[Dr Winston O Boogie jr]

Originally Posted by MartinSE

Okay, cost of living is reflected in higher wages, which drive up cost of living, and round and round that goes. I will agree it costs a bunch to live there, not a good place to retire, unless you are rich.

An advantage of living and working in CA is with higher wages for the same job as other places, when you retire you get higher SS payments. My wife, who comes from CA gets about 20% higher payments than I do and we were basically in the same field IT.

It is difficult to reconcile actual cost of living by comparing prices and wages. It would help if someone provided cost of typical items (food, gas, housing, etc) based on number of hours worked to pay for them. My 2 years in CA seem to show that while things cost more, the number of hours worked to pay for, say a loaf of bread, is about the same.

Crime, here is a recent crime survey 2022 - seems CA is about the same as Florida, and neither are near the top. You can draw you own conclusions about where are the highest crimes rates and highest homicide rates are - I already have a brownie point pending.

Highest crime rates:

District of Columbia
New Mexico
Alaska
Louisiana
South Carolina

Here are the 10 states with the highest homicide rates:

Louisiana (12.4 per 100,000 people)
Missouri (9.8 per 100,000 people)
Nevada (9.1 per 100,000 people)
Maryland (9 per 100,000 people)
Arkansas (8.6 per 100,000 people)
Alaska (8.4 per 100,000 people)
Alabama (8.3 per 100,000 people)
Mississippi (8.2 per 100,000 people)
Illinois (7.8 per 100,000 people)
South Carolina (7.8 per 100,000 people)

State Rankings Crime Rate byState

What's left out of crime stats by state is how localized the crime is. A huge percentage of the crime in Florida for example takes place in three or four big cities. There are thousands of square miles in Florida are are very safe. The Villages is in that category. The same could be said for most other states. Unless you live or work in St Louis you are probably very safe in Missouri.