The Tragic Death of California

People owning homes in California can sell and use their equity to buy homes in other locations without a mortgage. The 7% rate is irrelevant to those who can buy homes for cash.

Sure, but the majority of people pay a mortgage. And the majority of people who intend to move to save money often aren't the ones who own their house outright or even have enough equity to pay the fees.

Also, home prices in neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona have increased by more than the homes in California have since 2020. If rates drop back down to 2019 levels, more people would very likely move, accelerating the gap in home prices between the states, which would further contribute to their deficit. And all of this ignores the headwinds of Silicon Valley and remote work - and about 15 other issues.

When you refer to Nevada, the majority of the population is in Las Vegas.

You can buy a nice 2BR / 2 BA condo in LV for $250k. The property tax on such a unit is max $100 / mo and the homeowners insurance is much less as a result of their being no wildfires to burn your house down as LV has almost no trees in the desert.

The same condo in Santa Monica would be over $1M.

If you purchased that condo for $500K in Santa Monica 10 years ago for $500K, you would have enough equity to buy 2 units in LV with no mortgage and live off the rental income of one of the units.

Nevada real estate did experience a boom as a result of Covid, but it also got busted much worse than California during the sub-prime mortgage meltdown post-2006. Las Vegas is a more volatile market with more sensitivity to boom and bust cycles in the economy as it is more dependent on tourism and gambling.

I would be surprised overall gas prices are that dependent on local production. Gas is around $5/gallon right now (lower in some places and higher in others).

I thought CA had rules about production being in state?

The late Ruth Haring (an aquaintance of mine who was a former President of the United States Chess Federation) was part of a campaign to form a 51st state with many California counties forming a new state called Jefferson iirc.

As a long-long Californian ( born in Los Angeles in 1957), I don't think DEI has any meaningful effect on anything in California.

This!!!

California's massive debt accrued before Trump even became President iirc.

UC dropping objective standards and just going full racial quota (where whites are intentionally admitted at half their population %) is recent. It will take a few years to flesh out what the downstream consequences are, if any.

I dont know if this will affect UC's reputation, desirability, or quality. But we should have some idea in a few years.

I dont know one way or another. If it does, that would certainly explain why gas prices would dramatically increase if local production declined.

From what I've read that doesn't appear to be the case, but certainly if you're importing fuel from elsewhere then prices are going to be higher the same as if available supply was cut.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-07-06/california-gasoline-costs-refineries-pollution-imports

Los Angeles Times

Contributor: We still rely on gasoline. Why is California adding to the cost and the pollution?

Ok, it looks like there is no actual law, but over 90% is refined in state. No major gas pipelines into the state and specialize blend requirements make it a "fuel island".

Or white Trump anti science culture is putting certain groups that would have had to struggle to get in to begin with in a simply not competitive tier. Yiu can just look at a syllabus and HW problems in a CS or math class over the last 20 years as the white % in those classes has plummeted. It’s just way harder now and those hick conservative boys from the 90s just can’t be spoon fed enough to keep up.

Except they are being replaced with Hispanics that are even less competitive. Which is why they had to get rid of SATs to obfuscate this. And none of these kids are going into CS or engineering anyways. That was already mostly Asian when I was there 25 years ago.

When you get rid of SATs and the white % of your education program immediately goes from 35% to 20%, that pretty much gives the game away.

I remember back when Adam still had the top podcast in the world I would listen to him. Then one day he repeated a story. Then the next another story. Then he started repeating metaphors and quips and more stories. Soon I realized that I had pillaged everything I could from Adam. This was like 2014 or something.

Adam is equivalent to the old man shaking his fists at the clouds. Hes been so incredibly wealthy for so long he no longer has any normal perspective or reason to improve himself.

Hes just been getting more and more irrelevant for more than a decade now

Carola is definitely not a fan of local Democrat politics.

I will say the Olympics are going to be here in a couple years, and much of downtown LA (and other parts) is currently a post apocalyptic hellscape of homeless camps and drug addicts walking the streets; so it will be interesting to see how they navigate the clean up.

If the argument is more lower performing whites not smart/prepared enough for technical majors deserve to go to Berkeley....ok? But I think the massive under performance of whites vs asians is cultural and playing the right wing victim hood card is just making things worse for whites and rurals. I don't think it's a coincidence that this problem is getting worse as education is being viewed more and more negatively in white culture.

Yeah. I started following him way earlier than you (when he was on local terrestrial talk radio here) and stopped way earlier too, once you realize it is all recycled stories you have heard a few times.

I dont know I would say he is out of touch for being wealthy. I think the issue is his material is mostly talking about himself, and even though he is a good storyteller, there is only so much material someone can have talking about themselves.

A semi funny anecdote. Years ago he used to fill in on the Petros and Money local sports radio show as a host when then were on vacation. And at that time I listened to their show at work. I just had it on as background all the time.

And when Carola was hosting, Rick Barry, a retired basketball player, came on to promote something. And Adam Carola asked him if there was any players with really bad BO that made it hard to be around them. And he got pissed and cut the interview. And Adam never was invited to do sports radio again AFAIK.

That is not to say that ended his radio guest hosting career. I dont know know if he is still doing it, but back in the day he used to fill in a lot for right wing radio guys when they were on vacation. And even did Tucker and O Reilly a few times.

Are you actually reading my posts. The Asian % of the UC system has been around the same for 30 years. And has been even more over-represented in sciences and engineering. And this is due to higher qualifications. No one is disputing that.

The issue is the UC system wanted to have Hispanics represented more, despite them underpeforming whites and Asians.

So they got rid of objective standards, made everything subjective and intentionally cut the white population in half (well below their actual demographic representation) to replace them with Hispanics. What are the downstream consequences of this, if any, going to be? We will see.

I will say if I told you any other group was intentionally being enrolled at half their % of the population, despite being one of the higher performing groups (albeit not the highest) you and every other leftist would be outraged.

Also keep in mind, the people of the state of CA a few years ago passed a referendum basically saying the state cannot discriminate in this way. And the state govt and UC system just said FU and doubled down. So there is potential legal issues coming down the pipeline too. Who knows if/when the Trump administration is going to go after the UCs the way they have the Ivy's. But between blatant discrimination in admissions and all the alleged antisemitism, they definitely have the ammunition to do so if they want.

You said you are talking about people that can't do technical fields. I'm saying that is the main reason they are not able to get into decent schools. You want to play the race card like the race obsessed right wing always does, but low performing whites need to stop being LPWs if you want to convince anyone not on the far right. You can go after MIT and Cal Tech for not admitting Cletus and Bubba Joe jr as well, but it's just merit based.

Do you think he is wrong that the Floral store or restaurant is regulated and taxed to the max while the illegal immigrant can sell flowers on the street or have a little food stand with no requirements at all

I still remember how long it took Bill Maher to get his little solar shed inspected . Every week he would say another 7 days it took 1131 days

No. His description is very accurate. Although things aren’t San Francisco level where people shoplift from CVS and then set up a stand right outside to sell the same items at a lower price.

In fact, it is even worse than Carola describes in this clip. As if you didn’t
know better you would say, “look at the lady in the corner selling flowers as her business to make ends meet”.

But the truth is organized crime runs these operations and the people on the corner are invariably being exploited worse than if they were picking strawberries on some farm in central California.