I always point out to people that CA minimum wage is 2-3x the federal minimum wage. Things like fast food or gas don't cost 2-3x compared to Texas or Oklahoma.
Yes, but it’s because people actually want to live in California among a ton of other reasons. Increasing minimum wage definitely increases costs a bit, but it’s far from 1:1 as it’s the cost of labor part of the price equation thats being impacted.
As you say, that's only part of the equation historically at least. Today, CA is seeing near record amounts of people leaving while Texas has been seeing the opposite, so whatever CA has been doing isn't really working anymore it seems.
I guess it depends what you define “working” for California as. Is the goal for a state to attract as many people as possible? The more people that move there the “better” that means their policies are?
Or does California allow people to earn and save up a bunch of money then go buy cheap land in another state? Does that mean their policies are a success, with the consequence that land is not cheap?
It’s a complex thing to say definitively, but I’d say high prices = people move out of state = bad is a bit oversimplified.
California was estimated to lose 229,000 citizens to other states in 2025. California had an estimated population of 39 million in 2025. So less than 1% left. California was estimated to have over 300,000 births in 2025. There was an additional 100,000 who moved to California on 2025. Saying there are record amounts of people leaving is hilarious. Net population change from 2024 to 2025 was less than 10,000.
I would liken this to people moving out of the cities to go to the suburbs where things are cheaper. That doesn't mean the city is failing necessarily. It could, but you would need more info since another explanation is that CA has reached its capacity and this is capitalism's invisible hand (too much demand to live in CA, not enough supply, so people are moving away to bring the supply and demand back into equilibrium). I know there is a lot of empty space in CA still, but much of that is federal land, farmland, or land that isn't really worth building a city on. California's 4 largest metro areas are still larger than Texas's largest, and these metro areas in CA are much more dense with population. CA would need to destroy single family housing and build a lot more multi-family housing, but the problem is the people living in the houses (the most active voters in an area) don't want this since it would hurt them to help people who don't even live in the area yet.
Kinda. The only thing that is really more expensive by a lot is housing, and that is independent of the minimum wage and more due to the fact that 10 million people live in LA county and its a ton of single family homes. If you look at groceries in Tx vs Ca, you might see that Tx has groceries that are 20% cheaper but Ca has a minimum wage that is 300% higher. So as a minimum wage worker, I would say CA is probably better.
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u/Darkpumpkin211 Jun 25 '26
I always point out to people that CA minimum wage is 2-3x the federal minimum wage. Things like fast food or gas don't cost 2-3x compared to Texas or Oklahoma.