[quote=EconProf]A bit of history about San Diego from this geeser. When we first moved here so I could teach at SDSU, 45 years ago, CA was the land of opportunity–the Golden State. Pete Wilson was the San Diego mayor, later CA senator. CA was Reagan country and the government was efficient, taxes were reasonable, and politics were competitive. A 3 Br, 2 Ba house in the suburb of El Cajon averaged $45,000 in price, the same as the national average. [/quote]
If you moved here 45 years ago, that would have been 1976.
My father was an ultra-Republican who could not stand Democrats. In 1970, he moved us from the Midwest to northern California, in the central valley. He bought a 3/2 1500 SF house there for $21K. He became angrier and angrier at California politics and what he perceived as a poor school system, and kept talking about moving us back to the midwest (I was a teen in the 1970s).
In 1975, he did move my family back to the Midwest – to Oklahoma where he grew up. He sold the house in Northern California for about $25-26K I can’t remember that number exactly. OK is an ultra-Republican state and was ultra-Republican in the 1970s also.
Having attended both CA and OK schools, I can tell you I didn’t see much of a difference. Pretty similar to me.
By 1978, my Dad had had enough of Oklahoma. It wasn’t as good as he remembered and after just three years he moved the family back to the central valley in northern California, about 10 miles from where we had lived before. He lived out the rest of his life in that area and while he still grumbled about CA politics, he never even considered leaving CA again.
I just now checked: that house he bought in 1970 for $21K? Zillow says it is worth about $295K right now.
I guess what I’m saying is that making sweeping generalizations about California really doesn’t work. The central valley was Republican in the 1970s and is still Republican today. Housing prices haven’t went up nearly as much as the coast. In fact, they are right in line with the Midwest.
What you think of as ultra Liberal CA is really just the coast. When you go inland, CA is very Republican and not out of line with housing costs in the Midwest.
So you really didn’t have to move to Utah to get the lower costs and Republican neighbors. You could have stayed in CA. You chose the location mainly due to its proximity to your family – which is a very valid reason.
