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I have to agree that Neil's post was disappointing on a couple of levels, not the least of which was the place of sheer ignorance that an appeal like that one must come from. It would do him a great bit of good to see parts of the state that aren't the Atlanta metro and to reevaluate whether his beliefs are rooted in fact and reality as opposed to superstitions that appeal to his emotions or personal biases.
As an aside, remind me to get my sh$% together before I ever decide to defend a difference of opinion between myself and AtlantaRising
Just because you disagree, that doesn't make my post "ignorant" at all. That's a trope.
By any objective measure, California has high taxes, high housing costs, a bad problem with crime, and all the things I mentioned. People are leaving California in droves. And my plea to not come to Georgia and bring that crap here still is valid.
You can have opinions but not your own set of facts.
Just because you disagree, that doesn't make my post "ignorant" at all. That's a trope.
By any objective measure, California has high taxes, high housing costs, a bad problem with crime, and all the things I mentioned. People are leaving California in droves. And my plea to not come to Georgia and bring that crap here still is valid.
You can have opinions but not your own set of facts.
Even if someone decided that your characterization of California was apt, your critical thinking skills leave a lot to be desired.
AtlantaRising already dunked on you pretty badly... but even ignoring all of his very valid points, the fact is that Atlanta, a city that leans left, is the economic engine of Georgia and probably the very reason that you moved here and not, say... Valdosta or Milledgeville or even Columbus or Macon.
Without the Atlanta metro (where ~60% of the state lives), Georgia basically becomes some strange amalgam of Alabama and Tennessee.
Anyone paying any attention at all or doing the math on Atlanta/Georgia's fortunes and misfortunes would come to the conclusion that Atlanta succeeds in *spite* of regressive governance at the state level. Not because of it.
As for California, its an economic, political, cultural and geographic powerhouse. Its not immune to serious problems, but what place with that much land, money, industry, and influence doesn't have serious problems? More than a few states, governors, or legislators would happily entertain the prospect of dealing with similar issues that accompany the position that California is in.
If you want an example of a similarly large state that governs itself with regressive policy then look at TX.
Just because you disagree, that doesn't make my post "ignorant" at all. That's a trope.
By any objective measure, California has high taxes, high housing costs, a bad problem with crime, and all the things I mentioned. People are leaving California in droves. And my plea to not come to Georgia and bring that crap here still is valid.
You can have opinions but not your own set of facts.
And you have absolutely no right to tell newcomers from anywhere how to vote.
Even if someone decided that your characterization of California was apt, your critical thinking skills leave a lot to be desired.
AtlantaRising already dunked on you pretty badly... but even ignoring all of his very valid points, the fact is that Atlanta, a city that leans left, is the economic engine of Georgia and probably the very reason that you moved here and not, say... Valdosta or Milledgeville or even Columbus or Macon.
Without the Atlanta metro (where ~60% of the state lives), Georgia basically becomes some strange amalgam of Alabama and Tennessee.
Anyone paying any attention at all or doing the math on Atlanta/Georgia's fortunes and misfortunes would come to the conclusion that Atlanta succeeds in *spite* of regressive governance at the state level. Not because of it.
As for California, its an economic, political, cultural and geographic powerhouse. Its not immune to serious problems, but what place with that much land, money, industry, and influence doesn't have serious problems? More than a few states, governors, or legislators would happily entertain the prospect of dealing with similar issues that accompany the position that California is in.
If you want an example of a similarly large state that governs itself with regressive policy then look at TX.
Georgia is doing great because of a low tax, business friendly climate. One could argue that Gov. Deal did a great job attracting industry through those low regulation ideals and that it is the jobs that has propelled the state to where it is today.
I agree all the social conservatism bills are an embarrassment, but it's the business friendly, low regulation which is the opposite of California's MO that has led to Georgia's present success.
If by regressive you mean requiring all socioeconomic levels to chip in through sales taxes, or whatever, all Southern states are doing that and it's fair. No one group of people should have everything paid for them throughout their lives, and poverty etc. can be considered a temporary situation. No one is sentenced to it for life and many will choose to stay there. It's most fair when everyone chips in some for state and federal govt. operations.
California is an economic powerhouse and is a trendsetter in consumer and environmental protections.
But today, the homeless peeing on the sidewalk have more rights than the business losing money from their presence in front.
Tent cities in downtown LA have ruined the renaissance downtown. It's bad and everyday there's a new right they're given and one less for law and order and cleanliness.
there are about 30 california license plates at my apt's parking area.
I would like to correct one thing for the sake of accuracy. California is not losing population. In fact, from 2010 to 2020, California gained over 2 million new residents, more than any other state behind Texas and Florida during the same time period. Incidentally, Georgia added a little over 1 million people.
What is amazing to me is not that people's political views on social issues don't magically change when they move (integrity), but that people continue to be drawn into echo chamber media outlets without fact checking major assertions such as this. If voting Republican here also comes with restrictions on civil rights or women's reproductive rights, then I am voting Democrat all day long. Southern Republicans need to get out of the God business and people's personal lives and stick to fiscal issues if they want my vote. And California is still a great place to live, work and raise a family despite the high cost of living. If there was not heavy demand for property (the single biggest monthly cost of living), it would not cost so much to live there compared to other places.
California has domestic out migration that is staggering. Foreigners arrive and keep the populations of it and states like NJ stable, but natives are leaving in droves.
I think for the 2020 census or 2021 that California did lose a tiny percentage of people from the year before. From 2020-2021 population decreased by 173,000 per the LA TiMES.
As a whole no i don't think any large changes have really taken place for the state yet. There have been some smaller victories though, for example they just secured 16 million for us to speed up construction of the beltline which is a huge economic driver in the city while the last few years the Feds didn't give us anything besides road money rather than transformative public projects. But really I'm more interested in people like them getting more wins in the GA state legislature as I feel the state level is where a lot of policy decisions that are really going to affect us are made. For example where I lived in Florida a large driver of the cost of living was the refusal to allow really anything other than single family homes almost everywhere. Condos, townhouses etc were limited to very few areas so that has over time throttled housing supply driving up prices. We're already seeing a rise in taxs for years now due to Not enough housing supply and it's only going to get worse if we don't diversify where we live.
You've got it all wrong.
First off with 1 -6 of all Georgians iiving in poverty and eligible for SNAP benefits, the feds send billions, probably half of the state's total operating budget comes in medicaid, grants, SNAP benefits, operation of hospitals for the indigent like Grady and yes road money.
But if you want more award money and grant money for new amenities, etc. you have to live in a state with on the ball agencies applying for that kind of stuff all year along and winning and receiving money all year long.
Georgia's state agencies have never operated like that in the past, and they are more reactionary when there's a problem that can no longer be ignored before they act. I.E. Atlanta's neglected sewer system for 50 years got so bad that the feds were fining the city $25,000 practically every day before they got a plan and implemented it. Around $10 billion is the cost to rebuild our system, that's why we have the nation's highest sewer rates to pay for this consequence for not maintaining it.
Until Georgia's state government desires to rise be top-notch and proactive like California goes overboard trying to do, no one will be aggressively pursuing all of that extra funding to do great things locally.
And Georgia has a bad history of corruption and people don't put much trust or faith in the state government. They view every road project or whatever with suspicion.
That's Georgia's predicament more that partisan party priorities.
For one, there’s so much more of suburban Atlanta than there is suburban Savannah. The Savannah metropolitan region only encompasses about 3-5 counties in coastal Southeast Georgia while the Atlanta metropolitan region encompasses between 29-39 counties in the Piedmont and Blue Ridge/Appalachian foothills region of North Georgia.
…bruh. Why are there so many counties?? Some county consolidation would be in your best interest.
Quote:
Originally Posted by neil0311
One respectful request...
Many people are transplants here in the Atlanta area, including me. We left another state and area because we saw a better quality of life here in Georgia. Costs were lower. Communities were safer. Schools were great. The weather was better.
So please consider why the costs in California are so high, and why communities in California are unsafe, and why schools are failing. The answer to a lot of those is the political leadership and policies enacted in California. Democrats have run a one party state and many people are fleeing the results of their policies.
So please...I beg you...don't come to Georgia if you merely intend to vote for people who promise to do to Georgia what they've done to states like California, NY, and other states with high taxes, regulations, curtailing constitutional rights, failure to enforce the law, etc.
Ultimately it's up to you to vote how you want, but please consider cause and effect before you do. It's not a coincidence that Georgia has been a great place to live, gaining population, while California is losing population.
I have argued against this time and time again in the Phoenix subforum so I’m glad I don’t have to reiterate it here as it seems many Atlantans can recognize the BS that is spewing out of this commentary. After living in California’s darling my entire life and my home being the SoCal darling for the past 40 or 50 years I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. I also believed it at one point, until I recognized how utterly stupid it is. I won’t bring my soapbox here, just wanted to say that I’m glad to see that Atlanta posters can see through the thin veil of anti-immigration that this comment really stands for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MasterGlock
So what Republican policy is causing the COL to rise in Florida? What is the COL of Florida in comparison to New York?
If we use the logic that Republican is conservative, and Republican is the status quo, then NIMBYism. If zoning laws (handled politically) still favor the 1950s white suburbia with the picket fence then yeah that raises COL significantly. People who live in this type of development (SFH) do not pay their fair share of taxes for infrastructure (more road is needed, more water lines are needed), public services (more police/fire stations are needed, more schools and school buses are needed), as it’s been heavily subsidized by typically Republican zoning reform leftover from redlining and mortgage policies of the mid-20th century. Though I believe mortgage policies are federal and not state, but someone can correct me.
When suburbia first got started over 70 years ago, most people were living in rural (more self-sustaining with less infrastructure) or urban (more infrastructure but significantly more cost beneficial and efficient areas) and didn’t have problems with maintenance and providing services because they needed less services to begin with (rural) or needed more services, but had a larger base to collect from (urban). But as time went on, and the people per square mile (density) became more uniform as people abandoned urban areas for the suburbs, and people left rural areas for more opportunity, this balance came out of whack. And it took a few decades, but we are seeing it now. People demanding the same level of service as any urban area like their Downtown, but with less of a tax base. The result of this is crumbling roads, poor teacher to student ratios, aging utility services, lack of public transit, and going deeper and deeper into debt.
NIMBYism however does go outside party lines, though rarely so, in cities like San Francisco and Boston. Typically it’s wealthy Republican suburbanites who are NIMBY, less so the big city neoliberal, but these two are unique outliers. They too however have the same interests at heart, which is to protect their property value over the well-being of their neighbors and community, which is why time and time again I tell people California is not progressive for this alone. California is very corporate, potentially more so than anywhere else, and a complete lack of supporting one of the few basic necessities of mankind (shelter/housing) for its residents is rather appalling. California is chock full of people wanting to keep it a rich person’s playground, and a rich person’s office, than a well-rounded and happy state able to support all its people and all the services they need to function (the waitress and the CEO for example).
For the record I’m fine with suburbia being built, so long it’s no longer being subsidized. Condos and townhouses aren’t subsidized, and look expensive in comparison to homes when the opposite is actually true. But you actually pay the full brunt of costs in a condo or townhome compared to a house, which became subsidized under federal acts.
A Florida to New York COL comparison is interesting. I, in Phoenix’s equivalent to Buckhead, currently pay under market value for rent of $1400, which is only a couple hundred more than what my brother is paying to live in Venice, FL for 2x the space. Rents where I am though are typically 1.5k-2k/month for one bedroom apartments, and go up from there. Tampa is half the size of Phoenix, has half the amenities, yet is the same COL even after income tax is factored in. Manhattan rents are ridiculous, but probably comparable to Miami’s Brickell and South Beach neighborhoods. The more affordable parts of Manhattan (Harlem), Brooklyn, Queens are probably comparable if not cheaper than large portions of Miami. NYC also has a lot more services and amenities than Miami, and it’s much easier to live in NYC without a car than Miami, reducing costs further. Rents would be comparable between the two major cities (NYC initially being higher but no car and no hurricane insurance) it’s come down to about the same. A statewide comparison I’d argue that Florida has higher COL, due to Florida’s secondary and tertiary beach communities outside of Miami metro that keeps things expensive (Sarasota, Naples, Key West, etc.)
…bruh. Why are there so many counties?? Some county consolidation would be in your best interest.
The large number of counties in the Atlanta MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) and CSA (Combined Statistical Area) is the result of a combination of factors, including:
> The smaller size and larger number of counties in Georgia compared to most other states... Something which came about, both as the result of a historical quirk in Georgia politics where rural interests were able to gain more political power and dominance with the state legislative creation of as many counties as possible, and in large part as a result of Georgia’s larger land area in relation to most states located east of the Mississippi (... Georgia has more land area than any other state located completely east of the Mississippi River)...
... Heck, if you think that Georgia’s numerous counties are something, other parts of the Eastern U.S. (particularly the Great Lakes and the Northeast) have townships and boroughs, which are a subdivision of county governance in many more northeasterly states...
> The somewhat extremely low density of development and population of the Atlanta metro area/region... Something which is largely a result of North Georgia’s generally very heavily wooded rolling-to-hilly-to-very slightly mountainous creek-and-ridge terrain (in the rolling/hilly terrain of the Piedmont Plateau and the hilly/mountainous terrain of the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains north of the city), which has affected the Atlanta area’s metropolitan and regional development patterns, seemingly making the region’s developed area have to spread out over a larger land area than similarly populated large major Sun Belt metro regions like Houston, Dallas and South Florida where the terrain often may be much flatter and provide many fewer impediments to a continuous metro/regional development pattern.
Nashville is another fast-growing major metropolitan area in the Southeast that expands out over a fairly large land area because of a low density of development that has been affected by a similar (though maybe somewhat less wooded) rolling-to-hilly creek-and-ridge terrain of the area.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prickly Pear
I have argued against this time and time again in the Phoenix subforum so I’m glad I don’t have to reiterate it here as it seems many Atlantans can recognize the BS that is spewing out of this commentary. After living in California’s darling my entire life and my home being the SoCal darling for the past 40 or 50 years I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this. I also believed it at one point, until I recognized how utterly stupid it is. I won’t bring my soapbox here, just wanted to say that I’m glad to see that Atlanta posters can see through the thin veil of anti-immigration that this comment really stands for.
Don’t take those arguments personally.
Just understand that there are many longtime and native Georgians who may be alarmed and fearful and are lashing out because of an apparent spike in the number of newcomers moving into Georgia (particularly into the greater Atlanta metro region and North Georgia) from California since the start of the pandemic.
But Georgia (particularly the Atlanta metro and, to a lesser extent, the Georgia Coast) has for decades been a prime relocation destination for newcomers (transplants) from the Midwest and the Northeast along with most other parts of the greater American South (including all 11 states of the old Civil War-era confederacy).
Starting about and after World War II and ramping up after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, increasingly heavy migration from Northeastern and Midwestern states has played a particularly strong role in transforming Atlanta from a more provincial regional city/metro (similar in size to a Tucson in Arizona or a Fresno or a Sacramento in California) before 1950 to a very large major metro of international importance and influence in the 21st Century.
There also has long been a smaller yet noticeable amount of migration from California (particularly amongst African-Americans). But Californian migration to Georgia did not really seem to spike until the pandemic and really seemed to explode during the double U.S. Senate election runoff race in late 2020 in which both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats were up for election during an ultra high-profile high-stakes runoff race that continued for 2 months after the 2020 Presidential Election... That runoff election basically seemed to have the effect of serving as a huge relocation advertisement for the state of Georgia (metro Atlanta).
While there understandably may be many longtime and native Georgia residents who will be afraid of the prospect of dramatic changes that could render the Georgia that they may currently know as unrecognizable, the reality is that the cultural and political changes that are underway in Georgia have been in motion for decades.
Those changes started with the existence of the area’s military installations (including Fort MacPherson in Atlanta; Fort Gillem in Clayton County; Dobbins Air Force Base in Cobb County; and even Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia and Fort Gordon in Augusta and Robins Air Force Base in Middle Georgia) which brought many Republican-leaning Midwesterners into a then-Democrat/Dixiecrat-dominated Georgia during World War II and the Korean War.
And those changes grew with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s, which started the “Reverse-Migration” trend of African-Americans moving back to the South from the North, with Atlanta being a top reverse-migration destination because of the presence of the HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) of the Atlanta University Center/AUC Consortium (Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, Morris Brown College, Morehouse School of Medicine).
And those changes grew even more with the massive investments that the City of Atlanta made to expand the Atlanta Airport (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport) during the 1950’s, ‘60’s and ‘70’s.
... Massive airport expansion investments that helped Atlanta win the rights to host the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, massive airport expansion investments that (along with the presence of the aforementioned AUC Consortium) helped Atlanta become an international hub for music production in the 1990’s, and massive airport expansion investments that helped Atlanta become an international hub for television and movie production and a growing national hub for tech industry activity in the 2010’s.
Needless to say, the social dynamics that are changing Georgia culturally and politically have been in motion for many decades and appear to be completely unstoppable at this point in time.
Someone has reading comprehension issues. Where exactly did I tell anyone to do anything? Please share.
Wadded panties for sure.
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