Katy Perry ditches California for Kentucky, says 'Hollywood is not America'

Katy Perry is the latest American to leave high-tax California for a Republican-led state – and she couldn’t be happier.

During a recent interview on Chelsea Handler’s “Dear Chelsea” podcast, the 37-year-old musical star described how happy she is to have ditched Hollywood for Kentucky, especially as a young mother.

“I’m like, living in Kentucky, and I have for almost a month now. And that’s quite an amazing experience. Because it reminds you that Hollywood is not America,” Perry said according to Fox News.

The pop legend went on to discuss how leaving major urban areas helps celebrities better connect to everyday Americans.

“You need to remember that,” Perry noted. “Because I think you can understand people better.”

“Yeah, right. It’s nice to get outside of what you know to be normal and your reality,” Handler replied.

“Yeah, I mean they’re living in a bubble of sorts. We’re living in a bubble. Our bubbles are completely opposite. But they’re — it’s interesting,” Perry said.

Handler went on to charge Perry with having grown up in a religious “bubble,” citing her family’s Christian faith.

“You’ve been in different bubbles cause you grew up in a bubble,” the host said. “You grew up super religious, yeah, and that’s one bubble. Then you came into this industry, that’s another bubble. Right?”

“It’s an anthropology study of humans,” Perry replied.

But Perry isn’t the only American to escape from major, Democratic-led cities in recent years. In fact, more than half of all U.S. counties lost residents over the course of the decade, with almost all growth being represented in metropolitan areas.

The biggest loss, of 159,621 residents, was in Los Angeles county in California, followed by New York County in New York and Cook County in Illinois.

Meanwhile, the top 10 largest-gaining counties in 2021 (apart from Riverside County, California) are in Republican-led states like Arizona, Texas, Florida and Utah. 

These findings appear to mirror a recent study from the Washington, D.C. based Tax Foundation which used U.S. Census Bureau data to show that while high-tax states with Democratic governors lost the largest number of residents, low-tax states with Republican governors welcomed the largest number of new residents in 2021

According to the data, the five states (including Washington, D.C.) that lost the most residents were Washington, D.C. (D), New York (D), Illinois (D), Hawaii (D) and California (D).

Meanwhile, the five states that saw the largest gains in population were Idaho (R), Utah (R), Montana (R), Arizona (R) and South Carolina (R).

According to Tax Foundation analyst Jared Walczak, “The picture painted by this population shift is a clear one of people leaving high-tax, high-cost states for lower-tax, lower-cost alternatives.”

“If we include the District of Columbia, then in the top one-third of states for population growth since the start of the pandemic (April 2020 to July 2021 data), the average combined top marginal state and local income tax rate is 3.5 percent, while in the bottom third of states, it is about 7.3 percent,” he added.