# I joined, and pledged support to Yes California today. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [November 11, 2016, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467 "2016-11-11T04:44:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 68
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1341 "2017-02-14T06:24:27Z")
So my question is this; if Donald Trump is so terrible that breaking up the union is preferable to living under him, why would you think he would allow you to leave without a fight? ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1342 "2017-02-14T10:53:42Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I would be very interested to know how many of these large California corporations are actually incorporated in California. That might prove to be a wee bit of a problem, given that they are going to be incorporated, and owned by a huge margin, by U.S. investors. Yeah… Delaware seceding might be a bigger problem. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1343 "2017-02-14T14:07:21Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > How would you characterize this tidbit? > I know it came after your post but… The first sentence seems pretty neutral, but the second could fairly be described as fitting the bill. IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1344 "2017-02-14T14:10:42Z")
> [@Morgenstern](#): > > Seriously. California is a donor state, paying 16 billion per year in taxes more than it receives back from the government. California’s future (independent) budget, absent military expenditures, donations (foreign aid) to other countries, maintaining foreign embassy, etc., will be in the black. \*"Gov. Jerry Brown said Monday that he sent a letter to the White House requesting direct federal assistance in the (threatened dam) emergency, though some federal agencies have been helping already. Brown has had harsh words for President Donald Trump, and the state has vowed to resist many of his administration’s efforts. But the governor said at a news conference that he’s “sure that California and Washington will work in a constructive way. That’s my attitude. There will be different points of view, but we’re all one America.”"\* [http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/damaged-dam-system-threatens-northern-california-towns-45476463](http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/damaged-dam-system-threatens-northern-california-towns-45476463) No doubt when this and far more serious emergencies arise in future, the Republic of California will have ample funds to handle them. 🙂 > [@John Mac](#): > > It’s just that most of us see the possibility of a legal exit as being so slim as to not being worth consideration. It’s a likely a possibility as Trump getting his Mexico wall built - in other words, zero. The legal entanglements alone would run a decade or more, by which time someone radically different will be President and the whole secession infatuation will be just a dim embarassment. Hell, Staten Island couldn’t even secede from New York City. ---
**Author:** ![August\_West](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/august_west/32/18069_2.png) [@August\_West](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/August_West)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1345 "2017-02-14T15:17:09Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > It would be part of the process of negotiating some degree of independence. In other words, agree to our reasonable demands that SS is grandfathered in, or we will stop letting you use our ports to get your cheap stuff from China. We will deport any and all people who continue to insist they are US citizens. We will not let you fly over California, or our sister independent states, Oregon and Ranier, to get to Hawaii. Your sports teams will be taxed 50% of their income to continue to say they are in the American or National Leagues… In other words, during the process of negotiation, the US gets some things it wants, the Californians get some things they want, and they agree to revisit some nagging issues that don’t seem tractable at the moment. > > Give it 30 or 40 years, and no one will be alive to collect SS. Building on **Ravenman, Pantastic,** and **HurricaneDitka** ’s responses to this. Apparently your vision of how this plays out is: 1. California holds a referendum and votes to secede 2. California negotiates with the rest of the states by saying “Allow us to secede and keep federal Social Security or we will cut off our ports and disallow use of our airspace. Also, we want to keep our NFL, MLB, and NBA teams, but will tax 50% of the income of _your_ teams” 3. 3/4 of the states agree to this. What would really happen is that 100% of the states will say “We already have your ports, your airspace, and your sports teams. You are promising things that we already have simply by keeping you in the Union. Your application is denied.” ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1346 "2017-02-14T15:19:26Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > I would be very interested to know how many of these large California corporations are actually incorporated in California. That might prove to be a wee bit of a problem, given that they are going to be incorporated, and owned by a huge margin, by U.S. investors. > [@jz78817](#): > > Yeah… Delaware seceding might be a bigger problem. Where a corporation is incorporated is a fairly meaningless matter of trivia. It’s not as though anyone actually operates out of Delaware; it’s the state of incorporation for various legal reasons. The corporation’s assets don’t belong to Delaware in any meaningful sense, it’s just that Delaware courts are required to handle any dispute amongst shareholders. Having the shareholders being non-Californians is potentially a bigger problem, though it’s unlikely that any investors are going to vote to repatriate a company to the US Just Because. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1347 "2017-02-14T15:32:33Z")
Those legal reasons aren’t really trivia. There’s a reason thousands of financial jobs may leave Britain in the near future. AFAIK, the U.S. has some pretty tough rules on cash flow in and out of the country. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1348 "2017-02-14T15:37:45Z")
Location of incorporation =/= location of operations. Large US companies incorporate in Delaware to take advantage of their well-developed legal rules governing business organizations. Hardly anybody of consequence actually operates in Delaware or even maintains offices there. Companies which are headquartered in Britain actually operate there. That is not to say that companies which primarily _operate_ in California may not wish to relocate to “remainder US” states, but it won’t have anything to do with where they’re incorporated. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1349 "2017-02-14T17:00:20Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The post I was responding to was proposing ways to punish the US if the US did not agree to provide entitlement spending to people who refuse to pay taxes to support that entitlement. Interesting side note on the retirement spending thing: If Calexiters got their wish, and California became an independent country with EU like treaties with the US, allowing residents to easily retire to cheaper areas like non-urban US, it could end up being a donor country to the US even after Calexit! As long as Californians tended to retire outside of CA (which happens now), the balance of payments on retirement benefits would be skewed towards the US. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1350 "2017-02-14T17:39:50Z")
Do you have something to back up that Californians “tend to retire out of CA”? The one article I found talks about ~15% of California public servants who retire out of state. [Why CalPERS retirees flee California](http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article20702106.html) ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1351 "2017-02-14T18:06:11Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Do you have something to back up that Californians “tend to retire out of CA”? The one article I found talks about ~15% of California public servants who retire out of state. > [Why CalPERS retirees flee California](http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article20702106.html) I can’t figure out a way to link to this chart I have, but California is definitely on the lower end of percentage of population receiving Social Security retirement benefits. About 14% of Californians received SS benefits, as compared to 21 or 22% for states like Florida, Alabama, Arkansas. West Virginia is highest at 25%. The lowest are DC (11%) and Utah (12%). ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1352 "2017-02-14T18:27:49Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Do you have something to back up that Californians “tend to retire out of CA”? The one article I found talks about ~15% of California public servants who retire out of state. You can compare the SSA numbers to state populations - California has 14.2%of the state receiving SS benefits, and 9.8% receiving retirement benefits, while the average state has 18.5%. [Congressional Statistics, 2014](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/factsheets/cong_stats/2014/index.html) for the SS numbers, and google something like “California population 2014” to get the population for that year. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1353 "2017-02-14T18:37:27Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I can’t figure out a way to link to this chart I have, but California is definitely on the lower end of percentage of population receiving Social Security retirement benefits. About 14% of Californians received SS benefits, as compared to 21 or 22% for states like Florida, Alabama, Arkansas. West Virginia is highest at 25%. The lowest are DC (11%) and Utah (12%). Utah is low because we have a crazy number of kids (the Mormons). We have the lowest average age of any state, by far. No one else is even close (although our lead has been eroding over the years). ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1354 "2017-02-14T18:45:52Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > You seem to think that we born and bred Californians wont take up our arms and start shooting traitors who attempt to steal our birthright. (Californians won’t support Calexit, even solid liberals, unless Thrump futzes things up and hurts California) > > Some of the ports here actually belong to the USA. (the roads belong to California) > > California has no modern armaments to implement any of that. (why do they need armaments?) > > Without the US market and with the US naval blockade of California’s remaining ports, California’s economy will crash and CalExit proponents will be hanging from bridges and lampposts ala French collaborators. (Why would they lose the US market, and why would the US blockade the goods it wants?) I would certainly expect a whole bunch of healthy debate, a full examination of the pros and cons of secession/self government/alliance…etc. A lot of the support for separation will be from your Red Area folks who come to feel that they have been hoodwinked by the authoritarian government in Washington DC who took away a bunch of social welfare programs and stole their labor force, whilst at the same time eliminating a million jobs associated with Pacific Trade. No, I don’t think Californians in general will rise up to secede unless Thrump screws things up so badly that California suffers disproportionately or significantly along with everyone else. I expect Thrump to screw things up badly, so Calexit may well be a hot topic by this time next year. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1355 "2017-02-14T18:52:03Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > You can compare the SSA numbers to state populations - California has 14.2%of the state receiving SS benefits, and 9.8% receiving retirement benefits, while the average state has 18.5%. [Congressional Statistics, 2014](https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/factsheets/cong_stats/2014/index.html) for the SS numbers, and google something like “California population 2014” to get the population for that year. Then did you mean to say Californians retire out of state at a slightly higher average than the rest of the country? ---
**Author:** ![crucible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@crucible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crucible)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1356 "2017-02-14T19:05:01Z")
The best approach to all of this would be for Thrump to stop doing and threatening to do everything that would be anathema to California, Red and Blue voters alike. Beyond that, why is it that California is so extremely against Thrump? Perhaps it is because they were able to think about the issues beforehand and to correctly predict that if Thrump were to be elected, California’s economy might well devolve in chaos, just on the farm labor and trade issues. Why do Red States vote for Thrump? God only knows, and He isn’t revealing His plan just yet. Maybe they are so ashamed of voting for the Bushes they are trying to punish themselves by voting for a person who may well take us back into war and economic decline. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1357 "2017-02-14T20:11:12Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Then did you mean to say Californians retire out of state at a slightly higher average than the rest of the country? Ahh, random nitpicky semantics arguments about off the cuff message board posts, how I love thee. No, wait, I mean ‘how pointless and boring I find thee’. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1358 "2017-02-14T20:13:26Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > A lot of the support for separation will be from your Red Area folks who come to feel that they have been hoodwinked by the authoritarian government in Washington DC who took away a bunch of social welfare programs and stole their labor force, whilst at the same time eliminating a million jobs associated with Pacific Trade. Why would any of that make ‘red area’ folks desire to make the country more red-leaning? “We got hoodwinked by Trump, so we’ll vote to make it easier for him to get reelected?” “Our social welfare programs are gone, so we’ll accept your argument that California is a donor state and remove a big source of funding for them?” I don’t really see those working too well. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1359 "2017-02-14T21:53:30Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > The best approach to all of this would be for Thrump to stop doing and threatening to do everything that would be anathema to California, Red and Blue voters alike. I’d submit to you that “Red California voters” aren’t all that anti-Trump. After all, he got 3.9 million votes in California. It wasn’t quite as good of a showing as Romney or McCain, but it wasn’t all that far off their mark either. Certainly not nearly far enough to claim that Trump is “anathema” to “Red voters” in California. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467/1360 "2017-02-14T22:05:09Z")
> [@crucible](#): > > Thrump … Thrump? … Thrump… Thrump? … I haven’t downloaded the most recent update to my Democratic decoder ring. What’s with this nickname? I’m not seeing that it makes any sense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467.md?page=67) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-joined-and-pledged-support-to-yes-california-today/771467.md?page=69)