Grant Cardone: 3 Economic Reasons People Are Fleeing California — Could They Affect Your State Too?
Written by
Gabrielle Olya
Edited by
Molly Sullivan
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California is the top state Americans are leaving, with a net migration of roughly -259,000 residents per year as of 2023, according to a recent Storage Cafe report. There are a number of reasons why people are leaving the state, but economic reasons may be the No. 1 driver — and the recent fires have only exacerbated the issue.
Grant Cardone, private equity fund manager and real estate investor, spoke to GOBankingRates about the major economic issues he believes California needs to address ahead of his 10X California tour, which aims to get California voters to register as Republicans. Here are the top issues Cardone believes the Golden State is facing — which may apply to your state as well.
The Recent Wildfires Have Had Devastating Economic Impacts
Cardone said that the No. 1 issue that needs to be tackled is rebuilding after the devastating wildfires.
“This is the most important, vital priority,” he said. “If you don’t rebuild the state at warp-speed levels, the economy around it will crash. This is going to be somewhere between $400 and $500 billion to clean up and rebuild. And it could be more than that.”
Cardone is encouraging President Donald Trump to take the actions needed to speed up the recovery process.
“I’m doing my best to get in front of him [to discuss] a way to clean up the city in 45 days of all debris, all damage,” he said. “Remove it, and then have a rebuild [plan] in place for structural and housing, get all the regulations out of the way, and have the city rebuilt in 18 months.
“That will give tremendous enthusiasm back to the state of California, that there’s a new direction,” Cardone continued. “This could be a golden age for the Golden State.”
Major Companies Have Left California Due To High Taxes
It’s not just individuals who have been leaving California, but also many businesses. This is making it harder for residents to find jobs.
“We have to attract jobs back to the state,” Cardone said. “There have been major companies — Toyota, Elon Musk’s [Tesla], the list goes on — there’s so many companies that have left here. I had to exit all my companies here because I couldn’t afford to operate here.”
Cardone believes California needs to reduce taxes to attract new business back to the state.
There Are Too Many Regulations That Stifle Economic Growth
Cardone said that Californians “have to literally gut their regulatory board and remove most of the regulations that are not business-friendly, that add too much time and too much cost to start up a new business or a real estate development.”
In addition to the high taxes, Cardone believes that regulations are driving businesses away from California and preventing new ones from coming in.
These Aren’t Problems That Are Unique to California
Natural disasters can happen anywhere, and high taxes and regulatory red tape also exist in many other states across the country, especially blue states.
“You could replace [California with] Illinois, New York, New Jersey,” Cardone said. “California is the ‘mack daddy’ of blue states, and if you can fix the mack daddy, everything else falls in line. New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, they will all fall in line and say, ‘Look what they did.'”
Cardone notes that states like Texas and Florida have already reduced their taxes and are now operating on a positive budget.
“This is happening across the country,” he said. “California could be the the straw that breaks the camel’s back. This isn’t really about red or blue or Democrat or Republican. It’s about doing the right thing.”
Editor’s note on political coverage: GOBankingRates is nonpartisan and strives to cover all aspects of the economy objectively and present balanced reports on politically focused finance stories. You can find more coverage of this topic on GOBankingRates.com.
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