A new report shows California has the highest poverty rate in the US, alongside Louisiana, and rates have shown little improvement.
Despite the abundant wealth in the state – more billionaires live in California than anywhere else in the US – in 2024 about 7 million people, or 17.7% of residents, could not afford to cover their basic needs. In 2021, California’s poverty rate reached a historic low of 11%, but as pandemic-era policies came to an end, rates surged in the state and across the US, according to the report from the California Budget and Policy Center released last week.
Yet another odd similarity between Louisiana and California
California is like the survivor show. You stay until you get booted out by costs.
And people wonder why I dislike Newsom and his Democratic allies. They’re experts at passing laws and crafting ballot measures which sound progressive, but are actually schemes for padding the pockets of wealthy interests. Raising sales taxes which disproportionately impact poor people, only every trying to address the housing crisis with more construction of houses, even cleverly passing a measure for funding ecological projects that give capitalists an opportunity to profit(it’s been a bit since I heard about the details, but it was in the last election and I was blown away by their ingenuity).
Our state is not some shining beacon of liberalism, but fucked by capitalism just like everywhere else.
I’d say it is (along with my state next door, Oregon) a shining beacon of liberalism. It’s just that liberalism isnt what we were lead to believe it was and with events of late, the mask has finally come off.
Up north, we’ve been getting bills passed like road tolling into all the major population areas (where poor and middle class can’t afford to live but have to drive to in order to get to work) and taking money from rehabilitation and homelessness programs in order to give it to police, while all our politicians go on TV and talk about how concerned they are with the cost of everything 🙄
I looked into the history of the state recently. Knowing what I now know about the Spanish Mission System, it makes perfect sense that our laws look very much like they were written by The Mob.
I don’t get the problem with trying to solve housing by constructing more???
The housing crisis is not a problem of lack in supply. More than enough houses exist in the US for everyone to have a roof over their heads. The houses they are building are not going to go to houseless people or even bought by renters or families trying to expand their spaces, they will either be rented out at rates the houseless still can’t afford or used as tax havens.
I get what you’re asking but just building new buildings without programs to make sure they get into the hands of people in need it’s just spinning wheels. Things like what I just described combined with rent control and regulate the use of real estate as an investment would go a long way to fixing things.
Not to mention these construction and development companies get money, tax breaks, and lax regulations from the state to build housing that is then gobbled up by the wealthy and rented back to us serfs at a profit.
But if you keep building and building it should have an effect. Empty places still have to pay property tax. I guess im just saying im fine with us push push push build more housing but yeah I like other laws with it. One thing is I would like rental to be limited for non apartment buildings where the owner does not live there and not allow apartment buildings to do airbnb as that is for hotels/motels and taxed for such.
Why would it have an effect? If we have more houses than we already need and that hasn’t fixed things, doing even more of it probably won’t either. The wealthy have a bottomless pit of money and can always invest more into real estate. This argument is not too different than trickle down economics which has been proven time and time again to be a complete farce.
I doubt we have more than we need. empty buildings are money pits. you pay taxes and upkeep and get nothing back.
They’re money pits based on what? This chart disagrees with your assessment that “you get nothing back” on real estate investments. If that were true, nobody would be doing it.
Eventually but the same money in the s&p500 would get you more and be less likely to lose money over your purchase price and would not lose money every year until you sell.
Our state is not some shining beacon of liberalism, but fucked by capitalism just like everywhere else.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but those aren’t contradictory. Liberalism is fucked by capitalism, right?
No, you’re 100% right, but people who think California is good tend to think liberalism isn’t a justification for an empire to serve the wealthy.
It’s a great place to live. Even on the streets.
And where is wealth disparity the highest?
If I had to guess, I would say either here or New York. We flip flop for richest state with them every so often.
Shameful.
