People are leaving California in droves, or so I hear.
But maybe not poor people.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has apparently heard the same story. During a Fox News debate with California Governor Gavin Newsom on November 30, Governor DeSantis praised California — I mean, praised its landscape and natural resources, not its politicians.
“California has more natural advantages than any state in the country. You almost have to try to mess California up — and yet that’s what Gavin Newsom has done since he’s been governor. He’s the first governor to ever lose population. They actually at one point ran out of U-Hauls.”
More than 7 out of every 100 people moving to Florida are coming from California. It’s almost like a pandemic, and could be frightening, except that the Californians are still wearing KN95 masks.
Since Newsom took office in 2019, California’s population declined by about 575,000. If I were Governor Newsom, I’d feel really bad about that. I mean, I felt really bad when Darlene divorced me and moved to Phoenix, and that was only one person.
But Newsom had some equally questionable statistics up his sleeve. Reportedly, Newsom countered DeSantis’s remarks by noting, “more Floridians coming to California than the other way around in the last two years.”
According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in recent years more Floridians, ‘per capita’, have moved to California than vice versa, which could be interpreted as confirming Newsom’s argument, if you’re into interpretation. Like, if you’re PolitiFact, and you wanted to use census data to determine that 1.32 per 1,000 Floridians moved to California. and 1.31 per 1,000 Californians moved to Florida in 2022.
Not everyone is willing to stoop to ‘per capita’ statistics, but not everyone gets invited to debate Ron DeSantis on Fox News.
Both of these governors should be feeling bad. DeSantis, because Californians are moving into his neighborhoods, and we all know where that could lead. Look what happened when Disney moved into Orlando. The place hasn’t been the same since.
And Newsom, because they ran out of U-Hauls. How embarrassing.
Texas is seeing a worse infection rate than Florida, however. Almost 14 out of every 100 people moving to Texas are coming from California.
We can also note an influx of Californians into Colorado. About 4 out of every 100 newcomers. Hopefully, we are keeping them in detention camps?
On the positive side, the folks leaving California seem to be bringing their money with them. The California state government facing a budget deficit of $68 billion (‘billion’ with a ‘b’) and I am assuming the money was hidden in the false bottoms of suitcases, when people evacuated to Florida and Texas.
According to a wonderful old movie, The Grapes of Wrath, the suitcases carried into California in the late 1930s — following the ‘Dust Bowls’ in Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado — were mainly empty. Maybe a change of socks, and a suit to wear on Sunday. No money, though. Author John Steinbeck wrote about those poor folks and got a best-selling book out of it, and then movie royalties to boot. Which just goes to show, it’s better to write about poor people, than to be poor people.
Hence, the kernel of my idea for this humor column. If I can expand it into 200 pages, maybe I can get a movie deal.
Of course, it’s only an assumption on my part, that the people who left California between 2019 and 2023 had money hidden in their suitcases. I have no evidence to cite, in that regard. For all I know, maybe they were poor, just like the Dust Bowl refugees.
But if they are moving to Florida, then they are probably old. Old people like to move to Florida.