Oh come on... California is great. Best weather, great produce, ability to grow most whatever you want year around, no annual hurricane or tornado risk (and in many parts, no substantial earthquake risk), natural beauty that beats most of the world, etc.
I was walking around the San Diego zoo yesterday... It must have been 70 degrees... on the 16th of January, and most people in the country are trapped in their houses unable to go anywhere because the frigid cold (ready to kill themselves from lack of sun).
Last I checked, that is the definition of 'suck'.
The only thing that sucks in California are the politicians.. But thats true everywhere else as well.
Also: Prop 13 is absolutely horrid for CA, and the problem there is the people of CA. The prop tax system is absolutely stupid. ie my neighbor across the street with an identical priced home who has much more earnings power than me (being later in his life) pays a third the property taxes that I do. In fact, his house is worth (in today's shitty market) at least 5x what my parents' house in OH is worth, and they pay the same prop taxes.
Now I've taken advantage of prop 13 myself just recently by buying some foreclosures, but I know a broken system when I see one.
I'm all for a 'poor senior' property tax exemption, but 90% of the people grandfathered in with low prop tax bases can more than afford to pay their fair share.
California could solve the budget problems almost entirely by fixing prop 13 by equalizing payments from within neighborhoods.
There's a shitload of grandfathered wealth in CA that isn't paying their fair share of consumption.
(I know of people who bought a home in 1960 in Del Mar for 30K who aren't paying more than several hundred dollars/year in prop taxes for a home that would sell today for 3-5M!!!!)
