As a native Californian who moved away years ago. I know many people back "home" who would agree with this. Lot's of those folks would love to move away if they could.
Still, I can't help but miss home sometimes. California really is one of the most beautiful areas in the world. It has a bit of it all. Deserts. White sandy beaches. Mountains. Forests.
One should probably disregard any report that tries to rank anything as hard to pin down as quality of life over entities as large and diverse as states. Even the smallest states in the US have wildly different quality of life depending on income and geography.
The large ones like California and Texas are practically like countries when it comes to how varied quality of life is within their borders.
It's better to look at specific metrics (health, education, housing, opportunity) that comprise quality of life. California excels at some of those for some people, and fails at some for some people.
I feel like they should have done a better job of defining quality of life. A person who is born and grows old and dies in North Dakota does not have a better life than a person who does the same in California. If only for the education, career opportunities, weather, culture, and earning potential. Yea there are problems, but there are enormous benefits too.
Things like this always depend on what you value most and least. The rankings always have certain weights for those things baked in, and those things may not be the same as how you value them.
For example, the rankings put lots of northern states at the top of the list, whereas if you asked me what I value, not having to deal with much cold weather is important, so that would immediately disqualify everything they said was best. Other people, I'm sure, feel the exact opposite.
* If you like what North Dakota has to offer, which is a very narrow set of options on the spectrum of life possibilities.
> don't have to worry about urban issues which are huge stressors.
Urban living can be stressful, but I'll take urban stressors over being trapped in a small pond if it's the wrong pond. Rural life can be awesome but it can also get incredibly boring. It's also prone to souring quickly if you have difficulties with the dozen or so people you might have regular contact with. I lived in a rural area for a spell and it turned out the local handyman had been stealing from everyone for years. What do you do when that guy is the only handyman in the county and his family blames you for his problems when he goes to jail? Not a good situation.
Urban conveniences are also awesome. It'll be hard for me to move somewhere that lacks the variety and quality of food options currently available to me now. People in rural areas seem quite content with comparatively awful and unhealthy food.
I recently moved to California from a more rural state, and I agree that parts of California are a huge pain in the ass. I was just surprised to see North Dakota at the top because it usually gets such negative coverage.
Doesn't surprise me. Housing is so expensive there, everything costs so much more, taxes are highest in the nation, multiple levels of government within the state is in direct violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324. They let illegals get a driver license instead of stalling them while someone in the back calls U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to come and pick them up. Some of the rich billionaires even are leading a campaign to have California to leave the union, so that shows how much they hate the rest of the US.
California is pretty and iconic, plenty of things to do for tourism but I surely wouldn't want to live there. Silicon Valley used to be the dream, but during the 2016 election I realized how much of a bubble it is.
Kinda surprised Ohio was ranked worse than California at #40... Maybe because it's boring here with nothing to do.
I personally would love to move to South Dakota. Small and efficient government, no income taxes, low sales tax, property taxes doesn't really seem much higher, no safety or smog inspections for cars. I hear you can get things taken care of at the DMV quickly unlike larger states where you wait hours and hours or weeks to get an appointment. Very friendly state to full time RVers and digital nomad's too as they are one of the few states that recognize fulltime travelers. So for you entrepreneurs that are interested in that lifestyle, a good state also.
> multiple levels of government within the state is in direct violation of 8 U.S. Code § 1324
Please elaborate on this?
Also, you're right, South Dakota is amazing. Grew up here, moved away to Redmond for a few years to go to school and look for work, and when I didn't find any, I ended back up here. I was surprised at how much I missed it.
Then if the police stop someone, they just ignore the fact they are here illegally. They call them sanctuary cities on the news usually.
Seems like their logic is it safer to have people who know how to drive driving than driving illegally, even if they are here illegally. Then also if someone witnessed a crime, they might not come to police due to fear of being deported.
Kinda the same way states are allowing pot even though federally it's illegal... The feds aren't going after states it looks though, I remember hearing somthing Obama's justice department wasn't going to enforce it in states that allow it. But Trump's administration could always change their mind. Banks still can't let marijuana dispensaries do business with them however, so they have to keep and haul around large amounts of cash. They joked that some day one of them would get killed paying their taxes, and they'd make a law named after them. High Profits was a good documentary on CNN on this topic. Watched it on Netflix a few years ago.
Kinda interesting though, if you habor someone illegally and they murder someone. That code mentions that you are also subject to the same punishment. So if the mayor of a city allows illegals, and a illegal murders someone and gets sentenced to the federal death penalty. That mayor could also be sentenced to death too. Doesn't seem like the people in washington has ever gone that far to ever do that however, but it seems possible from my understanding.
Blame big business. California has a huge agriculture industry, which depends on huge numbers of illegal immigrants each season. The industry wants to keep these workers.
I think they are just another money grab, wastes people time and also limits people's freedom of movements. So if you live in a state that does smog inspections, and went to college across the county. Better do a cross country road trip!
Big corporations do it all the time, so a personally owned vehicle is a tiny fraction. Also you can buy a generator and the government doesn't smog test it, probably less generator sales than cars. I think it's all just a money maker and makes a small difference. Just like the UN's Paris Accord would of hurt America more than it would of helped, while the rest of the world did way less compared to what they wanted us to do.
There are families living paycheck to paycheck in rural areas where you can't go take a bus where these sort of things are a big headache. In my state smog tests were phased out state wide and is only now mandatory in certain counties.
So I doubt neighborhood soccer mom's little minivan is messing up the ozone compared to bigger fish. Also modern cars pollute much less, and these same states with smog tests have classic car exemptions. So you are punished for buying a newer car. Then I also heard the new EPA required diesel emission equipment actually makes the engines less efficient, however not as smoky so a bit of cons and pros.
California is insane with their environment regulations. I was looking at motorcycles and the same exact model also has a California version with even a smaller tank. Then those "This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer" those stickers and signs everywhere. Proposition 65, and the list changes frequently. Small businesses are being sued and being hurt due to these insane regulations. Even the fries are at major fast food joints cause cancer according to California.
Then truck drivers are mandated by federal law to get a certain amount of rest, but if they leave their engine on all night they get in trouble. There's some state employee lady that drives a white mini van that idles 24/7 at truck stops harassing truck drivers. I know a few truck drivers who refuse to do loads to California. Too bad not every single trucker would strike at once.
It's insane it's supposed to be the startup capital of the world when you have so many regulations to deal with. I guess the venture capitalists and startup community is a big draw so maybe that outweighs the regulations.
Glad in America we're free to vote with our feet! I love http://www.howmoneywalks.com/irs-tax-migration/ - California is losing a lot of money to other states. Florida doesn't have smog inspections and they are doing great!
No military exemption either, way to not support our troops! :(
Then there AB 450 penalizes companies for working with federal law enforcement.
I don't live in California and would never domicile there, but part of me wants to just go visit and Rally for Governor Candidate Travis Allen even if I can't vote there! We got to take back California! I heard people from California who are sick of the high taxes are moving to neighboring states like OR, ID, NV, UT, TX and trying to ruin them with their ideas. Maybe if you hate your former state, keep your former state ideas to yourself.
https://youtu.be/yRIITgjulhk If you can save California, you can save America! I feel like people from Californians are invasive species that will ruin our country if we don't fix California.
California is becoming a shithole as Trump would call it aka a third world country. Kinda funny I live far away from California, yet still concerned about their politics. Just scared their failures will bleed out and hurt the rest of our country. Everyone is leaving https://youtu.be/5Z7Dy_7di6k and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRQRg3xhehs
California is supposed to be big for recycling, but Waste Management was trying to build a recycling plant in Los Angeles at a old landfill waiting over 10 years without the permits being approved. Took less than 2 years to permit and build it in AZ. If I was that business, I would of told California to forget it a lot sooner so there CEO has more patience than I do.
Then the drought is California's own fault too. As Texas population was growing, they built more reservoirs. California built zero as their population kept doubling. https://youtu.be/xgFPKHlOPJY?t=171
Speaking of Texas there is a bill that might end mandatory vehicle inspections there too! Go Texas!
California is a pretty state with a lot of things to do, but politically it's a mess.
A "money maker" for who? In metro Atlanta it's between $20 and $25 a year and it's done by private businesses. The government doesn't make any money from it.
As far as less generators than cars. That's just the reason it's more important to test cars than generators.
You're not being "punished for buying a new car". It's just the opposite. You're not punishing people who have older cars where it would be prohibitively expensive to bring it up to standards.
It's not about one soccer mom. It's about the millions of cars on the road in major metropolitan cities. Your rights stop where my lungs begin.
I think it was about $18 back when they did it here but the state EPA ran the centers, but I just think it's annoying and waste of time. One of the concerns if Texas got rid of theres is less jobs...
Then the inspections done by private companies, many of them also do the repairs too. So I don't trust them.
In California, they even have random smog checkpoints. A police officer waves people over to a mobile checkpoint. There's videos of it on YouTube. Probably only stops California plated vehicles though. Good example video: https://youtu.be/IDKuDzUImh4
I wonder how car collectors deal with this stuff if not meeting any of the exemptions. Seems like a annoying hassle, especially if you don't drive it that much.
My ears are annoyed when people driving play loud bassey music, the government should require all cars have a volume limiter and inspect them every year for $10 extra. Similar logic I guess.
I invite all the Fox News viewers and others who take this BS seriously to move out of this hellhole and go to states with a higher quality of life rank such as Mississippi (#6) or Arkansas (#7), and send us a postcard so we can be jealous.
Indeed the only good thing happening here lately, aside from contributing two reasonably good senators, is how much one's house has appreciated. The traffic now is almost unpassable in the BA.
Things like weather and general natural beauty are often brought up when discussing the pros of California living. I'd also argue in favor of our food prices. Food, as a general good and not just staples like rice, is incredibly cheap in the parts of the state that I've toured.
I'm curious how much of this could also be related to cost of living. At a glance of Wikipedia, California actually has the highest poverty rate of any state once you account for the cost of living as I understand it. For the curious, the adjusted poverty rate is 23.8%. That's huuuuge!
Still, I can't help but miss home sometimes. California really is one of the most beautiful areas in the world. It has a bit of it all. Deserts. White sandy beaches. Mountains. Forests.