California Sucks
I’m just going to come out and say it. The only reason people live in California is because it has beautiful weather. That is what makes California what it is. If you somehow airlifted California and dropped it on top of Saskatchewan, leaving everything else intact, people would flee the state en masse because it’s a crappy state to live in.
I have always been skeptical about people who move to a place because of its weather. The reason is simple.
Suppose you’re an archaic homo sapiens, say, circa 900,000 years ago. Your middle eastern stomping grounds are getting kind of crowded and you’re an ambitious young buck who wants to be the chief of your own tribe. Why not? The chief always gets the hottest tail.
East? Nah. Persian gulf. West? Nah. Mediterranean Sea. South? Nah. People live there. North? Sure! That sounds good.
Except the farther north you go, the farther into Europe you go. And guess what? It’s freaking cold in Europe, and cave bears who literally stand 12 feet tall live in all of the caves. If you’re a half-wit, you’re going to either freeze to death or get eaten by a cave bear. It’s harder to live in cold places. I argue that if the entire world had the climate of California, we would still be living in caves because there would never be any incentive to progress any further. You aren’t going to freeze to death and there’s food growing on trees year-round because it’s sunny, warm, and 75 degrees for 350 out of 365 days per year. Nothing inspires creativity and ingenuity like otherwise inevitable starvation and hypothermia.
You’ll note, mind you, that most of the people who start enormous businesses that everybody has boners for like fucking Google were started by people who emigrated to the state from somewhere else because they were sick of winter.
I’m not going to deliver a littany of all of California’s problems; you know what they are. I will instead share with you a brief anecdote: my college buddy who hails from Capetown, South Africa moved out to California with a girl who grew up about 10 minutes from where I currently work on the east coast (although her family came from Boston). They love the weather. They live near fucking Google’s offices. But she is now pregnant and they are seriously talking about moving back to the east coast. Obviously, part of it is so that she can be close to her mother. But the biggest part is the fact that they have no chance in hell of buying real estate in California. Combined, they probably make about the same or slightly more than my wife and I do. But we own a house and they own shit. They complain about the taxes and they don’t want their children going to school with classes half full of illegals who don’t speak English. She is a raging liberal, by the way, and they both voted for Obama.
Despite the reality of California, Time recently posted this bullshit. To quote:
Its voters approved huge bonds for stem-cell research, high-speed rail and repairs to aging infrastructure while Washington was dragging its feet; its politicians adopted first-in-the-nation greenhouse-gas regulations, green building codes and efficiency standards for automobiles and appliances that have rearranged the national energy debate. Yes, it was also an early adopter of subprime mortgages — Countrywide, Golden West and IndyMac were all California-based — but life on the frontier has always been risky.
This paragraph is trying to make it sound like California is cutting-edge and that these supposed pros are actually a good thing. Stem-cell research? How is that good? Greenhouse-gas regulations? When your children are laughing at you for being so fucking retarded that you actually believed in global warming, remember that you read this blog and if only you had listened to me you wouldn’t have elected some assclown who raised your energy bills by 25% so you could pay for an imaginary solution to an imaginary problem.
And of course, the coup de grace of this piece: yes, our companies fucked the entire nation with subprime mortgages, but “life on the frontier has always been risky.”
What the fuck. What frontier? The pacific ocean? Give me a break. So when California adopts bullshit expensive legislation that does nothing but bankrupt them they’re leading us with steady, sage-like wisdom and carrying the torch for the nation’s progress, but when its companies play a huge part in throwing the entire world into a recession, we’re supposed to chalk it up to the romantic notion of the wild wild west? You’ve got to be kididng me.
Normally I wouldn’t give a shit because blaming a U.S. state for problems caused by companies that are headquartered there is fucking stupid, but the author of this propoganda turd does so fully in trying to establish how great California is because fucking Google has its offices there and Steve Jobbs invented the iPhone in San Francisco. It works both ways, jack ass.
The 1855 book The Land of Gold dismissed it as “lawless, penniless and powerless.”
The author of The Land of Gold – yes, we underline book titles – was a prophet. See? Some ideas stay relevant for a very long time and don’t require “progress” to correct. Another example of this would be the United States Constitution. Lawless? If immigration is the standard, then check. Penniless? Who would deny that? Powerless? Debatable. But money talks and bullshit walks, so no matter how sunny it is in the Sunshine State, if California’s coffers are empty and its checks bounce, then no one will care what “California” thinks.
TIME published a woe-is-California issue called “The Endangered Dream” in 1991 after the aerospace industry collapsed.
But of course. TIME was wrong then, but now it’s right.
But even with 12% unemployment, California still has an enviably young and productive workforce.
It’s amazing what happens when millions of Latinos flee the stinking shit holes they were unlucky enough to find themselves born into and grab on to the sides of trucks heading north to wind up in a slightly less stinking shit hole where they can collect free services and become parents of American citizens and therefore virtuall undeportable simply by having unprotected sex.
There’s only so many lawns that need to be cut and so much trash that needs to be picked up. That young productive workforce is unskilled labor that quite frankly we can do without. The only reason California gets away with it is because these people are illegal and they get paid under the table. If California’s young, productive workforce were legal and then tried to compete with China’s young, productive, and massively cheaper workforce on unskilled labor such as manufacturing, they’d get their asses kicked.
When it comes to energy, California is not just ahead of the game; it’s playing a different game. Its carbon emissions per capita are less than half the U.S. average. And from 2006 to ’08, it attracted $3 of every $5 invested in U.S. clean tech — five times as much as the No. 2 state. It’s by far the national leader in green jobs, green patents, supply from renewables and savings from efficiency. It’s also leading the way toward electric cars, zero-emission homes, advanced biofuels and a smarter grid: its electric utilities plan to install smart meters in every California home.
Bwahahaha. Total waste of time and money. This just makes an already expensive place even more expensive. And you wonder why California is bankrupt? Not, of course, that there is a direct correlation between its budget woes and it’s green industry – I’m sure there isn’t – but this kind of senseless and stupid government regulation is merely a symptom of a deeper problem – a legislation prone to believe in stupid things and voters prone to elect stupid people who also believe in stupid things themselves.
This public-sector foresight has created alluring opportunities for the most tech-savvy private sector on earth. The venture capitalists behind the high-tech and biotech booms see clean tech as the next big score.
This is called milking a fad for all it’s worth. Liberals hate the rich. This is what the rich do. They play on the public’s mass stupidity, make a fortune selling them stupid shit they don’t need, and then laugh all the way to the bank in their 16 cylinder 8mpg hogs with supermodels bobbing on their dicks.
But the state’s business culture fetishizes long-shot ventures and game-changing ideas. Failure is appreciated, not stigmatized, and an entrepreneur without a few busted start-ups on his résumé is almost suspect.
Where do I sign up?
I need to stop. TIME magazine will probably sue me if I keep quoting their bullshit story about bullshit California.
Ugh.
“In a Stage 1 emergency only a general call for voluntary conservation is issued, while a Stage 2 emergency results in power being temporarily cut off to certain large users, primarily industrial concerns, who have agreed to this arrangement in exchange for lower rates. When a Stage 3 power emergency is declared, electricity to one of the grids is shut off for a fixed period of time, which can range from 60 minutes to 2½ hours. If after this period of time the Stage 3 emergency still exists, power is restored to this grid but then the next grid in the sequence is blacked out, and so on, until the situation is stabilized — the blackout thus “rolls” from one grid to the next.
In California, each customer’s electric bill includes the number of the power grid (from 1 to 14) that customer belongs to; this gives customers at least some advance notice of when their electricity might be turned off in the event of a Stage 3 emergency. The grids are set up in such a manner as to ensure that a large percentage of customers in the same neighborhood would not be blacked out concurrently, which could invite looting and other related problems. Normal electricity customers can fall within the areas reserved for emergency use (if they are near a hospital or other critical infrastructure), in which case their electric bill will indicate a power grid of 99 and they will not be affected by rolling blackouts.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_blackout
California certainly is playing a different energy game.
[...] emach elucidates why California is a shithole. [...]
The best policy would be to build walls around California, as well as Massachusetts, her sister-state, primarily to keep the residents in. The problem is that those who leave both of these shit-holes are usually those who share responsibility for voting for the politicians who created the shit-holes in the first place, and who then bring their leftist feel-good politics with them and pollute the states they go to. Colorado has been turned into California-Lite. New Hampshire used to be the “Granite State”, with “Live Free or Die” on its license plates. Now it has become Mini-Mass.
Bad ideas are like a contagious disesaes.
I am intrigued and would like to know more about how I could soon be driving in a 16 cyl. 8mpg hog with supermodels bobbing on my dick. Actually, a 4 cyl. 30mpg compact w/many dick bobbing supermodels is acceptable.
?\\\California is the shithole of America, it is the illegal immigrant capital of the USA. Flush the fucking toilet America, California is a cesspool of no reality, want want want want cry cry cry. Can you say shithole, uneducated shitsuckers.
Yeah, who do I vote for so I get some of that juicy supermodel dick-bobbing? I am so there.
Hey, hey.
I live in California. Have my entire life. In fact, I’m a stone’s throw from the State Capitol in Sacramento.
I’m not going to argue with the lunacy of the way the state is run. It gets a lot of flack from me because it’s owned lock-stock-and-barrel by liberal politicians, with the other side reduced to little more than an annoyance. As evidenced by the recent passage of AB962 through our legislature, the entire California GOP apparatus, when unified, still cannot even slow down the Left’s juggernaut. AB962 is the bill that our dear Gubbernor signed into law which makes it a lot more hassle for law-abiding citizens to obtain handgun ammunition.
And of course, that right there is my primary beef with this state – the outrageous, absurd gun laws. It seems that those in power here are under the impression that a semi-automatic rifle holding 10 rounds in a fixed magazine won’t cause someone to become a raging, murderous lunatic, but an 11-round fixed mag or detachable one in any size, will.
The gun owners in this state are treated like children reaching toward a cookie jar on the counter. Our hands are slapped and we’re told NO, even though we’ve earned our right to the cookies. Next door in Nevada, kids our age gorge themselves on cookies and no one cares. You can own and shoot pretty much anything you like in pretty much any of the states bordering this one.
In this state’s defense, nobody (TIME or the blogger here) mentioned California’s incredible agricultural potential. Looking past the always-thorny issue of farmers’ water rights, this state produces a STAGGERING variety of farmed and ranched food producs – a dizzying array of fruits, nuts, vegetables, cheeses, other dairy products, meats of every type, and more. The almonds alone are worth writing home about. The diversity of climatic zones, elevations, and soil types makes this possible. And of course, let’s not forget the fish you can catch in our rivers and lakes.
What does Kansas grow? Oh, right. Wheat. Iowa? Corn. Wisconsin? Cheese. Anything else? No? Well, guess what – we produce copious amounts of all three, in addition to our other crops those states cannot grow.
That all having been said, the tax and regulatory burden here is crushing, and the high land prices that the blogger mentioned are a big part of it – on top of vast swaths of our state being overcrowded to start with.
I don’t take it personally when people bash California, because I know they’re talking about the insanity here in the state capital and the utter lunacy going on in our various trendy communities up and down the coast – pretty much any town whose name begins with “San” or “Santa.”
See, I’m from the hinterlands part of the state originally. Up north. In the valleys. Spent a good part of my life roaming the hills and mountains of the northern parts. I know the critics from other states don’t mean me – a gun-owning, flag-saluting, family-loving outdoorsman – they mean those stupid metrosexual types down in LA. I just wish more of my fellow Americans appeared to realize that their own kind live out here, too. We aren’t all gay (we passed Prop 8, didn’t we?), and most of us don’t surf.
The only thing that really burns my toast? Hearing people in states like Oklahoma gripe about having to pay $2.15 for a gallon of gas. Yeah, cry me a river.
The reason California is so fucked up is that all the other states dumped their shitheads on US back in the 60′s and 70′s. San Francisco, for example, was a patriotic town before that shit. I’m 5th generation San Franciscan, and I can tell you that all the fuckheads who claim to be from the City were actually born in YOUR STATES.
San Fran Nan, for example…Baltimore.
Barbara fucking Boxer…Brooklyn.
I could go on and on, but it disgusts me.
The laws and practices of California are a reflection of the worst of our country, all crystalized in one state, but don’t blame true Californians.
Many of us are fighting to take it back, while hoping to endure the madness long enough to do so…
I’m just hoping, as you mentioned (and indeed support my point), that the idiots that got us into this mess move back to where they came from.
Cylar said it best. There are many of us patriots left in California. This state has the potential to be the absolute best in the union with our fertile and diverse geography. The “progressives” who inhabit the south, and other large population centers don’t realize progress is not always a good thing. In the case of California, we have “progressed” in the wrong direction. I feel helpless to stop it, as even our conservative options for leadership are often the Arnold types who are in bed with the libs (as Arnold literally does sleep with one, pun intended). Our state is to far gone for conservatives to compromise at this point. We need some serious change from idealogical leaders who will seal our borders, encourage business growth, and eliminate welfare. The problem is, once the people realize they can vote themselves money, how can you stop them from doing so?
Golly, there hasn’t been a positive thing said here about California except from the guy who pointed out all the crops we can grow. Fact is, that and the weather are probably the only good things about the state. The taxes are insane (10% sales tax, highest in the country), there’s a million stupid laws and our asshole legislature passes more every year (to create revenue through fines), the police make the Gestapo look like sissies. Rents are absurdly high here and you cannot get by making less than $150,000 a year. There’s a million foreigners speaking some weird language everywhere you go, busy stealing the good jobs from Americans (for the last time, STFU that they only take jobs Americans don’t want, only a moron would believe that complete lie.) The freeways are parking lots, there’s huge crowds everywhere you go, and to top it off, most of the people are complete assholes. If i could leave California tomorow, i would do it – if you think you want to come here, i’d think twice if i were you.
Anytime someone starts out with “the only reason people do X,” you know that while a kernel of truth may exist, much of what is about to follow will be the rantings of a monomaniacal person, badly in need of some actual detailed, correct information.
For example, I moved here because I found a unique job helping students in US universities recover from poor high-school educations in math and science, and pass through the University into professional careers in Medicine, math, Engineering and Science.
You can either read up on the truth, or make up your own.
Care to modify your post? Or would you rather just enjoy being mainly wrong?
(I would have moved to Haiti (or Saskatchewan) to take this position. It just happens to be in Irvine, CA.)
Oh, and I love it here. We sail our boat on weekends and see whales and dolphins right up close, really enjoy the awesome weather, go to Catalina, cycle and run outdoors all the year around, etc…
Sometimes, I think some Cali haters are just jealous.
@Eric: I highly doubt that this job of yours is in any way unique. In fact I’d argue that similiar jobs exist in all 50 states, Haiti, and Sasketchewen. I think you’re being dishonest in this claim.
I can also derail your entire line of thinking rather easily by asking you a very simple question: if the same job were available in Saskatechewan and California, where would you go, and why? You’d be lying if you said the weather didn’t factor very highly in your decision, especially given your penchant for cycling.
I am jealous of your weather. I am angry that one of if not the best climate in which to live in the United States is wasted on morons like you.
read this first please:
http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks/Science_Behind_ALEKS.pdf
Now, examine this quote, taken from your original post:
“The only reason people live in California is because it has beautiful weather. ”
With respect to your doubts, I can assuage them: I am the only person doing what I do in the U.S. (seriously, did you read the document at the top? Knowledge Space Theory is uniquely the property of the Regents of the University of California, and is licensed to ALEKS Corporation for exclusive worldwide distribution).
I would have gone anywhere for this position!
Anywhere.
The company happens to be in California.
I say again Would you “Care to modify your post? Or would you rather just enjoy being mainly wrong?”
Oh Eric, why does it not surprise me that you think an academic paper like the one you linked would impress people?
It doesn’t.
“ALEKS is fundamentally different from previous educational software. At the heart of ALEKS is an artificial intelligence engine that assesses each student individually and continuously.”
In other words it’s an artificially adaptive tutoring system. But it’s still a tutoring system. You’re just using an algorithm in place of what a good human tutor would naturally do anyway.
And you call this unique and that’s why you moved to California?
What a numbskull.
OK, so that’s two unnecessary insults to zero.
I don’t know whether you know this or not, but I’ll give you this for no charge (and then blovk you from here:
people don’t read blogs weritten by others who are spammers, trolls, and pointless insulters.
You just lost a reader. Bye.
(plus, you are still wrong. Read up on Stochastic processes, or, evene easier, look and see who’s replacing the SAT at Universities around the US, and then realize how mistaken you really are.
Or, check in threee years at what the Urban school distircts are using to fix their math problem (much more cheaply than human tutors).
If I was to ever pick a lawyer to represent me It would be ‘Obama anyone that can lie to your faces about everything, he promised get away with it and come back to do it again is 1 either the biggest con artist of the century or the smarties con artist of the world he needs to get the I ‘Fudged “America the most trophy and have it connected to Georg 1 and two and they could both just be crushing the world like and egg we all just smash to bits. And now after this second run I have to ask myself bad will win.’This is that day when bad was good and the grave will uncover the truth,’As Armageddon is here ‘Therein the next few years can 1.’Be our design or it can be our battle field, which path will the ‘American blue sky choose? California threw ground roads there is gold there still 40 feet accost 20 feet down threw the grounds of hate above where children are taken by cars trains and planes, Think threw dig in find something good to hold onto like a pond. Dig it out put new sand in and share it’ beauty with others it is the tear of god if you don’t if you do god will smile down upon you from heaven this sickness in California is everywhere and it ends with safety in numbers with creation and creativity self sustainability please think clear Angel’s are here and if they hurt your pond. So defend it i give you the permission defend it with your life.
Faith in something good is like wheat to gods eyes.
California does not suck it’s just sick,’ OK just like the rest of America it’s our own design that prevents us from fixing here it’s the lazy unions that refuse to build upon her and I have about had enough
Your bother could mean the diffidence before life itself please keep bothering me.
The bothering wheel has gotten much attention for it’s own design, but that design is now out dated. There is a new design threw the ground, ‘please meditate on that for me. A squeaky wheel was the first notice of the bothersome round wheel, Now our round earth is squeaking seal her threw the grounds of hate.
California is so overrated.
-weather is highly overrated. Cold and foggy. I was shocked when I moved here from the east coast
-costs for routine things are ridiculous (gas, register a car, etc) Demonstrates complete mismanagement of the state
-try to engage with government on any level…what a joke (drivers license, register vehicle, pay a tax bill in person, etc…) aside from never being open, the lines are horrible and the competence of the employees in most of the levels of Gov’t I’ve dealt with border on 1st grade education. The state and local government here really is the ‘employer of last resort’
The argument against moving for weather is lame. Unless you’re a Silicon Valley geek or a Wall Street tycoon, you can likely take your talents (or lack thereof) to most any metropolitan area of the country. You might as well live where the weather is nice or to your personal liking. I live in Miami and actually have turned down a job transfer to LA–I’m a beach lover and water sports guy, and for that Miami > LA. But I’ve been to Cali and it’s very nice, better than most of the US IMHO. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 3 years, it’s been proven that owning real estate is at best forced savings and at worst a noose around one’s personal finances. And spanish-speakers are coming to a classsroom near you if they’re not there already. So feel free to live in a land of shorts and T-Shirts.
just a small correction sweetie..FLORIDA is the Sunshine State, california is the GOLDEN state lol
l.o.l. – literally laughed the fuck out loud reading this.. I live in California.. and it’s nice.. however, it does kinda act like it’s a separate country..
California is the best state ever! It’s a magical land filled with every terrain possible, every culture possible,the Pacific Ocean is your playground, and you will never get bored living out there! Taxes are high but you’re salary is higher for your position then anywhere else so it evens out. Haters in the building!!!!! And Californians aren’t mean a lot of them are laid back not all but alot that is what their known for it’s New Yorkers who are said to be mean. Get your facts straight buddy no need to use that type of language just cause your jealous and bored of your no ocean, shitty weather, land.
I too moved here from another state – in ’79 to be exact – when I didn’t know shit – fresh out of the Marines – 32 years later, all I can say is this state, this government, the lifestyle, the (lack of) any culture other than gang emulation, false sports worship – two shitheads just shot each other at a 49-er’s / dirtbag raiders game, worthless under 45yr y.o. no work ethic slobs.
All componnded by more foriengners who have no intent of ever becoming US citezens. not only does california suck, but so does the US for letting this shithole exist – Fuck all of you
I’ve been living in Sacramento area for 4 months now, maybe more and while I do meet nice people in the outskirts of Midtown now and again, I am reminded of this 3rd world looking place with Interracial relationships everywhere. its extremely baffling and not only that, the freaks in Midtown that come out after dark. I am never jealous of them because I have an inner freak that is authentic that many of these people do not possess deep down. Its all for show.. many attention seekers, mexiscum and race mixers + lots of sun = not my thing. I would have stayed in FL if only I had a job and more friends.. it would have made more sense to anyhow especially if this cool weather here is a fluke. I move if I have nothing to lose or if I get closer to somewhere else I really want to be like I did here. I like the mountains in Northern California but goddamn just be 1 hr south and you see a world of difference. I didn’t expect this part of CA to be that great even before I came.. I expected it to be a pitstop until I got to Oregon and turns out that perception is correct. Nothing comes short of it or amounts to anything more than it.
I was born in San Francisco and grew up in the South Bay. My Great, Great, Great Grandfather left Illinois and came to California in 1850 looking for gold.
I remember the days before the booming of Silicon Valley. Things were much different at that time. I left my state in 2009 for many reasons. I grew tired of the roads being jam packed with cars almost all day. The cost of living is horrible. Home costs are crazy and the price of gas is highly inflated. My wife and I were working two jobs and barely making it. The government in Sacramento has broke the state. Traffic, high cost of living, stupid laws…..I left. I am making less money at my new home and have more cash left over at the end of the month.
God how I wish I knew you. I’ve lived in just about every state but because of my family circumstances always find myself stuck in this shithole of a state. God forbid you verbalized your dissatisfaction in this godforsaken place because everyone is either fucking delusional, supported by a bankrupt system (which pretty much has pissed away their right to say otherwise IMO), or hasn’t known anything else. Ever find yourself in search of your connecting flight from ANYWHERE, USA to Los Angeles?? Here’s a failproof tip…look for the gate where all the unkempt, moderately overweight, and stressed out peeps are congregating..safe travels, thats your connection. You think I lie…or you laugh cause you KNOW I don’t.
Corruption
Alienation
Low-lifes
Insensitivity
Fraud
Obesity
Repugnant
Negativity
Invalidation
Abrogation
^just read the first letters ^
I Made the mistake and came here from Long Island New York in 2006 AND! AND!! AND!!! I am getting out of this Califarcia cesspool of lowlife, moronic, shallow, aging senile high school nasty kids in their 50s to 70s. You find that this place, Califarcia, IS CRAPPY, PRETENTIOUS AND JUST PLAIN CHEAP. Good Lord What a Messed Up State with unEarthly messed up NonHuman Bastardly Arrogantly Stupidly self impressed Nuts.
And!!!..Be Very Careful as Califrnia is some kind of a parasite which will draw your time and money out of you and leave you with nothing while giving what you have to…. so that the bureaucrats and KILLER police can justify their jobs and existence at the expense of everyone else.