I've been living here since 2005 and absolutely love it. Yup there are fires but usually we don't notice them, and having lived all over the USA and in Canada things like winter are *far* more dangerous to me than anything else. These things are also overblown on the news. I still laugh when I get calls from back home wondering if we're ok after an earthquake, when 99% of the time I never even felt it. It's a big state after all They are the ones living in winter which is documented to be extremely dangerous, I should be calling them asking if they are ok. Plus there's many perks you get here that you get nowhere else. Keep in mind I am a foreigner (I'm Canadian) so I'm likely viewing this from a different perspective than most, but here's a few nice things off the top of my head about living in this state:

- If i get ill it's ok, disability insurance has me covered.
- My wife just started a new job, abortions are covered right on her health care plan.
- If i want to get a prostate exam or other such male related medical stuff, I can go to my local planned parenthood and get it done.
- My wife can go to our local cannabis store to get her thc/cbd tincture which lets her sleep.

I can go on and on but that's just a few off the top of my head. They sound like basic quality of life things but believe it or not I don't think any state in the USA aside from California has all the above four and some don't even have one! When it comes to medical, quality of life and social safety nets, we may not be at Canadian or European levels of protection but we're far ahead of other states which very much matters to me and general quality of life.

Besides that salaries and opportunity for us are sooooo much higher here, and of course the weather. I always felt like I lived half a life in the other countries and states because weather would always get in the way. Can't do this because weather, can't do that because weather, etc. Here I can drive the back roads all year (I'm a car guy), I can do my astrophotography all year round, hobbies year round, basically anything I can do year round. I have one short life and I want to live it everyday, not just when weather allows. And typically no humidity, good lord I hate humidity, I like not sweating all the time or being eaten alive by mosquitoes. The mix of people is also incredible, lots of people from all over the world, it's not uncommon to hear a dozen languages just walking around, an incredible mix of people from all walks of life and all parts of the globe. And yeah, we go to the beach in December.

I've lived in many places but for me there's no where else like California, I love it here and will never leave.

Ha, yeah i find California taxes to be low but then again I am originally a Canuck so.....

It has nothing to do with me, it's her wants, her needs, her requirements. To her it's extremely important that medical procedures are covered especially with us being originally from Canada where such things are taken for granted. That was just one example but there are actually many female specific medical needs that are better covered and/or accessible in this state than in most others. Her current company has many women in high positions which likely explains why they take coverage of female medical issues quite seriously, some coverage of which would be unheard of in other parts of the country yet are normal here. You may disagree and that's fine but it's orthogonal to the discussion, I was merely stating it as one of many reasons why we choose to live here.

Well the tinctures aren't cheap but she sleeps like a baby now. Many women suffer from insomnia and unfortunately like many female medical issues it's largely ignored and/or they just throw drugs like Ambien at them, just insane. Now she nibbles on a gummi or takes a tincture (one drop under the tongue) and snoozes easily. Other stuff like medical disability coverage are huge, I think we're one of only 4 states that offer it. I went on it from December 2008 to June 2009 when I was out of action due to a random nerve issue. It had nothing to do with my work itself, it just sorta happened. The state paid me 55% of my salary tax free which was amazing, I would have been shit outta luck in most all other states. During that time is when I was told they weren't sure I'd be able to work a normal job again so I formed a business plan and started my own business once I got better, that took off and the rest is history. California took care of me when I was down whereas most states would have told me too bad so sad.

I think locals don't take things like medical coverage and access to medical procedures seriously until it's too late. We looked into it deep because we're foreigners so we did our research. It really matters when the shit hits the fan. Heck when I had my nerve issue I needed to get an mri done but I could not use the tube or the upright mri's because my neck was bent in a certain position that meant the mri imaging on those machines didn't work. But Los Angeles was one of two locations that had at the time a new type of mri machine called an "Upright MRI" which I was able to use and get scanned. Access to such stuff is really important when you need it.

I find insurance doesn't cost any more here compared to other states. For example for our primary home and rental property together we get full coverage on both for $1945 per year, that's for a full rebuild of both. The reason is the value here is in the land not the property, and the insurance company is insuring only your property. That's why when some rich person buys a house they don't care about tearing it down because the property itself isn't worth much at all. Now if you have solid gold toilets and the like then yeah you will pay more.

I don't think earthquake insurance is worth it because of the huge deductible. It only makes sense if you have the type of property that can totally collapse like a multi story property that was built in the 30s before all safety regulations or something like that, otherwise don't bother.

Finally as a general rule of thumb to specialty insurance like extra fire or flooding coverage, if it's not offered then don't buy the property. That's because the insurance company not offering any is their way of telling you that they expect the property to be destroyed at some point by fire or water.

That's actually awesome, I love that we do that, it's yet another way California protects us. Full disclosure is required so you can't victimize others by hiding things. I don't think all states do this, when we looked at properties in Austin, TX in the late 90s there were no such protections at the time, it was buyer beware. In the Seattle area in the early 2000's they were similar to here in California where you can't hide defects and such, the realtors made is very clear it all has to be disclosed. Likewise here it gets revealed if you are in a flood or fire zone, which is perfect. The only properties that I'm not sure fall under full disclosure are those sold at auction.

Depends on the county, I live in Ventura county where sales tax is 7.25%.

That was our impression of the USA when we lived in Canada way back in the day, all of us Europeans and Canadians thought the USA was great for a quick vacation but hell no to living in such a dangerous country. Those types of thoughts stuck with me for many years until eventually I decided rather than believe the typical info that was parroted by everyone about the USA back then, instead I would decide for myself. In 1991 I had an internship at Microsoft and lived in the Seattle area for 3 months, that was my first real world exposure to "Don't believe the hype". People were really nice, the city was lovely, I had a really good time there and never felt in danger. Five years later I would move to the USA permanently starting in Texas as friends and relatives told me I was insane to live in such a dangerous country. Many states later I still used to try and defeat that incorrect assumption about this country, but some people will believe whatever they are told.

All I can say at this point is people have an agenda, they lie and/or are easily deceived. Experience things for yourself, make your own informed decisions. Beyond that I don't bother fighting it anymore and I let people live with whatever nonsense is in their head.

That's the first time I've heard the term hillbillies applied to Indiana, but learn something new everyday I guess. Anyways I meant more beyond the obvious stuff like natural disasters. For example, lets say you know your property has an asbestos problem, foundation issue or something serious and you lie about it when asked while trying to pass off the problem to an unsuspecting new buyer, you can be held liable for it if they find out you concealed the issue. When we sold our Seattle property and moved to California we had a foundation crack that caused a leak. We fixed it, but we had to reveal that to the next buyer so they knew what they were getting into. Things like flooding, fire, etc are more obvious really as you can typically get reports that reveal if you are in a flood zone, etc, it's the property specific issues where things can be hidden.

We've had a few basements in our time and I'm not a big fan of them. For one they *always* leak, but even if you don't actually spot a leak often they have this "basement smell" which makes me wonder if there is a leak someplace and we're inhaling mold. My wife likes them but I'm not a fan.

Big problem we have here is that anyone in the world is allowed to buy property here without any limitations. This is a problem because all cash offers from people laundering their money here are common, and worse yet it's parasitic because they don't live here so the property owners spend 0$ on the local economy and instead just transfer the rent money out of the country. I could rant about this for a long time but I won't, suffice to say that I'm not a fan of this. At a minimum I wish only residents of the USA would be allowed to buy property here that way at least some money is being recirculated into the American economy, but I digress.

This point can't be overstated. To make a real world example, when I first moved to the USA I moved to Austin, Texas which is typically considered "cheap living" here except to me it was crazy overpriced. For example the price of rent in Austin was similar to a mortgage payment where I came from originally. So the typical argument I heard was why in hell would you move to somewhere like Austin that is so expensive to live in? Very easy answer to that one, "expensive" is all relative, so when you factor in the opportunities and salaries we had there compared to our hometown of Montreal at the time in the 90s it was as no brainer, we came out far ahead. Now extrapolate that to California and you'll see why for many living here is an easy choice financially.

It doesn't matter to some people, they watch one news source and/or have one disgruntled buddy and that is their basis to extrapolate their "facts" to millions of people over a large swath of land. Apparently we must all be insanely stupid for living in California because it has to be all homeless people on fire with needles sticking out of everyone all the time 24/7 because their media of choice says so.

I should have expected that in this thread though. I just looked again at the poll and noticed two options for "no", that should have been my clue that this was never a real thread asking a genuine question and instead it was yet another "let's bash on California" thread on Pinside. My mistake, I should have caught that and totally ignored this thread. But then again I have no idea why I even bother with this forum anymore, the pattern of hate and misinformation is patently clear, I should just cull it and move on. There's other places to talk Pinball that aren't littered with this nonsense and indoctrinated thinking.