Calfornia...Has it been destroyed by left-wing polices?

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Texas crime rates are going up because Abbott and his cronies keep enacting more and more draconian laws.

He prioritized a dick pic ban over fixing our state's sh***y power grid.

Okay, the Perfectly Normal amount of wildfires that is in no way out of the ordinary and in no way influenced by human activity. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to walk down the street on this flat earth to ask the local diviner what crops I should plant now that Mars is in retrograde--and leave your round earth, anti-astrology politics out of it!

To be less sarcastic and more accommodating: I will concur with what you said. Part of the issue is that forest-management practices are hamstrung by the particular brand of braindead environmentalist that does not know that preventing wildfires involves strategic clearing of trees and bush so that fires are more contained. That's forestry 101. Disclaimer that environmentalism is extremely important, but that does not mean that all environmentalists always know what they are talking about.

These are also factors in the homeless problem, yes. The homelessness is a result of many things. Homelessness and poverty in general lead to increased crime, and crime makes for a bad environment in which to do business. Businesses close, fewer jobs are available, more people are unemployed, more people end up on the streets.
California's economy is a tangled mess of mutually-sustaining problems. Even ignoring crime and poverty, California is infamous or being a difficult place to start or run a business. Overregulation is a huge problem--and I say that as a filthy leftist. High property costs make just about every aspect of owning a business more difficult. High cost of living means that consumers spend more on necessities and bills, and have less money to spend on your goods and services. Increased costs add up all throughout the supply chains businesses rely on. Employees need to be paid more to afford necessities--and if you cannot pay that much, they will turn elsewhere.

Californians are moving to states with lower costs of living--often red states. Californians who want to start businesses are moving to states where that is easier to do--just about any other state. Goldfish21 hit the nail on the head as far as I can tell.

Just a short comment. I might reply further later.

Please leave the sarcasm at the entrance, please.

Regarding the wildfires:

I watched a discussion with a fire expert about "Fire Tornados" some time ago.
His belief is/was that this phenomenon was a product of a lack of undergrowth disposal management.
We seemingly have the same problem here in Australia.

It is believed the reason massive bushfires have become an issue here in Australia is due to politically Green policies that ignore the danger of undergrowth build-up and the lack of maintenance of fire trails.
The expression: "Penny wise, pound foolish" comes to mind.

The result is, massive bushfires destroying virtually everything in their path rather than a "kool" fire that would occur on a regular basis with little fuel litter.

The Aboriginal communities used this method of land management for thousands of years which worked in harmony with nature. Even some Australian native flora is dependent on regular fires to help the propagation process.

My premise is that the same misguided politico-environmental factors are involved in California also.
Please note, it is simply a "proposition", not a conclusion.
I am happy to be corrected.

But why would they move from a state where abortion and weed are legal to states where they're not?

Gavin Newsom wants equal rights, fair criminal justice, and diversity for everybody.

Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp do not.

Despite all the fun people have talking smack about California, its still the 5th largest economy in the world, closing in on 4th place. The GDP of the state is more than twice the GDP of the entire country of Russia. So, yes, the state has problems in need of tending, but it's also laughing its way to the bank.

The state coffers did so well in the pandemic, most taxpayers are getting a rebate over the next few months.

And you still can't beat the weather and scenery.

None of the above is to gloss over the very real problems, some of which are man made, and others of which are climate related. Having a political super majority is NEVER healthy, and that is true of the liberal super majority we current have. State government does some nutty things while failing to make real headway with the worsening homeless crisis. That needs to change ASAP.

And, yes, we have more than our fair share of shallow elites who pretend they know how to help and care. They don't, but sometimes you can point them in the right direction, and they have the dollars to make something happen. Our governor is from that world, unfortunately.

But where the jobs and the surf are, there will always be people. We've got both. It's going to take a lot more than wildfires, homelessness, and the occasional smash and dash crime to destroy the state.

Besides, tomorrow isn't yesterday. We could still find a way to mitigate our problems.

Some on the right would say that the criminal system embraced by the left of politics is heavily biased towards excessive leniency towards criminal offenders, hence the possible increased social disharmony.

Rather than focus on the crime rate of California, perhaps it would be more fruitful to compare "Red State" and "Blue State" crime rates.
Is there an overall pattern?

To be clear, I am in favour of careful consideration of mitigating circumstances of people involved in crime.
I am not in favour of J. Edgar Hoover's principle of: "Justice is incidental in law and order."
I am enlightened as to the dark corrupt underworld that works in parallel to mainstream society.

However, seeing the greater picture may not aid in providing practical, workable solutions.

For someone like me, it would be to stretch my California dollars further in retirement. A lot of the problems in those red states don't really matter anymore at my age. Except I still don't think I'll make that trade; just noting why someone would.

Not to mention, we do have a lot of Republicans here. Even though they can't currently win many elections, they aren't that small a minority. The election results tend to distort the picture of exactly how liberal the state is. We're more of a nutty mix, really, than homogenized milk.

This is new to me.
So, you live in California?

Question answered.

I don't attribute issues in our criminal justice system to any political party. Instead, I'd suggest citizen groups that don't really understand all the nuances of crime and punishment have pushed an awful lot of bad law onto the state via propositions. The legislature ends up with its hands tied, because propositions theoretically are a direct voice of the people.

Except most people don't know the first thing about what is reasonable and effective punishment, or have any understanding of what the unintended consequences might be, or understand law well enough to know if the law the proposition creates will work as intended. Usually we end up trying to fix the problems created by one proposition with another proposition, except whoever writes the proposition doesn't really know what they are doing, either.

Can you tell I have an issue with the excessive use of propositions? I usually need to spend a full day studying them, only to find out down the road there was another unintended consequence none of us considered. It beats having no voice at all, I suppose, but its way overused.

The area of crime has seen this effect in spades. Mandate harsher sentences. Mandate lower ones. Mandate X be a felony. Mandate X not get prosecuted. There is no slow evolution. There is no consistency over time.

The laughing its way to the bank part? That is what is news to you?

Fifth largest economy in the world.

1. United States $20.4 Trillion

2. China $14 Trillion

3. Japan $5.1 Trillion

4. Germany $4.2 Trillion

5. United Kingdom $2.94 Trillion

California's Gross State Product in 2021 was $3.4 Trillion.  If we consider California separately from the U.S., it comes in fifth, ahead of the U.K.

1. United States $17 Trillion

2. China $14 Trillion

3. Japan $5.1 Trillion

4. Germany $4.2 Trillion

5. California $3.4 Trillion

6. United Kingdom $2.94 Trillion

"Laughing to the bank" is correct.  By the way . . . where does Australia rank on this list?  Or is it counted as part of the once-mighty United Kingdom?

i wish i could afford to live in california. in terms of cost of living, it seems to be like one big seattle.

Based on both Wikipedia and Worldometer, there's India between Germany and UK, it would compete with California.
Though, different sources have different methods of calculating GDP, so as long as we don't have it calculated with a unified method, we can't consistently compare it.

Anyway - California is rich, with around 7% of US population but 20% of US GDP.

My daughter lives there and loves it.It is expensive compared to other places , like Jackson, Mississippi ,but the quality of life is better.She made it from a poor county in Arkansas to the middle class in Cali.
She is a world traveler and been to many countries, the only place she was attacked and robbed (at knife point )was Austin, Texas.
Someone spit on her once in Guatemala ,but that’s usually not fatal unless they are viral.

California is a very, very large place, so you actually get a lot of variety. The cities and coast tend to be very progressive (Bay Area and Sacramento the most progressive, getting slightly less so as you go south to Los Angeles and San Diego), but the farming and rural areas are quite conservative. There are even efforts to split some counties from the state. Northeastern California sometimes talks about splitting off to become a new state called Jefferson, though I don't think this has ever gotten very far.

The cost of living is a major problem here. But this is where my family wants to stay there, so I will stay as well, even though my dollar could go a lot farther in a different state.

Crime is a problem, but it's not necessarily worse here than elsewhere. California also has some of the safer big cities in the country.

Homelessness is a big problem, and a lot of that comes from a lack of low-income housing. When people say "homeless", they usually think of a panhandler. However, there are actually quite a lot of people who are technically homeless but who still hold down jobs and pay taxes. Sometimes they go between the houses of friends, or even live out of their cars. These are typically the easiest to help, since they don't usually have serious drug or psychological problems. But even if you get help, it's hard to maintain a stable lifestyle when housing is so expensive.

I think urban Californians will eventually need to get used to living in more cramped quarters. We keep expanding out into the countryside, which causes a lot of environmental problems (like wildlife entering the suburbs). Hopefully we will see more low-income housing, multi-family units, and so forth.

If it weren't for NYC being the most expensive city, I would say the Bay Area would be in a class of its own as far as affordability there.

And we never mentioned Oregon or the non-contigs.