In case you were wondering, it costs more to live here

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency with the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, produces "regional price parities" which show the cost of living by state and metro areas relative to the U.S. average. As you can see above, California as a whole has living costs that are about 12% above the national average. Of course, California is a big state and within it there are considerable variations. If you look at metro areas such as LA or San Francisco, you get premiums more like 20% with rents being a particularly aggravating factor. (And there are significant variations within metro areas that escape the data.) The high cost of living complicates the offering of competitive faculty pay levels for the UC campuses premium areas.

The chart above comes from http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/rpp/rpp_newsrelease.htm.