link to original reddit post by /u/Adman65

👋🏼 Hello friends. My wife and I were listening to a recent episode of The Tom Woods Show and the email from the person in the Philippines resonated with me.

I'm originally from California. I moved aboard in 2011 and came back in 2019. My fiancé (now wife) and I decided to relocate to the United States. We did the 1.5 year long fiancee visa process and all that. We loved Hawaii and wanted to make our life here. Two things have changed. Now I'm not sure.

Hawaii's response to COVID19 has been one of the worst in the nation. At one point in 2020 people were being ticketed (criminal offense) for going outside with their spouse. That's right. You weren't even allowed to go outside with your family. That's on-top of the lockdown and other capacity restrictions common in other parts of the country.

Life was slowly improving over the past few months as the government loosened restrictions and life returned to somewhat normal levels. There were still masks requirements this entire time. They've came and never left. Now delta has happened.

The government imposed a limit at 10 people for indoor gatherings. They are actively floating "health passes" ala Key2NYC or what's in place in SF or LA. The outcome is the same: barring unvaccinated people like my wife and I from society.

My wife is photographer. She wants to do wedding and engagements. That has been impossible since 2020 with COVID. Just today they pulled the rug out from an entire industry here by capping gathering size.

I've lived in Hawaii since June 2019. Only six months of my time here were without COVID. In hindsight, I'm grateful for that time before March 2020.

The cost of housing has gone up 20-30% since we arrived in Hawaii. I did not expect Hawaii to be low cost and that's OK. We make good money together and could make it work. Here's an example. We rent our condo. The units in our complex were ~500,000 in 2019. Now the same units are 750,00. Median single family home price on Oahu (where we live) is 1 million dollars. We're priced out.

The landlord opted not to extend our lease so we must vacate by December 31st. I'm seeing an opportunity to reassess the decision. I feel like we're not done with Hawaii but Hawaii is done with us. Neither of us really wants to leave. Authoritarian COVID measures and raising property costs (will not end as long the interests rates are low) are simply pushing us out.

I'm considering selling the small amount of stuff we have and moving some where more sane. We can afford to buy property most places besides the big cities on the coast which are out of the question because COVID stupidity anyways. I'm thinking of Texas (not Austin or Houston), maybe Arizona, or rural Oregon. I'm open to suggestions with acceptable weather (let's go easy on the snow).

I don't want to live in a place that thinks they can control people like this. The worst part about this is that people here are begging for it. I had no idea how fascist people are. I couldn't imagine this happening in 2010 but oh well. The world moves fast.

I know it's trite to say at this point: the country has lost it's damn mind! I thought this was the USA instead it's something so far gone.

Anyways just wanted to share with some like minded people. Thanks for listening. Stay sane everyone.