If you open up U-Haul’s website and have a look at the discount page, you’ll see a huge graphic at the top of the screen advertising “Discounts on One-Way Rentals from the Midwest to the West Coast.”
It shows a map highlighting middle America, with arrows pointing west to California, and urging customers to “Take advantage of huge discounts… for select routes.”
The price to go from Dallas to San Francisco, for example, is discounted 44% compared to going in the other direction.
I find this absolutely hilarious.
It means that so many people are booking one-way U-Hauls OUT of California, that U-Haul is desperate to find ANYONE to drive their trucks back to California.
And is it any wonder why?
California has some of the highest living costs in the country when it comes to rents, home prices, and energy. They also have one of the highest tax burdens in the nation.
And what do California’s residents get for all of these costs and taxes?
Well, San Francisco spends about $58,000 per homeless person… and still can’t manage to keep them, their feces, and their syringes off the streets.
Unsurprisingly, San Francisco County has lost 7% of its population just since 2020 according to Census data.
And it’s not just individuals and families who are fed up. Businesses are wringing their hands as well.
Whole Foods is the latest major business to close its flagship San Francisco store after operating for just 13 months, citing rampant crime in the area.
This follows Amazon closing all of its cashier-less “Go” stores in the city, and Walgreens also shuttering many locations.
You’ve probably seen the videos of the mobs running into stores and grabbing everything they can carry, or shoving merchandise into giant garbage bags, and then simply walking out of the store.
Yet ultra-leftist progressive prosecutors allow it to happen. California even recently amended the laws to decriminalize this type of “petty” theft. I imagine if you own a retail store in California that is routinely plundered, the problem doesn’t feel petty to you.
On a larger scale, California is doing everything it can to force businesses out of the state.
I’m not just talking about the insane taxes and regulations which have forced multiple corporate headquarters to relocate to places like Texas, Florida, and beyond.
The latest absurdity is that the State of California passed a new law where a special commission of political insiders now has the power to regulate the profits of oil and gas refiners.
File this one away under “Most Destructive Ideas Ever”. I mean, a state committee is literally empowered to establish the maximum profit margin for an entire industry. How is this not full-blown modern communism?
The state’s politicians are practically begging oil and gas refiners to shut down, or to take their business elsewhere. And this is pretty insane for a state that has a history of severe energy shortages.
Yet California’s politicians are actually cheering this as a victory, praising their own courage and heroism. The governor himself said, “California took on Big Oil and won… With this legislation, we’re ending the oil industry’s days of operating in the shadows.”
(Bear in mind that most of these oil companies are publicly-traded corporations which issue hundreds of pages of financial disclosures and public filings every single year… so we’re curious to which “shadows” the governor is referring…)
Amazingly enough, after all of their anti-business, anti-productive policies, California’s governor is lamenting that his state will have a $22.5 billion budget deficit this year.
Gee I wonder why. Who could POSSIBLY have predicted that productive businesses and talented individuals would leave the state!?!
It’s the same story in so many places — New York, New Jersey, Chicago, etc.
In fact Chicago just elected an ultra-progressive, super-woke mayor who blames everything from high crime to dysfunctional education on ‘greedy corporations’.
Yes, it certainly must have been the greedy corporations that were responsible for this past Saturday night’s mayhem in Chicago, in which hundreds of teenage kids descended upon downtown Chicago to wreck havoc and destroy property.
Yet the Mayor-Elect’s grand solution to this chaos is to “find the revenue” by raising taxes on companies operating in the city.
In completely unrelated news, Walmart announced that they will be closing about half of their Chicago-area stores, because they simply can’t make money amidst so much crime and political cannibalism.
Furthermore, census data shows that Cook County, where Chicago is located, has lost nearly 3% of its population since 2020.
One mover was Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the $62 billion hedge fund Citadel, who moved the firm and himself from Chicago to Miami last year.
But Griffin said taxes weren’t even the biggest reason: it was safety. After a colleague was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight in the financial district, Griffin knew it was time to go.
Yet Chicago’s new mayor has supported the “defund the police” movement, and he pledges to send fewer cops to respond to calls, opting instead to put Emergency Medical Technicians in the line of fire.
It’s extraordinary how these politicians keep doubling down on the same destructive actions… and are then PROUD of themselves for doing such a great job.
Even more bizarre is that these people keep getting voted back into power.
The United States Congress, for example, has an approval rating right now of 18%, which is near a record low. Almost everyone agrees the organization is a total failure.
And yet every two years when Congressional elections take place, the incumbent (on average) wins more than 90% of the time. Isn’t that astonishing?
Let’s be honest with ourselves: it’s nice to hope for the best. But when the representatives of a failed institution win re-election more than 90% of the time, the odds of any meaningful change are quite low.
So whether it means simply heading to a new county, crossing state lines, or even moving abroad, perhaps it’s time to at least consider the option of voting with your feet.
