Your post is spot on, TG. I can’t even remember how many former co-workers (law enforcement types from several agencies) I worked with who retired to Idaho with their generous CSRS, FERS, SDCERA, PERS, SDCERS, LACERA, etc pensions, who sold their (often modest) homes here in CA and purchased slopeside or acreage with a view to forever in Idaho to “retire” in. Californians (predominately So. Californians) have boosted Idaho’s tax based immeasurably the last 20 years and simultaneously abandoned contributing to their home state’s tax base (CA).
The entire base of the Sun Valley ski area and surrounds and the smaller resorts surrounding Coeur d’Alene are what they are today ONLY due to the huge influx of Californians with “money.” Before Californians retired there “en masse,” Idaho was a rural, windy outpost “whose” few ski resorts couldn’t compete with CO’s, UT’s or CA’s due to lack of infrastructure.
************************************************
OTOH, I am acquainted with these recent (last 10 years) “domestic transplants” to the SD area:
1. Several native CA sons/daughters (and their spouses and children) who moved back here (due to inability to support themselves in another state) after defecting from CA during the “millenium boom” and prior. They are now 30-40 years old, living in mom and/or dad’s back bdrms trying to survive (and have their kids enrolled in the schools they attended in their old “stomping grounds”).
2. Long time former residents who left CA to move to another state to take care of an ailing relative who has now died. They are now back in SD after an absence of 10+ years and have to start all over again, not necessarily young anymore or with a “generous inheritance.”
3. Minor grandchildren, nieces and nephews of longtime SD residents whose parents living out of the state or country cannot support them and so “dropped them off” into the “stable relative’s” home.
4. 60 yo native Chula Vistan couple who moved to another state in 1992, purchased a house, took equity out of it and subsequently lost it to foreclosure in May of this year. One is working but they are struggling here living with friends due to their parents being deceased and their siblings left the area.
5. 75+ yo “recent” immigrants who are still living with their sponsor-children but have managed to qualify for an SSI payment in their own right. Upon entering the country, they were already over age 65 and thus never contributed any FICA payments to SS.
6. 55 year-old single female who relocated from another state with her (now adult) son, who is a lifetime SSD recipient but has no visible physical disabilities. She has never worked and brought her Section 8 voucher with her. The son is now working in another county and on his own. With her voucher, she has managed to rent 2 br units in 92118, 91941 and currently resides in 92128 with the voucher paying all but about $230 of her rent.
The fifth category, particularly irks me (and is not exclusive to CA), since these immigrants’ “sponsor” swore under oath to financially support them the rest of their lives as a condition of their permanent residency (issuance of “green card”). There is obviously a loophole in the immigration law where a sponsor can later state to the INS that they are indigent themselves now and/or their home has been foreclosed on and they can no longer support their relative that they sponsored. The relative can then apply for and qualify for the SSI under a separate address than their sponsor. They can then continue to receive SSI checks at that location while moving back in with their sponsors to take care of the house and kids (the sole reason they were brought over here in the first place). I have no doubt that some of these SSI recipients never left the home of their sponsors but are using another address to receive their SSI payments.
The list goes on. In my little “microcosm,” I just don’t see “productive taxpayers” entering CA, only leaving it :=(
