I recently moved to California. Before i moved, people asked me "why are you moving there, its so bad?". Now that I'm here, i understand it less. The state is beautiful. There is so much to do.
I know the cost of living is high, and people think the gun control laws are ridiculous (I actually think they are reasonable, for the most part). There is a guy I work with here that says "the policies are dumb" but can't give me a solid answer on what is so bad about it.
So, what is it that California does (policy-wise) that people hate so much?
Pretty broadly speaking, it's a population center and they'll always have a problem with those. There's more to it than that, but fact of the matter is even if the shit they tend to latch on to wasn't a thing they'd just find something else.
I can confidently say that both NYC and Miami don't have any of these issues despite being also population centers.
California gets namedropped the most, but I tend to hear a lot of talk about "liberal big cities" in general personally.
You can confidently say anything if you don't specify which problems you're referring to.