Harlan is a financial planner who lives in Little Italy.
It’s difficult to it this, not that I’m a San Diego native, because I’m quite proud of that, but I’ve decided that eventually I’m going to make Florida my new home state. The reasons are simultaneously simple and complicated. California has become a shell of what it used to be, based on my experience that spans more than 60 years and, sadly, it no longer makes economic sense to maintain California as my primary residence.
My wife and I have the good fortune of running our own financial planning practice. Our job is to enable people to achieve their goals, which usually includes the ability to stop working one day, but the amount of inflation the entire nation has experienced over the course of the last several months as well as California’s high-income tax rates have convinced my wife and I, and more than a few people we know, to consider leaving the state. Our practice has experienced steady growth, but with that income growth comes higher taxes and the stout cost of housing here, along with everything else. I’ve encountered more than a few people who say they can barely afford to maintain a home here in San Diego. It’s extremely challenging from a planning perspective to overcome both inflation and California’s tax tables.
Then there’s this — I was born in the old National City Medical hospital, the one that no longer stands. I grew up in Southeast San Diego during the 1960s, and I never seeing homeless folks, but now their numbers have exploded, and they occupy nearly every part of the city I know. Why would I want to pay what is one of the highest tax rates in America to state leaders who cannot seem to solve this massive problem? The governor and state leaders have been vowing for years to fix things. They’ve spent billions of dollars — taxpayer dollars, my dollars and yours — and things have only gotten worse. I know, it’s a thorny problem, and tragic at so many levels, but that does not excuse politicians for taking in huge chunks of money that people earn through their hard work and spending it in ways that appear to be doing more harm than good. My wife and I used to enjoy traveling to San Francisco. You could not pay me to visit that city these days, and that’s a shame.
Please bear in mind that these views do not come from a left- or right-leaning perspective. They come from a lifelong libertarian, a voice rarely heard in mainstream media. It is a privilege to share these thoughts, and it’s an honor to have the space in this publication to express these ideas. It’s for this reason and others that I still believe in America. I still believe that the city, state and nation will be OK in time, but it may take time, perhaps a long time, which is why I’ll likely be in Florida when the good times return.
