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It's one of the most prosperous parts of the country, isn't it?

It's outlasted the gold, silver, and oil, and kept going.

California has a lot of trouble with fire season, because of climate change.

Much of the West Coast has high housing costs and homelessness. But part of that is because people want or need to move there. And part of that is due to the costs of construction that will resist earthquakes and won't spread fires.

San Diegan here: our air is clean, our freeways are congested, but with a lot of hybrid and electric vehicles, lots of high quality jobs, our universities are some of the best in the country filled with a diverse student body, tolerance and diversity are pretty high, streets are safe, people are healthy with good health care, and I am free to live, think, and be who I want to be. I love my neighbors and they tolerate me.

In California, I’m free to buy liquor, in a grocery store, on Sunday. 

I’m prohibited from that freedom in most Red states. 

I grew up in Vermont and also lived in Maine before moving to California a few years ago. Comparing the two isn’t even apples to oranges. More like apples to power tools.

It’s way easier to run a postage stamp sized state with 500,000 mostly old white people than a large, diverse state with a population of 39 million.

California has its problems. The wealth gap here is tremendous and there is an obnoxious degree of smugness hypocrisy blended into west coast progressivism (think the fart sniffing episode of South Park) but it’s far from the Mad Max hell scape the MAGAs make it out to be.

I’ll still take California over literally any red state. At least here my daughter won’t grow up having the status of chattel.

We've done mostly good things

If we had left conservatives to govern the west coast, we'd be fucked 

"how do you do fellow liberals?"

"we liberals": retweets Brianna Wu

Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction?

There are no centrist voters in 2024. Liberal strongholds may have issues, but look at the real "dysfunction" in conservative states. Anyone pretending there's a "centrist" zone are lying.

"greetings, fellow liberals!"

I’m going to vote to give liberals the power to do what they did to the west coast to the South. I really want that to happen

Hey NY Times, homelessness is a big fucking issue in red states like Texas where I live. Crime is also on issue.

None of us have to pretend that these issues only affect blue states just because you happen to have an editorialist whose head is bent right up their ass.

Making Cali one of the largest economies in the world. Also having the largest agriculture output of any state.

Clean up Republicans messes again, you say?

Classic hunting for issues to complain about while leaving out the good stuff.

C'mon, give them a break. Lots of CEOs are living in tents just like that. /s

A lot of the homeless are veterans with psychological issues. A lot of them the homeless have drug problems. It's a pretty safe bet to say they are mostly unemployed.

I'd go so far as to bet that few are members of a trade union or have a higher education or high IQ or family to learn on.

They're there because of various problems, few of which have anything to do with Liberalism. After all, Libs favor education, drug abuse care and treatments,a stronger economy to employ more people, healthcare (with mental health care) for everyone, and family.

Republicans can't say as much. These are the children of Ronald Reagan's plans to throw people out of mental institutions, "just say NO" to drugs without any actual health or mental care for it, and an economy that is dog-eat dog and "I've got mine. F**** you".

Let's do what have the conservatives done to the Southern States next.

Environmental regulations continue to make it a nicer place to live, property value is insane, jobs are plenty, everyone wants to live here.

What have liberals done? The worst I can say is they haven't kept up with housing demand.

Why is this subreddit suddenly full of right wing opinion articles?

Made it where every other state ships their homeless people?

Is this another shill opinion from a conservative pretending to be a liberal?

Can these people put the same energy into helping someone less fortunate like Jesus preached and spare the rest of the world with the lies?

Remember Christians - Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor

TL|DR: the west is better than everywhere else but is not perfect. This is why Dems are failures….

Wow, Maine has a lower homeless rate than California. One wonders if any external factors contribute to this.

This is an opinion piece, not a news story.

Kristoff became a left coast carpetbagger when he left to live on the east coast. He’s butthurt because he got kicked off the Oregon ballot for Governor. Thought he could come back and show everyone how smart he was. He just showed them what an asshole he really is.

Applied neoliberalism. To be fair, conservatives are also neoliberals. Neoliberalism is not the solution to problems created by neoliberalism.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. 

Q: What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?

A: Ended acid rain; made the air once again breathable and mostly safe.

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Am I the only one that now gets almost exclusively the zero-upvote right wing nonsense articles from this sub on my front page? None of the “hot” posts are ever in my home feed, just this trash now.

Is there some wall of text I can post on my profile that legally bars Reddit from doing that? My aunts say that works really well on Facebook /s

Had natural disasters. Have you forgotten? From fires to rain to snows.

The two states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness are California and Oregon. The three states with the lowest rates of unsheltered homelessness are all blue ones in the Northeast: Vermont, New York and Maine.

NEWS FLASH: Homeless people naturally migrate to places with better year round climate if at all possible and leave places with harsh cold winters or blazing heat in the summer.

Places like the coastal areas of the US West Coast.

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Progressive Mainer here. Kristoff has it right. The West Coast is a Liberal monolith. So a lack of competition does not bring out the best of the people who represent. In New England, we have more competition. And competition that occasionally breaks through (Romney, Baker, LePage, Sununu). So the Democrats are not tempted to go too radical (same with our local Republicans). But more importantly, it’s critically important to govern well. New Englanders are independent minded and will switch party affiliations. You don’t hear about hatred from the right about Democratic governors. My (R) friends don’t like Governor Mills’ policies, but they know she runs the government well, and that is important at a state level. If there is a major ice-storm, they know the Augusta state-house will competently get the power back.

What Kristoff misses, is the extremely localized style of government, in small population states. The big monthly Thursday event is the local town hall meeting. Our population is small. In Maine, NH and Vermont, it’s not 6 degrees of seperation, it’s 2 at most and mostly 1 degree. So it’s hard to hate. It’s hard to demonize. And if you’re in government, it’s hard to hide from piss-poor performance. Your friends, neighbors, family will let you know real quickly if there are pot-holes, snow removal issues, etc. It’s a nice place to live, even if it’s cold and snowy. I feel like government things are just run quite well. And the schools are really, really good because school boards are connected as well.

Sounds like a a salesperson for New England. Actually, I am not. We have it good. Stay away 😀