Nearly 700,000 people left California in 2018, for a net loss of nearly 200,000. Today, it is certain that the near-total coronavirus shutdown, which isn’t stopping the second wave of cases, will be following them.
Soon to join is Joe Rogan, as the podcast host and MMA commentator disclosed to his millions of listeners.
“When you look at the traffic, when you look at the economic despair, when you look at the homelessness problem that’s accelerated radically over the last six, seven, 10 years, I think there’s too many people here. I think it’s not tenable, I don’t think that it’s manageable,” Rogan said on The Joe Rogan Experience. This came after Rogan lamented to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that Los Angeles’s urban decay had long preceded the protests that the city government allowed to take over the city.
Rogan’s haters simply attributed his planned move to Texas to pure financial self-interest. His $100 million dollar deal with Spotify would be heavily taxed in California, whereas Texas has no income tax. But not only does this miss that Rogan already raked in a heavily taxed $30 million in 2019 but also the fact that California tax rates just aren’t worth the perks they supposedly bring with them anymore. The issue probably wasn’t of what Rogan had to pay, but rather what return he was getting on his investment.
The coronavirus shutdowns have laid bare the enormous concessions that California city dwellers must make in order to live somewhere cool. In normal times, people hardly care that they can’t afford a big backyard or a proper bedroom so long as they can run in Venice Beach and party in West Hollywood. But when you’re crammed into a studio apartment or, in Rogan’s case, a modest mansion, the trade-off looks a whole lot less profitable.
And it isn’t just about the coronavirus. Urbanites everywhere pay exorbitant amounts with the promise that the community’s children will receive a quality education, the needy will obtain social services, and all private property and people will have complete protection in the form of law enforcement. How’s that looking in California’s cities today?
Urban governments everywhere are robbing children of their futures, with only 43% of urban students reaching basic reading levels as opposed to nearly two-thirds of their nonurban counterparts. Cities hold voters at emotional gunpoint to approve tax increases for the homeless, yet homelessness has continued to get worse no matter how much money is thrown at it — and this is much worse in California than it is elsewhere.
Meanwhile, after decades of police success in bringing violent crime to new lows, city governments are reining in the police and letting rioters run wild, supposedly in the name of “Black Lives Matter,” leading directly to a disproportionate explosion in violent assaults against black people.
Los Angeles is just an especially bad version of all this. On top of crumbling roads, soul-sucking traffic, and wildfires destroying the heart-wrenching beauty of the California coast, the coronavirus shutdown has ruined everything that was left — the music, cinema, cocktails, athletics, art, and culture.
Rogan’s probably happy to save an extra few million in taxes. But for a man of his wealth, that’s mere crumbs. The real issue is that, in Texas, he can rest assured that whatever he does pay, it won’t go toward making the police stand by helplessly and watch while the local bodega is being looted.
