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.