked about how the state was becoming Mississippi.
If your family and your history is there, if your work is there, if you find there are things you love about the state, you resign yourself to living there and deal with it.
But for many the deal is becoming tougher to bear. 35 or so million people, most of whom are pressed up against the coast. Too many people on too little land. Water brought in by heroic engineering feats that require a fragile ecology to remain in balance-forever. Too much immigration too quickly adding to population pressures. Opposing political interests that have resulted in gridlock while issues remain unresolved.
Simply put, IMHO, the state is not close to what it use to be. But, what is?
I’ve visited California off and on over the last 41 years. When you don’t live there you see the contrasts more vividly. From someone who still likes California, but much less today than I did before, the place has a threadbare look. A kind of hunkered down, cheek to jowl, horizontal Manhattan look and feel.
The energy of the place is different too. When my wife and I go to visit our daughter, son-in-law and 2 grandkids, the discussion revolves around issues that use to apply to New York, Chicago, San Francisco & LA.
Now, California and maybe New Jersey, or the first states where the entire state has largely become one gigantic set of urban issues.
Today it may be the Golden State in name only. But I do believe that so goes California, so goes the nation.
There is a definitely a dichotomy in the quality of life attitudes of inland Californians and coastal Californians. These two videos expound on the points made in this article:
Inland California:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8liZC7cQp4
North County Coastal doing well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arj7VSeX-d8
Every year it’s the same refrain. Taxes, immigration, traffic, dysfunctional governments, quality of life. Same things my parents said when they left in 1987. I say all you whiners, go ahead, move to Oregon, Texas, and Montana. Leave more restaurant tables for the rest of us.
I once received an interesting bit of career advice: “If everyone likes you, then you’re not trying hard enough.” I took this to mean to truly excel, you will inevitably upset a few people, learn to deal with it. I think the same theory applies to places. A truly great place will always be despised by some people. So I always take the complaints as a sign that California is still a great place.
… very well said Ross. I agree … California has it’s issues but so does any other place. If one can afford California then nothing like it, otherwise its better to move/stay out.
I mostly agree with #1 about Prop 13. The net effect has been negative to the society as a whole, while being beneficial to long-term property owners. The way the law is written, the limit on increases in taxable value to a rate below inflation gives a little to older homeowners and a lot to immortal corporate entities. It was sold to the voters as a way to prevent the elderly from being taxed out of their homes, but that could be done with an elderly credit or exemption. As it is, it provides the greatest benefit to companies like the utilities and railroads that hold property forever. The nominal 1% cap on property tax is much easier to defend, since it applies uniformly to all.
#9 has a point that you can’t please everyone, but then stretches that beyond recognition to what sounds like an argument that more is better when it comes to complaints. If the number of complaints is rising, it’s a sign something is going wrong. If the complaints are out of proportion to the compliments, it’s an even stronger indication the something is wrong.
Best weather on the planet……….nuff said
California is one of the richest states (10th, more or less), in the richest country, in one of the most beautiful locations in the world.
I think a lot of it is that people think that in order to be happhy, they need more money than 99% of the population rather than just 90%. We have a lot of stuff, but have forgotten how to be happy once we get it.
Prop 13 had its element of deception. It was sold as a means of keeping homeowners whose incomes did not keep up with their rising home values (many of whom but certainly not all were elderly) from being taxed out of their homes. But what was also slipped in was limits on commercial property that shouldn’t have been, for example when a company buys another company and takes ownership of that company’s property it isn’t reassessed (and anyone who thinks a company making an offer on another company doesn’t base the price on the current value of its property is deluded).
However, people who moan about the decline of quality of life in CA tend to forget that the rest of the country took the same downhill ride that we did. Relatively speaking, it doesn’t seem to me from my travels to other states that we have lost much relative to them.
The quality of life in California, or anywhere else in the country, is much higher today than twenty or fifty years ago, mainly due to technological advancements. There is no decline. Heck, even crime is down. Now, there is stagnation, and a growing gap between the wealthy and the poor (ironically, prop 13 increases this gap due it applying to rich people and commercial properties, requiring other regressive taxes (such as sales taxes) to be higher, and reducing the government safety net). But anybody who thinks that the standard of living today is lower than it was decades ago is looking at the past through rose colored glassed. (Now, five years ago it was better-but not twenty or fifty.)
“But anybody who thinks that the standard of living today is lower than it was decades ago…”
Test scores are clearly down.
Also, state had a surplus for many years. Now a huge deficit.
U Cal system used to be essentially free. Now it is expensive (unless you make less that 60K/year).
Perhaps you are looking through rose colored glasses as well?
I love Cali. I think people who do not should stop complaining and move away and then there will be less traffic.
All you Prop 13 bashers forget to note the increase in income taxes since P13 was enacted. And who pays the bulk of that? That’s right, those who tend to own property. So please don’t go throwing around all this “Prop 13 screwed my generation stuff” when in fact it shifted future taxes from property to income. Also, keep this in mind when you refer to “lowish” prop taxes… A $3 mil home — and RSF and Olivenhain are LOADED with them — pays $36,000+ in taxes. That’s ridiculous. Does that get the owner one iota of service better than the $300K dump down the road that pays $3K? Actually less service in Olivenhain’s case, because the nearest fire/EMT station is a 9 to 14 minute response time away since the closest location is near the coast.
The argument against uniform ad valorem taxes is a weak one. You’d rather have a head tax? If you don’t want to pay the taxes, don’t live in a $3 million house. The property tax is an avoidable tax; just sell the expensive property and you are free of it. Income tax is not so easy to avoid unless one lives in poverty.
Property tax provides far more stable revenue than income or sales-based taxes to support the services we all seem to require. Perhaps we should require fewer services, but the voters never seem to want to cut any that exist, and often vote for new services.
Meanwhile, income concentration and wealth disparity continue to increase over decades and generations. The issues facing our society are only going to grow if everyone takes an “every man for himself” approach without regard for the common good.