For the first time in a glorious 171-year history that attracted thousands seeking fortunes during the 19th Century Gold Rush, gave birth to the global movie industry and unleashed the digital revolution, California has seen its population – currently just under 40 million – decline.It shrank by 182,083 last year – equivalent to all the citizens living in the coastal idylls of Santa Monica and Santa Barbara combined.
Families and firms are being driven away by the high cost of living, crime fears, hefty taxes, inadequate housing, interfering officials, persistent political failures, red tape, raging wildfires and the squalor of streets littered with homeless drug addicts.
‘It is very sad,’ said Scott. ‘I will always love California but it has changed. It is not what it was when I was a kid, or even five years ago. I could never go back.’
California – long proclaimed as a liberal nirvana and run by Democrats – is even losing one of its seats in Congress for the first time owing to the population fall. Inevitably, Republicans say people are voting with their feet to flee to conservative states such as Florida, Idaho and Texas.
Apple is also building a new campus in Texas, while several other major tech firms, including Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, have moved their headquarters to the Lone Star state.
Delian Asparouhov is typical of those who turned California into such a powerhouse: a computer geek who attended the top-ranking Massachusetts Institute of Technology, launched a space start-up, was backed by a billionaire and became a venture capitalist in the state. Yet this month the Bulgarian-born entrepreneur, still ony 27, bought a house in Miami, Florida.
He said: ‘Silicon Valley has a stifling intellectual climate with its mono-culture that only allows one viewpoint to be expressed. It seems to espouse the same socialist values as the Soviet Union.
‘So I am fleeing just like my parents fled a similar system for America when I was a kid.’
When he suggested on Twitter that Silicon Valley should move from California, the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, responded by asking if he could help.
Asparouhov says he has 60 friends and former colleagues who have made the same move. ‘California is a beautiful place with beautiful people but it’s fraying. It is anti-growth, espouses diversity but does not implement it, and parts look like a war zone with encampments of homeless people filled with mentally ill people who need help that never arrives.’ Asparouhov believes so many firms are opening in Miami that it could become America’s leading technology hub within a decade.
| Et cetera. |