That splashy headline was based on the U-Haul company’s growth index, which each year “ranks states by their net gain (or loss) of customers who rented a one-way truck, trailer or U-Box® moving containers in one state and dropped off their equipment in another state.”
Despite its world-renowned natural beauty, its reputation as a golden state and a remarkable history of progress, California was ranked at the bottom of the index for the sixth consecutive year. Ranked No. 1 and No. 2 were Texas and Florida, a couple of states that Gov. Gavin Newsom has attacked as rivals over his years in office.
Overall, the migration is heavily from progressive states to states that are more affordable, friendlier to business, have lower tax burdens, lighter regulation, the promise of worker freedom, reasonably priced housing and simply less government meddling in private affairs.
U-Haul released its index on Jan. 5, three days before Newsom’s final state of the state speech, which was a “rosy view of California” as well as “his record as governor.” It included little if anything that would move the state higher on the index.
The governor made no mention of reforming a volatile revenue system that punishes job creators, innovators and investors in a particularly vicious way but instead bragged that “we’re proving that a progressive tax structure works.”
Nor did he propose easing off on the state’s fixation on “clean” energy that is responsible for the excessive gasoline and electricity costs that are factor in people fleeing the state.
Newsom could have taken the opportunity to suggest that the next governor look back at the last two decades to find where California took a wrong turn. But he didn’t. He might have noted that his plans to end homelessness, going back to his days as mayor of San Francisco, haven’t worked, that homelessness grew while he held both the city and the state CEO jobs. But he didn’t. He simply buzzsawed his way through blue state babble, as if more and more government is the key to solving every personal problem and societal ill.
Newsom brought up “multi-year investments in education” that “are paying off,” yet found it convenient to not mention that his COVID policies severely harmed students, and that the failure of public education continues. He later pivoted to the “state’s first master plan for career education” which he says, “creates seamless, debt-free pathways from school to high-paying jobs, with or without college experience.” Others will see it, and time is likely to confirm their skepticism, as just another of the state’s broken promises.
While the governor was spinning his “sunny California tale,” California billionaires, who don’t need U-Hauls, were leaving in anticipation of a coming wealth tax (which, to his credit, the governor opposes). He could have used the moment to voice that opposition. He didn’t. He instead leaned on the progressive bromide that the wealth isn’t spread out thinly enough.
The satirists at the Babylon Bee named Newsom U-Haul’s salesperson of the year for five straight years. Though it’s a spoof, it makes a sharp point. Over his seven years in the governor’s mansion, Newsom’s policies made it harder, not easier, to live in California.
Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute and co-author of The California Left Coast Survivor’s Guide.
