[Richard230]

According to an article in my newspaper today, written by Marisa Kendall of the Bay Area News Group, anyone thinking about moving out of the SF Bay Area should be aware that U-Haul truck prices reflect the rush to leave the state.  For a 10-long truck and a 26-foot long truck, driving from the Bay Area to Seattle will cost $1,654 and $3,483, respectively.  However renting the same trucks for a drive from Seattle to San Jose will only cost $517 and $680 for a four day rental.

Renting the same trucks and traveling to Phoenix, AZ will cost $618 and $1,301, while in the other direction it is only $119 and $132.  If you want to ship out to Las Vegas it will cost you $945 for the 10-foot truck and $1,990 for a 26-foot truck and $119 and $132 if any sap wanted to move from LV to the Bay Area.

North American Van Lines published a report last year which found that California was one of the top five states in the country that people were leaving – a distinction the state has never had before.  In 2017, 60% of the moves were out of state and 40% were moving to California.

[Guaire]

This has been going on for a long time now. The first article I heard was comparing travel between
CA and Texas. UHaul can do the math. The high demand was leaving CA and the price had gone up. I can hear it now, “I’ll pay anything. Get me outta here!” Personally, I wish it wasn’t so. I love the place.

[Arizoni]

Like Jerry Jeff Walker sings, "If I just could get off this LA freeway...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2zE9cot3jY

[Bilgemaster]

I wonder: Is this just a demographic blip, like with retiring oldster baby boomers fleeing the Golden State's famously retirement-hostile tax situation? Or, is it an entirely darker and more ominous phenomenon, like when wildlife suddenly starts inexplicably fleeing an area prior to some natural cataclysm. It's not like California is exactly sitting pretty on those tectonic plates. Maybe best keep those Enfields gassed up with a spare can and hose, maps and water and beans handy, and ready for that weird run East, just in case. Avoid freeways and interstates. Sidewalks, bike paths, railway rights of way and other "non-traditional"  routes are your happy places. Start up your band of post-apocalyptic cannibal marauders somewhere nice like Elephant Butte Lake, NM, about 600 miles west of LA. Don't mind the tarantulas. They're pretty harmless, and just like a nice campfire too. Scorpions on the other hand...

Happy trails!

[Richard230]

The real problem is the high cost of living in California. Unless you own a home that is paid off like I do and are in good health, you are basically screwed. My home cost $35,000 when new in 1972, now homes like mine are going for around 1 million dollars (with property taxes to match) and in some areas it will cost you well over that amount to move into a 1000sf "fixer upper". (An 850sf home in Sunnyvale, located near San Jose, recently sold for $2,500,000.)

A one-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area rents for $2,500 to $3,500 a month, depending upon its location. Some low-wage earners have to rent individual rooms in a private home.  My neighbor is renting out one of his bedrooms for $1700 a month to a single waitress. Other workers are renting an apartment with 8 people sharing the cost.

Plus, taxes here are very high, with the State taxing everything that they can and using much of that money to fund social programs to help out people who either shouldn't be here in the first place, or just don't want to work.  (I have a brother like that.  He is making a decent living off of the dole.)

And then there are extremely high medical costs, again to make you pay for people who go into emergency rooms and just don't, or can't, pay.  I have a friend who passed out while riding his motorcycle last November.  He just fell over at a slow speed and had some internal injuries and a concussion.  He spent two weeks at Stanford Hospital and then one month at a therapy hospital in San Francisco.  His medical bills so far total $1,150,000!  It is amazing that anyone can afford to live in this state.    Is it any wonder that they are shipping out?

[tooseevee]

I wonder: Is this just a demographic blip, like with retiring oldster baby boomers fleeing the Golden State's famously retirement-hostile tax situation? Or, is it an entirely darker and more ominous phenomenon, like when wildlife suddenly starts inexplicably fleeing an area prior to some natural cataclysm. It's not like California is exactly sitting pretty on those tectonic plates. Maybe best keep those Enfields gassed up with a spare can and hose, maps and water and beans handy, and ready for that weird run East, just in case. Avoid freeways and interstates. Sidewalks, bike paths, railway rights of way and other "non-traditional"  routes are your happy places. Start up your band of post-apocalyptic cannibal marauders somewhere nice like Elephant Butte Lake, NM, about 600 miles west of LA. Don't mind the tarantulas. They're pretty harmless, and just like a nice campfire too. Scorpions on the other hand...

Happy trails!

             No, we aren't sensitive to tectonic plate tension like the other animals are.

             As Guaire sez below "this has been going on for a long time" and the same things that have melted down the state that I live in (RI), and the whole Northeast for that matter and most of our cities, are the same reasons that people and businesses have been bailing out of California for a long time. California has lost hundreds of billions of dollars in tax revenue.

              I could go on and on and lay it all out year by year (I study this stuff) from the end of Dubya Dubya Two to now, but nobody'd read it.

              So stated quite simply, it's just the steady, incremental, year by year, increase in the power, influence and the eventual, inevitable total takeover by far left wing Progressive policies, taxation, regulations, education (from Kindergarten on or maybe sooner) since the end of WW2. Anyone with sense and the ability plans their escape from RI (and the same for Cal.) long before they can retire (if they can EVER retire). Many RIers have dual residencies in Florida and their cars are registered in Florida and they spend the right amount of time in Fla. to keep it legal and As Soon As Possible they are GONE and never pay another dollar of Rhode Island State Income Tax or spend another day with the highest energy costs, the highest taxes, the worst business atmosphere, the worst education statistics, the highest union, tax-free university and welfare/social services/welfare state influence PLUS Providence being a sanctuary city with out-of-control violence/murder/stabbings/break-ins, DUIs, after-the-bars-close fights (and stabbings and muggings), smash and grabs, home invasions, scams of all types every night of the week, and during the day, with the police almost reluctant in many instances to intervene because it's always THEM who gets the shit and end up in court or destroyed by "social media" or the "oh, you poor (criminal) victim" lawyers. 

            Omigod, I wrote too much. I'll shut up now and wait to be told how wonderfully a lot of these lunatic Progressive policies, political correctness and whining have worked out for us here the past 70 years.

              And so it goes.   

           

[Adrian II]

Just seems like people are voting with their feet, albeit on the pedals...

A.

[gizzo]

            Anyone with sense and the ability plans their escape from RI (and the same for Cal.) long before they can retire (if they can EVER retire). Many RIers have dual residencies in Florida and their cars are registered in Florida and they spend the right amount of time in Fla. to keep it legal and As Soon As Possible they are GONE
         

I have no idea what the situation is over there but if it's so bad in RI why do people wait to get out and not just Go right away? Especially if they already have digs somewhere like Florida? Jobs and family to hold them back maybe?

[Richard230]

I have no idea what the situation is over there but if it's so bad in RI why do people wait to get out and not just Go right away? Especially if they already have digs somewhere like Florida? Jobs and family to hold them back maybe?

In California it is jobs, family and great riding weather that keep people here. You weigh those pluses, with crazy traffic, high prices for everything, high taxes, education that concentrates on social issues instead of anything that would help you get a job or live on your own without the government's help, an impending drought, seawater rise, the possibility of an earthquake at any time, the likelihood of wildfires, roads and bridges that are falling apart and many other things too numerous to mention.  I stay here because my family is here, I have my home paid off, I have a government pension that keeps me afloat and I really appreciate the good riding weather here. 

[Bilgemaster]

I have no idea what the situation is over there but if it's so bad in RI why do people wait to get out and not just Go right away? Especially if they already have digs somewhere like Florida? Jobs and family to hold them back maybe?

Well, it's a lot easier to find a cab there than in Palm Beach...

[tooseevee]

I have no idea what the situation is over there but if it's so bad in RI why do people wait to get out and not just Go right away? Especially if they already have digs somewhere like Florida? Jobs and family to hold them back maybe?

          There are as many reasons for what people do as there are people. If you're young enough and smart enough you get away when you're young. If you reach a certain age, you kind of have to stay to build and guarantee your retirement benefits keep accruing until you CAN move. If you can still handle it when you reach that age. The best retirements in RI are state or town jobs where the laws are passed by the people you elected to pass the laws for you so you will elect them again.
 
           RI is not special in people wanting to leave a certain state because it's fiscally and socially fuktup and revenue starved and taxed and feeed and regulationed to death. It just happens to be one of the worst. We're a totally Progressive Democrat controlled, social justice, sanctuary city/welfare state with the best welfare machine in the country. Obama just loved RI.. Rob the people with jobs to pay the unproductive.

         I'd tell how I came to stay here, but it would be a long story and people's eyes would glaze over. Suffice to say, I'm 80 now, have put A LOT into the house, moving would be VERY difficult, I love this house we paid off in 15 years (best thing I EVER did), the area is perfect and exactly what I want and I don't feel the need to be armed to a greater extent than I am. We've been here for 30 years, it's isolated and development proof. 

              RI has been run totally by Progressive Democrats, teacher's and other unions, universities, welfare state, social justice, immigrant PACs, La Raza (now UnidoUS), SEIU and other left wing political action committees and organizations. It's a total clusterfuk. As is the whole Northeast now since 50 years ago; madly trying to be worse and more Socialist than California. And the worst schools with the bars lowered so far to pass the criteria to keep getting the money and the accreditation. And then the ones who do graduate can't get a job or they flunk out in their Freshman year because the government/union controlled schools haven't done their jobs and some can't fill out a job app and write in complete sentences.

           It's a long, long complicated story. Too long for here.