> We are hearing a ton of these anecdotal stories very recently about Californians moving to other states, especially wealthy, higher income individuals.
We know matches a political narrative (anti-liberal, anti-tax) and that the right, such as on Fox News, has long pushed it about CA. That would explain why you hear it so much.
EDIT: I'm trying to avoid discussing the politics of it on HN, but ignoring the narrative is like (as I said elsewhere) ignoring the Sun as we talk about Earth's orbit. It's impossible to discuss it seriously or honestly.
This is objectively true: people are leaving California for high cost of living, insane real estate prices, and dysfunctional state politics. California is not the epitome of the American dream of "heading west" to make it big that it once was. And tech workers increasingly have mobility. Just the other day there was a top story on HN about a small town in Idaho that has become unaffordable because of outflows to there and lots of anecdotes about similar things happening in other cities around the country. The great opportunity that California once was has dried up, just like the reservoirs.
Based on what? Lots of people repeating something - we of the Internet age know better than our predecessors - isn't evidence of anything but 'viral' narrative, and raises no real question other than 'where did it come from?'
We know matches a political narrative (anti-liberal, anti-tax) and that the right, such as on Fox News, has long pushed it about CA. That would explain why you hear it so much.
EDIT: I'm trying to avoid discussing the politics of it on HN, but ignoring the narrative is like (as I said elsewhere) ignoring the Sun as we talk about Earth's orbit. It's impossible to discuss it seriously or honestly.