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You Don't Have To Love it - Just Leave It! [1]
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Date: 2025-09-07
I used to be aggravated by the term “America – Love It or Leave It.” It was usually leveled by a redneck or some variety of right-winger, at anyone unpatriotic enough to question Vietnam or any other unnecessary, immoral war. But it was a versatile jab, able to be directed toward anybody who advocated America living up to its long-revered promises of justice, equality, freedom, et al.
I always thought, “That’s just stupid. I should sell all of my possessions, leave the country I was born in, the culture and history I know, the place my family lives, to move across the world to a place where I probably won’t speak the language or have any familial connection! Just because I criticize my country and want it to be better?! How about – America, love it or change it!”
But now, listening to the right-wing California-bashers, I’m proudly employing what I once rejected.
If you trash California, and don’t live here, PLEASE STAY AWAY. If you do live here, PLEASE LEAVE IMMEDIATELY. I don’t need you to love it or leave it. Just to leave it.
You can sell your overpriced home for a lot, move to a beautiful red state, buy a mansion with a few acres, and live your un-woke Trumpian dream. You won’t have to sell your things and/or learn a new language. You won’t ever to have to be around poverty, homelessness, drugs, or crime.
What’s that? You don’t want to switch jobs? Work remotely with the technology developed in California.
Don’t want to find a new job? No problem! Since you believe that companies are fleeing CA to leave behind taxes and oppressive regulations, you shouldn’t have any problem landing new, well-paid employment.
Your parents live in California? So what? It’s such a shithole that you shouldn’t have much problem convincing them to leave. It will be like the Beverly Hillbillies in reverse!
Come and listen to my story ‘bout a man named Bob
Had a nice house and a pretty good job
He looked on Zillow and imagine his surprise
His property value had continued to rise!
A lot, that is
Double digits
Crazy
Next thing you know Bob was a millionaire
The kin folk said, “Bob, move away from there!”
“Anywhere but California is the place you want to be!”
So he loaded up the family and moved to Buloxi
Mississippi, that is
No unions
Gun racks
New Jim Crow
I’ll give you a friendly wave as you head down the highway, escaping California’s golden hellscape. I’ll be happy that you’re gone.
Do I think that CA is perfect? Far from it. There’s way too much money in our state, driven by tech, sending prices through the roof, and making it virtually impossible for young people to buy homes. Crime and drugs are problems, and CA’s homeless population is higher than that of most other states. We’re prone to wildfires.
But, here’s why I think the CA bashing is BS:
Cost of Living : Of course, prices are high. It’s called supply and demand. It’s the most populous state, and the wealthiest state. The world is rapidly seeing technology drive the bus, so it’s no surprise that massive amounts of wealth would be generated in the tech capitol of the world. There’s too much money in this state.
Housing Prices : For every CA resident who wants to leave the state, there are 10 or 50 0r 100 families willing to overspend to get that house. For every ridiculously priced rental unit, there are scores of people who want to get in. There are many more people than there are housing units. I’ll admit that some of that can be blamed on lengthy permit processes and zoning laws, but even if these factors were eased, demand would still far exceed supply. For a million reasons, people want to live in California.
Employment: The unemployment rate is high – about 5.4%. I won’t attempt to ignore, deny, or justify that. Texas and New York both stand at about 4%.
Economic Health : Despite those numbers, CA still has a very strong economy. -
Everyone has heard that if CA were a country, it would rank 4 th in the world in terms of economic production. It far surpasses any other state.
It is by far and away the #1 producer of food in the country.
It is also, and this may come as a surprise to the CA-haters, #1 in manufactured goods. Yes, there is more manufacturing in CA than any other state.
Average wage – CA ranks 4 th ; average annual income – 6 th .
Citizens below the poverty line – 22 nd highest, which isn’t good (not surprisingly, of the 10 states with the most impoverished residents, 9 are red states).
CA has seen far more new businesses start in the last five years than any other state – almost double that of 2 nd place Texas.
It ranks #2 in new business applications, behind only Florida.
Those last two stats should give Bob and his ilk cause to wonder – if CA is such a terrible environment for business, why are there more new start-ups than in any other state and more new business applications than in all but one. The evidence, frequently anathema to Republicans, paints a very different picture than does Faux News and other sources of misinformation.
Homelessness : An intractable problem that nobody has solved. Many homeless people suffer from some degree of mental illness, and no taxpayers want to spend money on mental health; many more are drug addicts and similarly, nobody seems to want to pay for the treatment that addiction recovery requires; since housing units are in short supply and, as previously mentioned, are outrageously expensive, poor families can wind up on the street; and finally, it’s just easier to be homeless in mild-climate locales. People without homes would simply freeze to death in many parts of the country. The bottom line is that it’s a terrible problem that nobody – conservative or liberal – has any clue how to solve.
Addiction : Oh, The Tenderloin. Where would Faux News and the Right be without it. My guess is that many in red states have never seen recent images of the spectacular beauty that is California in general and the Bay Area in particular. Instead, they’re fed a steady diet of Tenderloin, Tenderloin, and more Tenderloin. Yes, it’s a tragic, deplorable mess. Addict encampments and deals going down 24/7. A right-wing propagandists wet-dream. But……though it has spilled onto Market Street and into the Civic Center area, it still constitutes a tiny part of SF, and a microscopic section of the greater Bay Area.
How to change it? Here, I partially side with the law and order folks. I think that drug dealers should do prison time. They seem to fearlessly distribute the drugs that ruin so many lives, and that should be met with severe sentencing. However, the more effective way to combat addiction would be to convince taxpayers to spend money on reasonable drug treatment. Anyone who knows anything about addiction understands that detoxing for a few days and then being put back on the street is a cruel joke. Recovery programs should be at least three months. Six is better, with maybe a prayer of success. One year, with another year of aftercare services, and someone might become a healthy, contributing member of society. Who wants to pay for that? Nobody.
And here’s something that conservatives will be shocked by, and undoubtedly disbelieve because it doesn’t fit the Faux News narrative: Based upon 20 indicators, including overdose deaths, opioid prescriptions, drug arrests, and access to treatment, California ranks 49th in terms of overall drug use and addiction severity. That bears repeating – 48 states have a more severe drug problem than CA.
Crime : The bogeyman that Faux News makes sure is omnipresent, and every red-state resident thanks the Lord they don’t have to deal with. “Billy, do your chores and finish your homework. You don’t want to end up jacking cars in…..(ominous background music)…..San Francisco!”
Is crime an issue? Certainly. CA ranks 10th as far as violent crime is concerned. Looking at the 50 U.S. cities with the most violent crime, CA has nine in that unflattering grouping. This has to come down. But here are some interesting phenomena.
Most of the violent cities are in rural CA: San Bernardino, Fresno, Bakersfield, Modesto, and Stockton. Low wages and higher unemployment means more poverty, which means more crime.
Oakland is high on the list at #12, but most red-staters would probably have it pegged as #3 or #4.
San Francisco (aka Hell on Earth) is 46 th .
Los Angeles (Hell on Earth’s southern sibling) isn’t even on the list! I loved the map that showed up a lot on Facebook: a map of the greater LA area with a tiny circle of red in the location of rioting. Of course, the same burning car was shown by Faux and conservative websites as evidence of an out-of-control city in an out-of-control state.
My conclusion? Crime is a problem. I don’t like having to worry about my windshield being smashed when parked on an SF street. But here’s the deal. On any given evening, there are approximately 250,000 cars parked on SF streets, and an average of 15 reported incidents! That means that the chance of my car being broken into is 0.006%! Some break-ins may go unreported, with victims opting to forego a police report and simply deal with their insurance company. But the bottom line is that both SF and LA are very safe big cities. Crime is not the monster Faux and the Right would have gullible people believe.
Education : Sadly, this is the area in which CA lags. It is dead-last in terms of % of high school grads, somewhere in the middle of the pack with college degrees, and in the upper third with advanced degrees. Our spending per pupil used to be toward the bottom, but is now at 19th. Were I an apologist for the inexcusable (aka – Trump supporter), I would say that with the highest % of immigrants and the 2nd highest % of EL (English Learner) students, the task of CA’s educational system is daunting. Whenever I worked with EL kids, I felt for them, knowing that I could no more pass a high school level class in a language I didn’t speak than I could sprout wings and fly. Still, CA can and should do better.
Taxes: They’re high. Get over it. It’s the price you pay for living in a great place that’s large, has lots of diversity, many people, and many needs.
Culture and Entertainment: CA is right up there with the best of the best. SF, LA, Chicago, NYC. This category really needs no explanation.
Weather : I’m not even going to rate this, though many would claim that CA’s weather is unbeatable. It’s a very subjective category: some folks love having four distinct seasons, with fall colors, winter snow, and springtime life that bursts from under that snow in dramatic ways. Other people undoubtedly hate that, and would much prefer the mild, outdoor activity-oriented climate of California. I’ve never known anyone to leave San Diego without marveling at the “perfect” weather.
Beauty : OK, so this is where we are incomparable. There are certainly beautiful parts of every state. Colorado and Utah with mountains and red rocks, the amazing deserts of the southwest, Hawaii’s idyllic paradise, Alaska’s grandeur, and much else. But, no other place in the U.S. has it all: mountains, foothills, forests, majestic redwoods and sequoias, fertile cropland, wide sandy beaches of SoCal, rocky cliffs and windswept beaches of NorCal, gorgeous Napa valley and well-tended vineyards up and down the state, wild and scenic rivers aplenty, and Yosemite, the jewel in any crown. And much of that is within half a day’s drive! Give me a few more hours and I could reach any of them: Tahoe, Redwood National Park, Napa, Mt Shasta, Big Sur, Joshua Tree, Mendocino, …………! Give me 90 minutes and I could be kicking back in Santa Cruz, one of America’s great, funky beach towns, or enjoying an overpriced wine tasting in Napa Valley, or walking amidst giant redwoods in Muir Woods, or standing in the Marin Headlands, looking down on the world’s most iconic bridge, across sparkling blue water to a vibrant gem of a city. I’ll even be audacious enough to claim that are few chunks of land on earth that have as many different ecosystems and are as diversely beautiful as California.
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