Joe Rogan: There is a Mass Exodus Out of California Right Now

When are you moving to Texas? The end of the month. Whoa. Yeah, I'm out of here. This place is going to blow up. This place is going to sink. Watch as soon as I leave. Boom. I just thought it's fucking... This place is crazy. The lockdown still exists, right? The homelessness is completely out of control. The overpopulation is out of control. The way they're handling this is so bad. I'm just upset with the federal government's handling of this. There's so many people that are just financially... They're so fucked right now. And I think people should be... I don't want to say people should be held accountable for it, but I think people should make decisions based on the way the place that they live is handling this really difficult problem. And the way... The solution they've come up with in California is to jack up taxes. The most recent solution was to jack up taxes to 54%. You guys are out of your fucking mind. Retroactively back to January. That's a lot. Yeah, it was a proposal. It's crazy. It's not going to fix it. They're bankrupt. This state is bankrupt because they're incompetent. They're not going to become competent if you give them more money. They've managed the money that they got very poorly. They already have high taxes. There's a 13.5% state income tax here in California. And the place is still fucked up. It's like... This is a very telling and dangerous time in a lot of ways. It's very challenging. And it exposes a lot of things. And one of the things it exposes is that I don't particularly like the way things are run here. And I don't like being in a place that has such a high population either. I think there's a real problem with living somewhere that has 20 million people plus, 40 million in the whole state. It's so crazy. There's so many people here. And the only thing that was really keeping me around was the Comedy Store and my friends. And a lot of my friends are bailing. A lot. Where are they going? All over the place. My friend Joey's moved in New Jersey. Theo Vaughn is moving. I think he's moving in Nashville. A lot of my friends are talking about Texas. People are just bailing. There's a mass exodus out of California right now. That's crazy because I was actually planning to move to LA eventually. So now that you're going... I was going to say the next time I'm in town, I'll come say hi, but you're going to be gone. Well maybe I'll be here every now and then. Once things are back to normal, whatever normal is going to be, I'd be happy to come in every now and then. And we're going to keep this studio for a while. I'll come to the Comedy Store and still do shows there. I miss all my friends that work there and that perform there. So I'm sure I'll be in town at least a few times a year. But I just want to change too. I think there's other places to live. I want to live in a place where it rains. That's another thing. It's very unhealthy. Living in a place where it's always sunny. I think it gives you a really delusional perspective. It's beautiful for you because you come from Toronto, it's 55,000 degrees below zero. It's not snowing every day, counter to what people think. We do actually have summer and sunshine sometimes. Of course you do. Look, I love Toronto. But the thing is, when people come from somewhere like that and then you come to LA and it's sunny all the time, you're like, this is amazing. But after a while, it gives you a distorted view of nature. And I think that's one of the reasons why people in LA are so delusional. They very rarely have to deal with actual nature. I always felt like there was something real humbling about growing up in Boston because it got so goddamn cold and it snowed so much that you just knew. There were certain point in times where you had to submit to nature. You had to huddle in. There's two feet of snow outside. You just stayed home. You just hung out with the family. You played games. You did what you had to do. No one's going anywhere. The roads are shut down. You have to plow. It takes days. And there's something about that just understanding that sometimes you have to be at the beck and call and the will of nature. That doesn't exist in California. Every 20 years or so we get a wake up call. The earth shakes and buildings fall down. You go, fuck, I got to get out of here. And then people move out. And then a couple years later they forget and a bunch of people move in and then it gets overcrowded again. But this is like one of the first years, I think, where California didn't grow. And that's very strange. Because every year California's population just keeps growing and growing and growing. And they're saying this is one of the very first years in recent memory where it's not growing. So many people are leaving that it's actually not growing. Change is good.