Increased safety features on recent car models are a factor here as well. In the decade before I drove, airbags became standard, and weren’t even required until I’d been driving for a bit.

And over the last 10 years, NHTSA has pushed for stability control, 5 star crash test ratings, etc…

Then the whirlwind of safety over the last 5 years where back up cameras became required, and blind spot monitoring, brake assist, lane keep assist, adaptive cruise control all became available features.

You can still buy a car without those, for sure, and unfortunately that still costs $12k unless you want 200k miles or rebuilt titles.

But as I’m shopping for my kids first car, I find it hard to draw the line on what safety features she can have vs not have, and suddenly a few safety features later, used cars cost $20k. A far cry from my first car that I bought for $1k and drove in to the ground.

I’m in the same boat in Texas right now. Want to move to a more liberal state, and have several friends who already have.

The reason I stay is every person like me who leaves makes Texas more red. And often times, a liberal Texan is a conservative Californian/Coloradan/Canadian, so moving to one of those place will also move them to the right, so both places shift red.

Case in point. I have a friend who moved from NYC to Dallas because NY was too liberal and their conservative votes didn’t count there. They lasted 6 months before deciding to vote democrat in Texas, because red here is further right than they are comfortable with, so their move made NYC and Dallas more liberal.