Cost of Living in Raleigh

To add to the last statement Rick made below about locals not liking outsiders, that's anywhere! The great California migration has turned quiet little hidden "gem of a city" type places into overpopulated "Anywhere, USA" type cities. No longer anything special. Traffic is starting to get worse, more housing developments are going up and driving down older property values, jobs are becoming fewer and more competitive, making it harder for grad students or entry level employees to find stable gainful employment. Rent increases, supply and demand for natural resources increases, thus increasing monthly rates. Supply and demand for gasoline and groceries goes up, thus do the prices. The need for big box and chain stores increases, putting long standing family owned shops and stores out of business. Pollution increases. Sometimes bad elements come along with these new transplants and crime rates increase. Things start to change all around, and most people don't do well with change. It's not like us Californian's are widely known for our charm, kindness, hospitality, and generosity. To the rest of the USA, we're all a bunch of self-absorbed, inconsiderate, rude, pushy, demanding Hollywood/Silicon Valley/Consumerist types looking to consume everyone else's slice of heaven, chew it up, spit it out, and leave things worse than when we came. We're a plague to places that don't live a fast paced lifestyle, a threat to their peace and serenity of the calm and mellowed down way of life. Little do they know outside of TV and social media, there's A LOT of us who are not like that and we don't all come from cities and hectic or privileged lifestyles. Some of us do live in the country, are God fearing, hard working, loving, charitable, live in tight-nit rural communities, and aren't at all Hollywood or Techy, rich snobs looking to gentrify their hometowns into the next uber vegan mecca. We just want to live in a better place away from all the vanity, the materialism, the narcissism, and the disproportionate wage to cost ratio that has nearly every resident living just above, at, or below state poverty levels. We're not all a-holes looking to trash your town or run everyone out of it. We just can't live in our crappy state anymore. It's always on fire and we have no water. Might as well accept it now, because eventually CA is going to become uninhabitable and we're ALL gonna have to migrate someplace eastward.