If San Francisco is so great, why is everyone I love leaving?
&gt; There is an apocalyptic amount of people moving into California, and no one blames them for the overcrowding and the shifting culture. But when too many Californians leave California and settle in, say, Portland, they are blamed for ruining the place by way of simply being themselves.<p>Part of this is where the money comes from.<p>Poorer&#x2F;lower-middle-class people (mostly) move into California, to work these jobs under varying amounts of duress. It&#x27;s hard to complain about the kid who moved from Iowa&#x2F;Wisconsin&#x2F;Tennessee&#x2F;etc, and is hoping their first real tech job at Uber or Facebook or Netflix justifies the move. That&#x27;s why discussion moves to hating the companies, not the people.<p>But when Californians leave, they leave wealthy (in comparison). Even if they were poor-ish in California, just the act of selling their home (or condo, or any unit, anywhere in the state) instantly propels them straight to the upper-class or upper-middle-class when they move to places like Idaho or Nebraska or Michigan.<p>So, when they move here, and say things like &quot;$200k for a beat up old house? That&#x27;s nothing! A <i>downpayment</i> in California would be $200k!&quot; -- it gets easy to hate the coastal person <i>for their money</i>. Because you sure as hell aren&#x27;t earning that cash local -- Our hometown Gordon Foods corporate jobs aren&#x27;t paying even 33% of the wages a corporate Uber Eats job does. Our local housing prices are no longer driven by local wages, they&#x27;re driven largely by what percentage of coastal people are cashing out their wealth and dumping it into our hometowns (or what percent of coastal private equity funds are buying up our cities to rent back to us at inflated rates)<p>----<p>That&#x27;s not to defend these actions, I am <i>not</i> saying this is right (no one should hate anyone over this). But it does at least help understand why the blame goes where it does. The blame follows the money. In California, that money comes from the companies. But in flyover-USA, that money is coming from the <i>Californians</i> (or NYC&#x2F;Boston&#x2F;DC&#x2F;Seattle&#x2F;Denver transplants), because you sure as hell aren&#x27;t ever earning that much money from any local company here.