A tough relationship that's worth the effort

In 2017, the median price of a home in California was more than 2.5 times the median price in the nation as a whole. In the state's five largest cities, the median home price ranges between $500,000 and $1.5 million. Struggling with the rising cost of housing and child care, one in five residents lives in poverty.

No one said first class was cheap.

Paradise has its problems -- fires, floods, drought, homelessness, anti-business climate, one-party rule, lack of affordable housing, crowded freeways, high cost of living, income disparity, a top state income tax of 12.3%, and a $275 billion debt fueled by gold-plated pensions for public employees.

What's next? Locusts?

We're also saddled with a legislature that can't tackle the real problems because it's preoccupied with passing laws that prohibit hotels from offering guests shampoo in tiny plastic bottles.

Take-out restaurants, you're next. Hand over the plastic forks or else.

We're a long way from the 1930s, when folks from Oklahoma and Missouri optimistically migrated to the Central Valley. They pitched their tents and worked their tails off. Year-round sunshine told them they were right to make the trip. Years later, the Okie from Muskogee, Merle Haggard, promised a warmer climate "if we make it through December ... maybe even California."

Rumors of the state's demise are wildly exaggerated. California now has the fifth largest economy in the world, behind China, Japan, Germany and the United States. Silicon Valley is printing money, and it doesn't need President Trump's tariffs. Hollywood makes hundreds of billions of dollars by spinning yarns out of make-believe. Last year, the tourism industry took in more than $140 billion. And agriculture generated more than $50 billion thanks in large part to those illegal immigrants whom many Californians claim they want to get rid of. Wink, wink.

In the early 1960s, my grandfather -- who had been leading my mother and her family of migrant workers between Texas and California -- stayed in California for good because they could earn $1 more per hour.

Many years later, I migrated back to Texas to join the editorial board of The Dallas Morning News. State officials would come into our office and brag about how Texas wines rivaled the ones in California, and how the area around Austin was a miniature version of Silicon Valley, and how they were even making movies now in the Lone Star State just like in Hollywood.

Funny. I've spent more than three-fourths of my life in California. And I've never once heard someone here say they were modeling anything on Texas.

I figure I'll stick it out.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com. His daily podcast, "Navarrette Nation," is available through every podcast app.