Say Anything Blog

You probably live in a state that has cold winters, right?

[...] Everyone I know is so disgusted with life in California that they dream of leaving. [...]

I am leaving california because the people in this state suck big dripping bloody anus. California is a state with greedy money hoarding people.

I am not just dreaming of leaving California, I AM leaving California, this used to be a nice place to live, I was born here, but it has went to hell.

Perhaps the main economic reason of why people are living California are the extremely HIGH REAL ESTATE prices..

...blame the federal government too!

California pays more in federal taxes than it receives in federal benefits.

..can North Dakota say the same?

it California were an independent nation, it’s economy would be the ~7th largest in the world!!

..can North Dakota say the same, lol?

housing Market and high real estate prices:

The international boom in housing prices has been most pronounced in California, with the median property price in the state rising to about the half-million dollar mark in April 2005. Orange County and the San Francisco Bay Area have the highest median prices, each approaching $650,000 in August 2004.[18] The least expensive region is the Central Valley, with a median price of $290,000.[19]

tax burden in California as a whole aren’t that drastic:

California’s overall tax burden of $10.66 per $100 of personal income is slightly above the $10.43 average for the United States

so despite everything whats wrong with California, they most be doing something right, ... Certain California cities are among the wealthiest on the planet

California has been having a net positive when it comes to immigration in and out of the state (more people are moving in than moving out).

California is the 13th fastest-growing state (after Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Utah, Idaho, Texas, Colorado, North Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington State). This includes a natural increase since the last census of 1,557,112 people (that is 2,781,539 births minus 1,224,427 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 751,419 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 1,415,879 people, and migration within the country produced a net loss of 664,460 people.

California is the most populous state—more than 12 percent of U.S. citizens live in the state. California’s population is larger than all but 33 countries. About four million more people live in California than in all of Canada.

California has eight of the top 50 US cities in terms of population. Los Angeles is the nation’s second largest city with a population of 3,845,541 people, followed by San Diego (8th), San Jose (10th), San Francisco (14th), Long Beach (34th), Fresno (37th), Sacramento (38th) and Oakland (44th).....

...

North Dakota has been having a very pronounce net negative, ..particularly of college educated proffessionals (more people are moving out than people moving in):

North Dakota has experienced a decline in population over the last 20 years, primarily among skilled college graduates for whom there are few jobs in the state. State leaders have been at a loss to address this issue, which is called outmigration in local parlance.

Student loan forgiveness programs for health and education professionals have been initiated with some degree of success, but a larger program to forgive the loans of all college graduates residing in the state for a given period of time failed to pass a referendum. Some federal politicians, including Byron Dorgan, have proposed “The New Homestead Act of 2005” (compare to the original U.S. Homestead Act in 1862) to encourage living in areas losing population through incentives such as tax breaks, but these have also made little headway.

Many North Dakota politicians believe that better economic development programs will eventually resolve the issue, but opinions are mixed as to what exactly that would entail.

I hear a lot of North Dakotan are moving to California? ..what the main reason (objective answers only, please)

economy of California

North Dakota’s outmigration

North Dakota has an excellent educatinal system which I admire, ..specially its higher education. ..but:

North Dakota’s leaders frequently boast that the educational scene in the state is excellent. However, because the economic situation is no match for it, many skilled graduates leave the state.

WHY are people leaving North Dakota?

A great, comprehensive article on North Dakota’s Outmigration

some excerpts:

At some point, throughout middle America, the population [in the United States] hemorrhage stopped, bottomed out.

But not here, in North Dakota. North Dakota has continued to lose people. And it didn’t have that many to begin with. In 1930, its population peaked at 680,845. In 2000, it was down to 642,200, and by 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, it had dropped to 634,366. (By comparison, the national population more than DOUBLED, to 294 million from 123 million, during the same period.) Of the 25 counties nationwide that lost the largest portions of their populations in the 1990’s, 12 were in North Dakota.

commenting on drivin around parts of the state,

You won’t pass many cars; depending upon where you’re driving, and when, you may not pass any at all for a half-hour or more. What you will pass, in no small numbers, are the things left behind in the exodus: Abandoned houses. Empty stores. Churches without congregations. Community buildings gone dark. Closed schools, never to reopen.

Wry North Dakotans have suggested that such sights are now so common that they should perhaps be represented in the state seal

anon, and your point is?  30 words of less please.

Actually, the outmigration from North Dakota has actually stopped in recent years.  Thanks, I think, to the state’s burgeoning economy.

I think a lot of kids are leaving North Dakota because in decades previous our economy was really ag-centric...and a lot of graduates just weren’t interested in farming.

To solve that problem many communities jumped on the “economic development” bandwagon and spent a lot of tax dollars on tax breaks and loans for businesses willing to move to ND.  This has largely backfired as most of the businesses leave as soon as the economic development benefits dry up.

Thankfully, true development in the state’s economy has begun outside the meddling of do-gooder politicians.  Largely this is being driven by high gas prices in recent years which have re-ignited ND’s petroleum industry.  That, hopefully, will be a genesis for growth in other businesses sectors as well.

But really, I don’t know why people get all atwitter about outmigration.  It awlways stops eventually when the labor force dwindles to a size small enough to drive up wages.  The best thing the government can do is just keep its hands off and quit mucking things up.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

I didn’t know this about North Dakota (what made me become interested in North Dakota was the great educational system it has). I find it to be a great paradox which I can’t understand, ..North Dakota has all the great thing proffessional people like myself crave (great educational system, my number one; extremly friendly people and almost no crime, nice pace of life, a clean environment and land to run around, great panoramas, etc.)

While I want to move to North Dakota it seems college educated professionals within North Dakota can’t wait to get out. I don’t really get it and want to know whether there is a perfectly rational explanation for it.

rob, I’m now going to research this in depth, but it appears you’re wrong and it hasn’t stopped:

the Associated Press in April of 2006 has an article calling it ‘alarming.

so does this one from one of your local paper:

N.D. out-migration figures ‘alarming’

By Patrick Springer, The Forum
Published Thursday, April 20, 2006

North Dakota continues to be a state with more exits than entrances: The state suffered an annual average migration rate of minus 6.3 percent from 2000 to 2004, according to new census estimates.

During that five-year period, the state lost an average of 3,999 people each year, the U.S. Census Bureau’s new domestic migration analysis, which tracks people moving in and out of each state, found.

Migration studies do not count births and deaths, which are included in population estimates.

The new migration figures surprised many officials because the state’s estimated population has shown slight growth for the last two years and migration losses had been easing since 2000.

“I think it’s alarming,” said Rep. Mary Ekstrom, D-Fargo, who twice failed in legislative attempts to launch a state office of immigration to lure more people to the state. “We’re doing worse than all our neighboring states, and we have been for a long time.”

“I was hoping that our out-migration losses were coming down, but they spiked up again,” said demographer Richard Rathge, director of the North Dakota State Data Center. “I’m not sure why.”

Unemployment in North Dakota is almost non-existant, which denotes a thriving economy, but the parados still baffles my mind, ..why are you people leaving such a great, a state I’ve come to admire recently?

I see the weather is one of the reason, but I already new the weather in North Dakota was sort-of bad ..but the wheather is in some way very bad in most other part of the US too. ..so that doesn’t do it as an explanation to me.

one bright spot for me though, ..I hope that ND Homesteading Act comes into fruition!,

..great vista and (in my opinion) one of the greatest state to have a family in.

Anon, Patrick Springer is a moron.  The very eptiome of a yellow journalist.  He is a mouthpiece for the Democrats and the Unions in the state and is not to be trusted to provide objective reporting on much of anything.

The article you post above (though I’d point out that the Forum is not my hometown newspaper) is just an example of that.  The state Demcorats (much like national Democrats) have a vested interest in making economic conditions in the state sound miserable.  Springer is all too happy to comply.

Here is evidence showing that more people are moving to North Dakota than away.  Sketchy data, to be sure, but it backs up what I myself have observed.  This is a relatively new trend, so it may be another year or so before there is enough data to say for sure...but the hysteria about outmigration is unwarranted.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Rob, you’re showing your bias towards Pat Springer.  Hmm.... let’s see could it be the series of articles that Mr. Springer did on Workers Compensation?  And could it be that your firm used to do alot of investigative work for the bureau.  Yeah, no bias there, Rob!

And Anon, they leave for more substantially more money in Denver and Minneapolis. Yes, the COL is higher in both those communities, but the increase in wages more than makes up the increased housing costs.

Hmm.... let’s see could it be the series of articles that Mr. Springer did on Workers Compensation? And could it be that your firm used to do alot of investigative work for the bureau. Yeah, no bias there, Rob!

That’s exactly it.  Mr. Springer interviewed several WSI claimants who told their side of the story casting WSI in a bad light.  Could WSI respond to the allegations made by these people?  No.  Because those cases are confidential.

I could provide details that would undermine nearly every single claim made by Springer and many of the people he interviewed, but I am bound by confidentiality.  Nice how that works, right?  Springer (acting as a mouthpiece for the unions, yes we know who was behind it all as I’m sure you do) can sound off, and the people he’s targeting can’t respond.

But whatever.  After years of running in the black with rock-bottom fraud and premium rates WSI will soon be raising its prices to employers.  Congratulations, we just went from good to bad.

And Anon, they leave for more substantially more money in Denver and Minneapolis. Yes, the COL is higher in both those communities, but the increase in wages more than makes up the increased housing costs.

An assertion made by a union mouthpiece who wants to see the government mandate higher wages and make prive industry more susceptible to thug union tactics.  Notice that Puzzle offers nothing to back up her assertion.  She doesn’t have to.  It is what she wants to believe, so she believes it and expects everyone else to as well.

But actually, you’re dead wrong.  The increase in wages does not offset the increase in cost of living.  This calculator is a useful tool illustrating that fact.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

MY plans haven’t been put-off yet, ..but, ..

two more recent article on that same newspaper:

Census shows outmigration continues

The new migration figures surprised some officials, because the state’s estimated population has shown slight growth for the last two years and migration losses had been easing since 2001.

Goodrich’s small class a sign of the future

..on the same newspaper you quote (the one with the positive article)

time to allow those “guest” workers in, .

Rob, I took a look at your calculator and I think where there is a difference is that the calculator uses a “comparable salary”.  I know of very few people who move to Minneapolis or Denver for a “comparable salary’.  Usually it’s for a lot more.  For example, an auditor acquaintance of mine was offered a similar auditor job in Mpls but the salary was $20 grand more per year. So while the calculator you used is accurate for “comparable salaries” it is usually why someone moves to a larger city. I certainly didn’t.

Also, I doubt that any of those high wage union job workers would give up their wages. It is clear that the highest wage jobs in ND are union jobs.

P: Unions exist to fix the supply and price of labor.  In so doing, they transfer money to their members at the expense of the rest of the population, through higher prices and decreased supply.  I works every time the govt mandates it.

SHIT!

North Dakota has a very aging population

Also, I doubt that any of those high wage union job workers would give up their wages. It is clear that the highest wage jobs in ND are union jobs.

Well of course they wouldn’t.  They’d be stupid to.

That doesn’t mean that unions are right.  How much more affordable would many products be, how many more employees would companies be able to hire, if unions didn’t exist?

We’d be better off without them.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

yes, the population is aging, our youth are leaving for better paying jobs elsewhere. 

R108, whatever. As I said, I doubt a union worker would be willing to give up their negotiated wage and benefits package.

Yeah, Rob, tell that to all those businesses in Beulah and Hazen and Bismarck, if they could survive without those high wage jobs, I highly doubt it.

Yeah, Rob, tell that to all those businesses in Beulah and Hazen and Bismarck, if they could survive without those high wage jobs, I highly doubt it.

Like the Unions created those high paying jobs? 

Puzzle, I’ll make it easy for you, they didn’t.  In fact they’re doing their best to move as many jobs overseas as they can.

Nice try whistler, but of course you would say that.  However, those workers are highly productive and do great work for Basin Electric. so they have negotiated good wages and working conditions with their employer.  If the employer agrees to those conditions and signs the contract, why should you care?  It’s there business after all?  No laws are being broken, so quitcherbellyachin’.

"If the employer agrees to those conditions and signs the contract, why should you care?”

I care if he employer didn’t have any real choices.  Did he have the choice to hire non-union workers?  If not, then it wasn’t a real negotiation, was it?

why not just fire all the union workers and give the jobs to the professional young blood, those North Dakotan which are leaving in ‘alarming’ numbers?

why not just fire all the union workers and give the jobs to the professional young blood, those North Dakotan which are leaving in ‘alarming’ numbers?

I think they should give the jobs to the workers that will do the most work for the money.

It’s great to want more money, but when unions institute inefficent rules they’re hurting everyone.

Gone for the weekend.  Hope yours is great.

unions institute inefficent rules they’re hurting everyone.

I don’t believe unions institute inefficient rules...companies do.

I don’t believe unions institute inefficient rules...companies do.

Featherbedding, you can’t get rid of the non-productive, you can’t reward the productive etc etc etc.

aNON: Once a company has been unionized, the unions essentially run the company.  Their threat is the economic threat of a strike.  This should be prohibited under antitrust laws, but guess what?  The antitrust laws don’t apply to unions!  Ain’t that a kick in the head!

However, those workers are highly productive and do great work for Basin Electric.

I have a hard time believing that.  Every labor study I’ve seen that wasn’t sponsored by a union has indicated that non-union labor forces are more motivated and more productive.

I read recently that a study between two auto plants, one unionized and one not, showed the union shop doing something like 30% of the non-union shop while eating up something like 50% more compensation.

Clearly, unions are bad for business.  But whatever, as long as the union bosses can keep raking in those dues right Puzzle?

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

My experience with unions is through my husband’s past membership in three unions.  Unions enforce strict codes (such as seniority rules) that penalize more workers than they help and inhibit productivity.  Unions create and exploit an adversarial work environment.  It is no way to run a railroad.

If the employer agrees to those conditions and signs the contract, why should you care?

Tell me what employer has ever had the choice to engage with a union?  Either the employer is forced to negotiate through union thug tactics (business-threatening strikes and threats against anyone else the business hires) or the government steps in and forces the business to negotiate with the unions.

What’s even worse is when laws require workers in certain fields to join unions.  Talk about the ultimate in anti-choice.

Puzzle likes to sit back and pretend like the status quo of unions and business is all hunky dory with everybody, but business only accepts unions now because they’ve been shoved down our collective throats so long that they’re an accepted cost of doing business.

That’s malarky.  I think it’s time for some outside-the-box thinking.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

Your outside the box thinking is to tell the worker if they don’t like their job, to go find another job.  Wow, that’s outside the box thinking.

It is problematic for the box to be aware of itself.

Your outside the box thinking is to tell the worker if they don’t like their job, to go find another job.

And yet, that’s how things work in a free market.  You don’t like your job?  Get a different one.  Employers should only have to compensate employees at a level which will keep a sufficient work force.  Not one penny more.

It’s sad that you don’t get this.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Rob’s recently listened-to songs:

I am leaving California for several reasons:

- Real estate is way too expensive.  Housing costs 60% of my paycheck here, when it used to cost 30% on the East Coast, even on a California salary.

- The higher cost of living and lower quality services.  With a higher standard of living, one would expect that if you pay more money, you would receive the same quality of product.  However, my experience has been that I pay more money and receive lower quality products and services, across the board.

- Weak public school system.  If I have kids one day, I would like them to have a good public education.  In order for kids to attend a good public school in California, one either has to live in a good area, which is so expensive it is out of the question, or one has to send their kids to private school.  A LOT of people out here send their children to private school, up to 50% in some communities.  This was NOT in my long-term budget.  I would want my kids to have a quality, free, public education.  One would think that since the taxes are so high, there would be high quality public services, but it’s the exact opposite.

- Lack of values.  One thing that is great about California, and I will give credit for this, is its diversity.  It welcomes people from all different backgrounds, which is great.  However, that does not mean that values go out the door.  And if you cite a concern, it seems like the culture blames you as the problem, when someone else was causing an issue.  Where I come from, it was considered a good thing to be honest and tell the truth.  It seems like values are sacrificed for harmony out here, even if it means that someone is getting hurt and everyone else turns the other way.  I don’t like it.

Generally, everything is so expensive.  I would not normally expect this.  I have a masters degree and earn a fairly healthy middle class income, and it is difficult to save money.  My spending habits now are pretty close to what my family-of-origin’s spending was when we were close to welfare when I was growing up.  It makes no sense.

Having been a California native for decades, I left in 1996, only to return 10 years later because I was “California Dreamin” having spent those years in the snow, cold and humid summers of the East Coast.  Now, having been back for only 4 months, I plan on leaving, and never to return because of:

[1] The stratospheric cost of housing.  People, these are 50’s, 2 and 3 bedroom ranch-style homes selling for $600K and up.  $1 million is now the norm for a house, and even then your neighbor looks into your kitchen window.  You people are out of your f***ing minds.

[2] Traffic.  Driving into LA to see my friends is something that should be on “Fear Factor”.  It’s a suicide mission - whose going to cut me off, what illegal is going to hit-and-run me, and why are people passing me in the “slow” lane when I am doing 70+

[3] Demographics.  California is being changed demographically into a third-world country by the invasion from Mexico. That’s the real reason, whether everybody wants to admit it or not.

I mean, really. Does anybody actually think people are leaving California because they’re tired of the great weather, the beaches, the mountains, the various things to do??? They are leaving because California is being changed from being a First-World state into a third-world dump and yes, it is due to illegal immigration.

Illegal aliens bring crime, traffic, gangs, overcrowded schools, overcrowded hospitals and a lot of other negative things so the middle-class Americans keep leaving.  As more and more illegal aliens go into California, the more social services they use and the more has to be spent on them for free schooling, healthcare, incarceration costs, etc. The more that has to be spent on them, the more the state has to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for those services. The more middle-class Americans are taxed, the more they leave the state. Eventually, California will lose its middle-class Americans and instead be a third-world dump like Mexico. It’s already happening.

So, Goodbye California...it was nice while it lasted.

robert108 said, I care if he employer didn’t have any real choices. Did he have the choice to hire non-union workers? If not, then it wasn’t a real negotiation, was it?

That’s an excellent point and one that Puzzlefeet (a former union thug) never responds to. I just had the highlight that.

dan you couldnt have said it any better,ive watched oxnard transform from a quite little beach community to having there own swat team and gang unit in little more than 10 years because of all the illegals lured to pick in the farms now xnard is a shit hole and i wouldnt pay 90000 for a house there i take that back you couldnt pay me to live next to the wetback scum that this city has become.once someone with a hispanic background gets elected into the local offices such as city councel members and such all of a sudden now the codes and enforcment that kept a city nice like oxnard as an example suddenly standards are lowered somehow and now the streets smell like urine just like tiajuana,its not a race issue its a character issue clean up your act oxnard

The MILLIONS of illegal alien invaders are a scourge upon a civilized society. Too many of the invading horde LUST after YOUNG girls. The following news story is far from a rare occurance.

Larry D. Hatfield, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, April 10, 2001 ©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

Greenfield, a normally placid Monterey County farm town that bills itself as the world’s broccoli capital, is currently the center of an ugly controversy involving alleged sexual mistreatment of children and ethnic harassment of immigrants.

“We may have averted a tragedy, and certainly ended a public nuisance,” said acting regional director Dave Still of the San Francisco office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

“They go after everybody because they look alike, they’re all brown-skinned, “ said Tony Acosta, a leader of the Central Coast Citizenship Project.

Both men were talking about the arrest of 39 Mexican immigrants—Still says they were here illegally, Acosta says that is not certain—on the streets of Greenfield last week.

After an undercover operation begun several weeks ago, INS agents arrested 21 men outside a downtown pool hall on Friday afternoon, and 18 more in a nearby apartment building.

The first group of men, according to the INS, were “observed harassing, touching and shouting lewd remarks at schoolgirls just out of class” at four nearby schools—Greenfield and Oak Avenue elementary schools, Vista Verde Middle School and Greenfield High School.

The second group was arrested after a complaint was registered by a Greenfield schoolgirl, said INS spokeswoman Sharon Rummery. She said the alleged incidents were observed over several weeks.

The girls involved were between 5 and 18, Rummery said. The men arrested were aged 17 to 55.

The men were taken in buses to the Mexican border immediately after the arrests. An undetermined number of wives and children were given the option of going with them, but Rummery said they declined. They are likely to go before immigration judges to determine their residential status, she said.

Acosta, whose group is one of the leading immigrant advocacy organizations in the Salinas Valley, accused the INS of making indiscriminate arrests.

“They arrested one of the groups at one of the businesses on the main street, then went into the apartment complex,” he said. “There was no knocking.

They just pushed the doors down and took all the men and left the women and children. They arrested everybody without asking for documents.”

Rummery said the INS agents knew who they were after and that the arrests were based on nine complaints, from school crossing guards, the Monterey County sheriff’s office and others. The first complaint was several weeks ago from a DARE program narcotics officer from the sheriff’s office.

The arrests were part of the INS’ “Salinas Project,” a program set up in the heavily Hispanic area in September, when the last remaining Border Patrol officers were pulled from Salinas and reassigned to the border. “People in the area were concerned and nervous there would be no INS presence,” Rummery said.

When the sexual harassment allegations began, the three officers assigned to the project set up an undercover program.

“The sorts of things we observed happening over several weeks are not violations of immigration laws,” she said. “But we’re there to support local law enforcement, and we saw a potential danger to young girls and acted on it.”

Greenfield police were not available today to say why no local criminal charges were filed.

City Manager Randy Anstine said he did not know why the arrests were a purely INS action. “The city of Greenfield cooperates with any and all law enforcement agencies, whether federal, state or county,” he said, noting that local authorities were not told of the action until shortly before the arrests.

“But we certainly don’t tell anyone how to do their job.”

One official suggested off the record that because of manpower and fiscal considerations, Greenfield let the INS handle the matter by simply removing the alleged perpetrators, rather than prosecuting them.

The arrests, already the subject of an angry community meeting last night, will be on the city council’s agenda next Tuesday evening. Acosta said he expects many people unhappy with the outcome to show up. Greenfield’s population of 12,583 is 85.4 percent Hispanic.

“We’d like to find out what really happened,” Acosta said.

He was skeptical of the accounts that the men harassed schoolgirls.

“The INS is in Salinas to arrest criminals, and that’s OK,” he said. “But these guys were coming for work. They leave at 4 and 5 in the morning and come back at 4 or 5 in the afternoon, so how can they harass schoolchildren? They came here to work. We’d like an explanation from the INS.”