Why do people dislike California?

It absolutely has a lot to do with Right wing/Republican propaganda, California, Chicago, and New York represent everything they hate so they constantly use both states and that city as negative talking points.

One point they constantly make is that New York City is a crime riddled hellhole, meanwhile NYC has one of the lowest crime rates in the entire country, and one of the lowest murder rates, it's just a massive city with a massive population and everyone there has cameras so when stuff happens it goes viral. Also the Red States tend to have much higher crime and murder rates.

All in all this is usual conservative/right wing tactics, they constantly want to isolate and segregate themselves from other ideas, and aren't afraid to take over where other people live to exclude the people already living there. This is why Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah have similar campaigns about "don't California my state" and by "California" they mean don't bring your "liberal/socialist/Communist/woke/progressive/democratic" outlook to their states, because they don't want to be responsible for cleaning up the racism and various other problems that the red states seem to have adopted as their identities.

Also I know quite a few conservative Californians and New Yorkers that recently moved to Texas and Florida, and as conservative as they thought they were they actually talk about moving back to where they came from because of how it is in their new states, except for the fact that they moved to the new states because they can afford so much more than what they could in California.

Overall my point is, if you consume right wing media then you are conditioned to hate blue states, and particularly those blue states are Cali, NY, and the city of Chicago as well as DC, I'm not saying these places are without flaws, but I am saying that the propaganda and disinformation about those places has amplified the hate towards those places and their residents.

California gets trotted out in the conservative media sphere as "liberalism run wild", a place where being what they consider to be a "real American" is illegal but crime is subsidized by the state, where everything is expensive and dangerous, and homeless people have gay sex in the street. There's an entire industry focused on filtering for the most extremely awful news they can find in a state of almost 40 million people, packaging that news as though it's the typical experience everyone there goes through, and then blasting that news into the brains of Americans 24/7. That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.

California is the target of conservative fear mongering.

There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.

Full disclosure, I’m Canadian but travel to San Diego often for work.

Downtown San Diego is not as I remember it from before the pandemic. It’s quite clear to me that California is struggling with a massive mental health and addiction issue. The cost of living compounds these issues and amplifies the worst in people. Even “normal” working class folk are quick to anger and explode at the slightest inconvenience and people just do not give a shit about each other. I pin it to everyone being stressed out because they live paycheck to paycheck and the future is always uncertain.

Things that I think could help: universal healthcare, increased public housing, and the execution of the sackler family.

It's a left-leaning, progressive state. Everyone who talks shit about this state in anything other than the cost of living generally doesn't have an answer because their actual reason for disliking the state is that it's not a republican state.

california is the largest "sub-national" economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.

if i had to guess, the answer is "success breeds jealousy"

I think this is mostly due to the highly polarized political climate. California is the most populous state and it's policies frequently end up spreading to other states and therefore is frequently focused on because if it's major influence. This is similar to how Texas and Florida are in the news a lot for their more conservative policies. While there are people out there who take the time to inform themselves and make their own decisions most people are only able to parrot back talking points they hear from the news or their friends. I suspect your coworker is one of those people and probably leans conservative so all he hears all day is how California's policies are making housing too expensive and it's too "woke" etc.

As a very left leaning individual who does not like California my reasons basically come down to all the benign neglect of the homeless (leaving people to rot in the streets with their fentanyl addictions isn't progressive, assholes) the militant oppositions to building housing anywhere (progress is being made but it's like pulling teeth) and the huge focus on performative laws that effect 0 actual change.

... Notably these are all problems in other states too. Most of them just use police to lock them up instead. Not better.

But California rubs me the wrong way because they act smug about it.

Because its a right-wing dogwhistle.

I live here and it's all propaganda. From my lefty perspective there are no shortage of things to criticize about California, but most of the criticism in the mainstream comes from the right and more or less 90% of it is made up.

Example: last year San Francisco elected a DA who said that they wanted to reform the justice department, used Black Lives Matter rhetoric, etc, and the conservative media sphere drummed up a propaganda campaign against them and against San Francisco generally that convinced everyone that a spike in crime had occurred even though there was no actual evidence that crime had gone up (and even if it had the new DA hadn't been in nearly long enough to be the cause of it). This resulted in that DA getting recalled and replaced and everyone outside the state thinking that San Francisco is Mad Max, even though statistically things are basically exactly the way they've been for the past couple of decades.

The real problems are what other people said, things are expensive and the cities have a lot of inefficient sprawl which makes the cost of living worse and starves the city governments of funds for social services. We've been staring down the barrel of a water crisis for like two decades and the state government is seemingly incapable of taking any action on it, we spend way too much money on cops, the government is completely captured by the local industries, the only thing we seem capable of doing to homeless people is systematically brutalizing them - but none of those problems are unique to California.

Funny enough for the right wingers that don't like the gun control in California, it was first brought in because Reagan was fearful of the Black Panthers who were openly carrying fully legal assault rifles and those white politicians couldn't handle that second amendment applying to black gun owners.

Poor republicans are butthurt

As California goes, so goes the nation. Conservatives don't like this.

If it wasn't for the high cost of living, I'd move to California as well. Still hope I'll make it there some day.

Most people out of the state who complain about California, never lived here, they are just repeating what they heard on conservative media.

If it was a hell hole like they say, the property prices would be cheap, no one would want them.

Most people that are leaving, are leaving because they got priced out and cannot afford to stay.

From my small sample size experience as a customer service rep for an internet and cable TV company, California customers are some of the most obnoxious ever. People in LA seem like some of the angriest people ever. The slightest inconvenience and it's like you killed their fucking dog.

Same reason people don't like Florida. Lots of targeted negative media coverage. Conservatives think California is a shithole where homeless people are everywhere and people don't get arrested for robbing a store at gunpoint. Non-conservatives think Florida is full of hard-core Trumpers who want to ban all gay people from existing and is like a redneck 1984.

Reality is more nuanced. Both states are very large populations with a diverse makeup. But nuance is hard to convey in headlines. I personally live in Florida and love it, even though I hate DeSantis with a passion. The people here make up for the shitty politics. And the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the other side.

Right now, it's because Californians are moving to [insert right wing state] and turning it left wing.

I’m not sure how this hasn’t been mentioned yet but a lot of the Midwest doesn’t like California because it feels like there’s a migration of californians who have been priced out of California moving into the Midwest who both bring their left leaning policies into right leaning areas and buy up so much property it drives housing even higher.

They watch a lot of Fox Entertainment.

It's all nonsense created by right wing extremists. California is an amazing state for a huge, long list of reasons.

The people here are amazing (not you, LA) and we have some of the most beautiful beaches, coasts and forests in the world.

While traveling in the South I was surprised to hear the exact same conversation in every diner I went into. It was whatever scare point was on the news the previous day. And nobody was debating the merits of the clams they were reciting, they were just agreeing with each other and bringing up the next claim. It was like it was a scripted conversation that they had started every time I walked into a greasy spoon restaurant.

I think it's more important for people to be up on their current talking points than to look at anything critically, especially not look into what their "news" media tells them is happening. And a lot of that seems to revolve around how terrible California is, I'm not sure why besides creating a very "large and powerful, controls Hollywood and the narrative" other for people to be worried about. (Surprisingly the exact same narrative control that dominates the diners in the South)

From what I've observed it has to do with the fact most people do not know how to party, something California knoes how to do very well.

Went to San Francisco and California in general for the first time this past May. I've grown up in the suburbs on the East Coast with a very conservative family.

They were all losing their minds when I told them I was going to go. They were convinced I was going to get 16 times a day.

The city and state as a whole was absolutely beautiful (visited Yosemite and got engaged). There was so much to do that I had never experienced as someone who grew up in the suburbs. There was only one time we felt a bit uncomfortable but we were aware of the situation and had plans to get out if need be.

We rode public transportation (the horrors!) the whole time without any problem.

I know it's not perfect by any means but to me the problem is fear mongering by the likes of Fox

California is cool, I just don't like LA. It's dirty, crowded, has traffic 24/7, and everything is expensive just to name a few reasons.

Republican deflection and propaganda. Next questions.

Everyone is just bringing up economic reasons, but none of them are really policy directly. The economics are a good reason to hate California, but they dont have policies that really drive this. The real key is that California is a massively desirable place to live. The beaches are only second to Hawaii. The weather is arguably the best in the world. Some of the most beautiful state parks. It's one of the only places you could surf in the morning and snowboard in the afternoon. Supply is limited, and demand is high, so you get high prices.

As for actual policy, California has a progressive mindset. This leads to a lot of progressive policies. The problem tends to be that the policies that get enacted are often designed to sound progressive, but actually just limit the citizens without fixing the problem. Examples:

1. Coal rolling was bad for the environment. So they outlawed a large amount of car tuning. This causes damage to the car culture and a good hobby for a large number of citizens.
2. Water, being a limited resource in California, made it finable to water your lawn or wash your car in a drought, even though farming and business use 96% of total water usage. Normal people water usage isn't going to solve the problem
3. Gun policies that dont allow suppressors, short barrel rifles, etc, but in reality, the vast majority of gun crime and accidents are all based around handguns.

I have oversimplified all of these, but essentially, California is very good at making policies that annoy their citizens, but dont solve the problem just to make it appear like they are doing something.

Homelessness problem, too hot, too idolised and too full of rich assholes

Two words: Techbro Ethnocracy

As a tourist from Canada, my wife and I drove through parts of the US for about three weeks in 2018, and we absolutely hated California. It was our least favourite part of the trip. It is clear that LA is struggling with massive homelessness. The roads were the worst ones we encountered on our road trip. The beaches were littered with garbage, to an amount that we just found disgusting. They were also incredibly overcrowded, though that is what happens in heavily populated places. We went to Disneyland, and that was nice. However, we did cut our California stay short and moved on.

Now, I don't have many places to compare California to, as we were only in about four states. However, we have travelled extensively in Canada, where we have been to most of the provinces. We enjoyed the states and provinces we have visited. However, California is definitely in our no-no zone for vacations.

Again, this is a tourist perspective. I do not really know what it's like to live there.

Okay, let's start with the environment: most of California doesn't have enough water, and they're not doing anything to directly remediate that. Environmentally, a lot of the farming is going to be a disaster when the consequences of climate change really set in. Most of SoCal is a desert, but you wouldn't know it from the expanses of lawns that you see in wealthy enclaves. (...But you'll figure it out really fast when you try to go mountain biking without puncture-resistant tires.)

The gun control policy is awful, and likely illegal in light of the last few SCOTUS rulings. But here's the kicker: California has a Democratic supermajority, and they could do things about the underlying conditions that lead to violence in general, and don't. They've consistently failed to seriously address the economic issues that are closely tied to violent crime, things like economic inequality and poverty, criminal justice reform, systemic racism, and so on and so forth. Instead they've opted for policies that make wealthy white people happy without fixing the issues.

Housing; this is where wealthy "liberals" are directly to blame. Dems say that they believe in housing that's affordable, but wealthy elites--which are overwhelmingly Democratic in California--oppose zoning changes that would allow for high density, affordable housing. The result is shithole houses that can cost over a million dollars, studio apartments in sketchy parts of town (see point #2, above) are thousands of dollars a month, an exploding homeless population, and fuckin' awful sprawl.

Taxation: California has long had the chance to show that it's progressive with taxation, and to institute wealth taxes. They don't.

Education: California still relies on funding largely through property taxes, which ensures that school districts with a poorer tax base will have less funding. Again, this is the product of wealth elites--who are overwhelmingly Democratic in California--working to oppose funding changes that would have the effect of making schools in super-rich neighborhoods less desirable, but would also improve schools everywhere else.

Public transit: California barely has it, and it's consistently underfunded. Combined with point #3, it leads to traffic gridlock that's famously awful in major metro areas.

Most of these problems can be solved. The problem is that Dems are being hypocritical; they have a NIMBY attitude that means that, even though they say the right things, they don't do shit.

I don’t live in California but visit the bay area frequently for business. Here’s a typical experience:

Depending on travel budget, I’ll either stay at a motel for $400/night, or a regular hotel for around $800/night. It’s not my money, but it’s still ridiculous to need to file a budget exception to stay at a Motel 8.

When I arrive in the evening, I try to watch Netflix but the cellular bandwidth is so shitty I can’t even watch at the lowest resolution, and the hotel wifi isn’t much better. I boot up a wifi scanner and find nearly a hundred different base stations in range all stomping on the spectrum, so I just play Switch for a while and go to bed. When I get up in the morning, I go down to the free breakfast which is plastered with Prop 65 signs indicating the food served at the establishment is known to the state to cause cancer.

On the walk to the convention center, I have to sidestep multiple people strung out on who knows what. A person riding by on a bike yells “FUCK YOU” to all passers-by, including myself. Multiple vans with oversized LCD screens advertise a variety of AI and Blockchain startup “solutions”. One company has set up a 20-foot display on a parked “van” opposite the convention center to advertise to conference-goers despite being unaffiliated with the conference. Conference staff call the police but apparently the van has a permit, and it’s public parking so there’s nothing they can do.

When I arrive, I’m stopped by staff because I’m carrying my own demo machine. They tell me their union contract requires that all hardware setup must be handled by contracted staff. I leave my machine in the area they designate, and fill out the form indicating it must be ready in room 1005 by 2pm for my presentation.

After attending several morning sessions, I walk to find lunch. A local sandwich shop doesn’t sell Diet Coke or Doritos, but they do have cucumber water for $8. I decide to go to CVS for my Diet Coke fix, but almost every product is locked behind a door. Overhead speakers announce “Security, walk the floor” as several people enter the store, casually stuff their pockets full of M&Ms, and walk out without paying. Nobody stops them, including the security guard who just watches them until they leave. I decide to skip the soda.

When I return to the conference center to prepare for my presentation, my demo machine is there but is not connected to any of the room equipment. The contractors who plug in the machines are apparently different than the ones who move the machines, and they are on strike.

On the way back to my hotel, someone asks me for money for a bus ride. I ignore them, but they begin following me. I tell them no but they follow me back all the way to my hotel, where a security guard turns them away.

I get my bags and head to the airport. My driver thinks he’s in the Indy 500 despite being in stop and go traffic. It’s about 78 degrees and humid inside the terminal - The AC is off because PG&E is having capacity issues due to wildfires, which were incidentally caused by downed lines (owned and poorly maintained by PG&E).

Never been to California, don't hate it, but don't exactly have a super high opinion of it as an outsider either. My personal reasons are

Much of the state has had a water crisis to one degree or another for most of the last century. That seems like a pretty clear sign that the environment can't really sustain the amount of people and industry it has, and yet we keep at it.

A lot of the state is prone to earthquakes, wildfires, mudslides, and other crazy shit. Again, seems like a less than ideal place to live.

The climate really isn't for me, I personally like cold winters with snow, that's not really a thing in a lot of California.

I'm from the northeast, I happen to like the overall vibe of people from this part of the country, west coasters have a different vibe, not necessarily a bad one, but it's not one I want to surround myself with full-time. Some (but not all) people get really snooty about the East vs West Coast thing, and while it definitely goes both ways, and I'm certainly biased because my experience is pretty much entirely from the east coast perspective. It seems to me like when that happens west coasters activity dislike the east, whereas the east is more indifferent towards the west.

Politically I overall tend to agree with the trends in CA in broad strokes, but it feels like they go weirdly overboard in some things (like the prop 65 warnings) and take weird half-measures in other. That's not a unique California problem, but because they're such a political and economic powerhouse their missteps have bigger ripple effects than most other states. I think overall most of the country could stand for our laws and policies to be more California-like, but we shouldn't be holding California up as some sort of gold standard to copy exactly, and I think that's a distinction that is lost on some people.

It's also expensive.

Full of Americans? They don't get on that well

We moved to California from across the pond and love it. Socal weather can't be beat. Great food, great outdoor exercise and playtime options. The people are nice. Yeah theres issues but all told we really like it. I don't get the hate from other states and seems to be simply sour grapes

Expensive, will be hit hard by climate change, subject of right wing propaganda portraying it as a hive of removed debauchery(lgbt people and abortion rights)

I live in Colorado and there's a lot of California hate here. I don't feel this way but I know some is directed at the real estate investors who have been buying up homes and making the Denver housing market even worse. During the pandemic so many people lost out on houses to cash deals so they started working with these shady companies that would front you a cash offer for a % of the sale, then you'd just get a loan.

I lived there and made $90k a year. Lived like 50 minutes from work, still paid $2.5k per month for a 500sqft studio and qualified as low income for the area. If people making that much are considered low income, something has failed.

Politics wise, it is seen as a hub of liberals. That means you have conservatives doing their best to knock California down the same way that liberals will do the same for Texas and Florida.

That said, there is a cost of living crisis that is caused a lot in part by the wealthy blocking increased density while locking in low property taxes due to date of purchase. So, a lot of coverage gets portrayed as rich liberals say they want these things, except near them.

It is also easier to film homeless in California since the weather makes it easier for them to live outside and the state is failing bad at providing housing for them.