Consumer Affairs’ annual state ranking has placed California as the third-worst state to move to, after Louisiana and New Mexico, according to reporting by the Daily Signal.
The low ranking was driven mostly by issues with affordability, safety, and economic strength, with measures also including health care, education, and quality of life.
“While the state ranked 23rd in health care and education, and 14th in quality of life, it finished dead last in affordability and 49th in safety—making it the second-most dangerous state in the nation, according to the report,” the Daily Signal wrote. “It ranked 41st in economic strength.”
For much of the 20th century, California drew ambitious families from across America with promises of opportunity, good jobs, and sunshine. That dream has faded under decades of Sacramento policies, according to critics.
“California has everything it needs to succeed: abundant natural resources, hardworking people, and limitless opportunity. Yet years of failed leadership from Gavin Newsom and Sacramento have squandered those advantages,” U.S. Rep. Vince Fong, a Republican representing Bakersfield, told the Daily Signal.
Here in southern Orange County, the effects are felt daily — from skyrocketing home prices that lock out young families to concerns over public safety and quality-of-life issues. While the state boasts natural beauty and innovation hubs, the combination of burdensome regulations, high taxes, and enforcement challenges continues to drive residents toward more affordable and safer states.
California affordability is also a major issue in this year’s gubernatorial election.
Steve Hilton is centering his Republican run for California governor on a branded “Califordable” agenda built around cutting taxes, lowering energy and gas prices, and loosening housing regulations to reduce everyday costs for working families, renters, and young would‑be homeowners.
Hilton repeatedly frames California’s cost of living crisis as his campaign’s organizing theme, arguing that “life… is hard for regular working people” because of high housing costs, top‑of‑nation gas prices, and layers of state and local fees and bureaucracy. He pitches his plan as “simple, positive, practical” steps to “make our state Cal‑affordable” with direct reductions in what households pay for taxes, fuel, electricity, and housing.
Hilton’s headline tax proposal is to eliminate state income tax on the first $100,000 of earnings, then apply a flat 7.5% rate above that threshold. He frames this as “the first thing we have to do” to make life more affordable, arguing it would immediately put more money in people’s pockets and help middle‑income workers stay in California. He pairs that with broader pledges to “cut and reduce waste in the government,” saying he would claw back what he calls hundreds of billions in inefficient or misdirected spending.
On the Democrat side, nominee Xavier Becerra would tackle affordability in a much different way. Becerra is pitching affordability as a “put families first” agenda built around freezing key household costs (utilities and home insurance), aggressively expanding affordable and starter‑home housing, and using state power to crack down on price gouging in basics like healthcare, childcare, and groceries.
Becerra talks about California’s affordability problem as a squeeze on “working families” facing rising insurance, childcare, groceries, rent, and utilities, and says the state must “tackle it head on.” He argues the state should use its regulatory and purchasing power to lower prices where “the market has failed,” while keeping California “affordable, healthy, and open to everyone chasing the California Dream.”
The Daily Signal is a conservative news and commentary outlet that distributes a suite of email newsletters offering politics, policy, and culture coverage from a right‑of‑center perspective, originally launched in June 2014 by The Heritage Foundation as an extension of its Morning Bell email and The Foundry blog before becoming a legally independent media organization in 2024 with its own leadership and board.
