It’s only in recent years that California started to break even with respect to federal taxes. In 2007 the state got back 78 cents for every dollar it sent to Washington, according to the Tax Foundation:
You say all that like it’s a bad thing.
Yeah, this observation is kind of a mixed bag. While recently there are more people leaving than entering CA, the number leaving is a small fraction of the state (~39M), and there are still several hundred-thousand people moving TO California each year from other states (tho that is less than the number leaving). The population of the state is still growing, however, due to births, so it’s not like the population overall is in decline. Like I said, a mixed bag and open to interpretation and discussion. The cost of housing is likely a big factor.
Also, I understand those leaving are mostly from the lower educated and non-professional ranks, while those entering are mostly college educated. I will see if I can find a citation.
As a Bay Area resident who is currently renting I am trying to twist this into a negative and I simply can’t do it 
. Any cooling off of the over-heated Bay Area rental market is welcome. Worth the pandemic hardship? Hell no and of course not. But it is a modest silver lining from my selfish POV.
Note that this trend is not being mirrored in home sales, where prices continue to rise in part due to a constricted supply as fewer homes are coming on the market due to those same pandemic impacts.
Without getting into reasons for it (any deeper discussion would belong in a different forum) one big negative about California for me are the ever-growing piles of trash strewn along roads and highways.
I’ve not noticed that. The courts do a pretty good job of supplying an army of community service workers for that task.
Exactly.
I lived the first 55 years of life in Santa Clara Valley and saw it change from a mainly agricultural place to what is now Silicon Valley. When I was growing up I lived in a subdivision that was surrounded on 3 sides by cherry orchards. Our neighborhood was safe, and kids played outside as late as they wanted. The weather was great, the beaches were great, and the air and water were clean. Really.
I worked in high tech for most of my career and directly benefited from all the changes that have led up to what it is today… an overcrowded, unsafe, polluted megalopolis. The traffic is terrible and the beach is so crowded there’s no point in going over the hill. The streams I used to fish in are either polluted or died up. They only have two seasons; cool and wet and hot and dry, which is now called fire season. The air is choking during the summer moths and people are often advised to stay indoors. You have to be a millionaire to buy a house in a good neighborhood in the Bay Area. Most people just rent.
I left CA for good 10 years ago and never looked back. I return every few years to visit what’s left of my family. I live in a small town in a rural western state where the water and the air are clean and there is no traffic… ever. We have 4 distinct seasons and you can afford to buy a house on 10 acres. Tourists flock here and lament about having to return to their cities to work their asses off to make a living. The heyday of California ended sometime during the 1960s, and it’s been downhill ever since.
As East Coasters transplanted to the Bay Area, we laugh that a 3 degree increase in temperature is called a warming trend.
We thought of moving back after I retired, but we visited our old town in NJ in the summer and remembered high humidity. So, no thanks.
We haven’t done it yet, but we’ve identified restaurants with cuisines from A - Z (just about) not all that far from us. That’s a plus. The produce in the Farmers’ Markets is awesome. We can do better with bagels, but I’m a picky New Yorker.
Mostly I’m proud of our state government for doing the right thing (mostly) and how the legislature works now that the Republicans can’t interfere.
Yes I worry about drought and the fires. But unlike Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, among others, we acknowledge climate change and try to do something about it. I remember daily pollution alerts - they’re gone now except for fires and extreme circumstances.
I didn’t much care for the place when I lived in the East, but now I love it.
Went to boot camp in San Diego. I liked the city okay, boot camp not so much. I was stationed in the San Juaquin Valley for a year or so. Hot, dusty, polluted, billions of crickets and black widows. Hated it. I was stationed in Port Hueneme several times; while I was not at all fond of Oxnard and environs, other towns along the coast (Ventura, Santa Barara) were nice, and the hills of Ojai were also nice. I’ve been to and through LA a number of times. The traffic is horrendous, but there is a lot to do there. I enjoyed my visits to SFO with my wife, as she used to live there and knows her way around. The eastern areas are mostly a non-starter for me, as I don’t like desert and heat.
My brother is a New Yorker, who went to college in Chicago, stayed there for about five years, then moved to California-- LA-- and never looked back. He loves it. He does not miss winters. He lives in Northridge now, after living for sometime in LA, and actually in Hollywood (he works in the film industry, but as a techie, not an actor).
I have visited him many times, and I always enjoy it. I didn’t get to go this past winter, but I’ve spent a couple of weeks out of the last several winters, before COVID, there.
My brother drives a fully electric car, and has only native plants in his yard, and regaled me with all the grants, rebates, and refunds he has received for his environmentalism-- his house has solar panels, etc., etc. He never showed much interest in politics before he moved there-- I mean, he’s always had a liberal streak, but he really blossomed in CA. He loves being an activist there.
I’m staying in the Midwest for several reasons-- one is that the aunt and uncle who live here and were like parents to me are still living, and I like to be here for them, and DH has a good job here that he also feels good about.
But I could see some day, if my aunt and uncle were gone, and DH retired, or I were widowed, moving to CA to be near my brother. DH has siblings who happen to both be on the west coast (Seattle and Nevada-- forget the city, as she moved recently) as well, so he’d probably be amenable.
In fact, if I ever do make a major move, and don’t return to New York, CA is at the top of my list.
You live in SF, Berkeley, Oakland, Albany, etc., you have free air conditioning! As a kid, when we loved to visit our relatives in SF or Berkeley in the summer. It could be 100 degrees out where we lived (about 90 minutes from SF), but when we hit the tunnel, we climb into our jackets, because it was probably 70 or lower as we came out of the tunnel.
Anyone who wants to understand what the term “microclimate” means, come to the bay area and visit towns like Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Oakland, and Concord. On the same day, you can have 20 degree variations in temperature and rain/no rain 10 miles apart.
This statement alone tells me you’ve never been in the high Sierras (or visited Yosemite outside of the summer months).
exactly so.
I consider CA to be my adopted home even though I left a long time ago. It gets a bad rap, as does Texas, IMO.
Nice state. Big state. Lots of very beautiful places. The ocean is kinda cold and I was shocked at how many homeless people there were, but other than that, I can’t think of much not to like. I would be interested in retiring there if it weren’t so insanely expensive.
Lemme tell ya, when I was a kid…
I was born back East and lived there and in the Midwest. Stinking sinkholes of suck, all of it! California rules!!! 
More seriously, yeah it has its issues and I’m sure like ALL of the country it’s not what it was 60 years ago - in 1961 there were 183 million people in the US and 16.5 million in CA. in 2021 that stands at 331 million and 39.9 million respectively. Population pressure isn’t a pretty thing and some deleterious change is inevitable because of it.
But it’s still a pretty cool place, overall. And it has improved here and there. It is noticeable that average air quality (recent massive wildfires aside) has substantially improved since the 1970’s despite a burgeoning population, causing the decline of the central valley’s notorious car-killing Tule fogs. For stuff like the infilling of the SF Bay the 1960’s was the nadir - things have very slowly improved since then.
Getting back to the architecture –
You want architecture? California has architecture!
Welll, yes, I have been to both of those in fall and winter. And I did say “mostly”, although it was a pretty sweeping statement. I’m talking about SoCal areas like Bakersfield, Victorville, Barstow, Death Valley, the Mojave and other arid places that to me are just bleak. On the other hand, there is Yosemite, Sequoia, Lassen, and Shasta, all of which I’ve enjoyed visiting.
Curious about this statement. Are you saying cleaner air, or more people, has led to a decline in tule fog? I was of the understanding drier conditions overall are suppressing the central valley fog.
We’ve got trees older than the British monarchy.
Hell, we’ve got trees older than the pyramids.