To Continue Thriving, California Needs New Politicians
California is driving on fumes and living off the residual investments and innovations of past generations. Is it any wonder so many Californians are heading to Texas or Arizona?
The late, great urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, wrote in her seminal The Death and Life of Great American Cities that, "there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error, and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings."
She was explaining that people with innovative business ideas need an inexpensive place to get started. After all, the founders of Apple, Google, and Disney birthed their enterprises in garages. In California, these days, the cost of real estate—and everything else, for that matter—is so high, that few people can afford the cost of entry. That's why so many innovators are high-tailing it to Texas and elsewhere.
Jacobs sprang to mind as the latest news reports that Silicon Valley stalwarts, Hewlett Packard and Oracle, are moving their headquarters from the San Francisco Bay Area to Texas. More than 200,000 Californians left the state between 2018 and 2019, some of whom might be among the next generation of tech moguls looking for cheap warehouse space to foster their groundbreaking concepts.
The once Golden State keeps growing—albeit at the lowest rate since 1900—thanks to the birth rate. The key reason for the continuing exodus is real estate is so unaffordable here that only established firms and families can afford the tab. This is the direct result of progressive public policies, which focus on divvying up existing wealth rather than letting people create more of it.
California officials love to boast that the state is the world's fifth-largest economy—and point to Silicon Valley as evidence that we're still on the cutting edge of entrepreneurial activity. But California is driving on fumes—living off the residual investments and innovations of past generations. These lawmakers take credit for something they seem intent on destroying.
Who in their right mind would start a business here? As Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) likes to say, California remains a great place to build a small business—provided you start with a large one. The only surefire ideas that work here now are living on a trust fund or getting a cushy job in California's remaining high-pay growth industry, the government.
California isn't only losing people, but is losing its future. "The state's long-held self-image—a blend of Tomorrowland and Fountain of Youth—is colliding with the inescapable fact that the Golden State is getting old," as a 2018 Los Angeles Times article noted. No wonder. Older folks who own their homes aren't going to leave the lovely climate or Pacific views, but energetic young people are building their lives elsewhere.
The state's big cities are becoming virtually childless. "San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children under 18 of any major city in the U.S., and Los Angeles County has seen a 17 percent decline in the number of kids in the past 10 years," notes Derek Thompson in the Atlantic. Big surprise. It's tough to raise a family in an 800-square-foot, $1 million condo.
How can we reverse these trends? It starts with a new mentality—one that's committed to recreating a state of opportunity. California has the nation's highest poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau statistics that consider cost-of-living data. We have the most generous welfare benefits in the nation, but few people want a subsidized apartment and a monthly stipend. It's better to give them a shot at upward mobility.
Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership is hostile to private industry. It pretends that wealth is something that fell miraculously out of the sky, and that their job on Earth is to redistribute it. They bemoan income inequality, but fail to see that their slow-growth, regulatory policies have made new and old buildings unaffordable for virtually everyone—or that their labor rules crush new enterprises before they get off the ground.
State officials can start by reforming their housing policies. Housing is no different than any other industry. It's about supply and demand. Local and state land-use rules add as much as 40 percent to the price of new construction. Most people buy older homes, but if governments restrict new construction, they inflate the cost of existing properties.
For all their bragging about Silicon Valley, California's leaders spend a lot of time punishing those companies for imagined crimes. Currently, the state is joining a lawsuit against Google for offering free search-engine downloads on cellphones. Don't forget the state's relentless efforts to ban companies from using contractors, which demolishes the foundation of the gig economy and robs moderate-income Californians of their livelihoods.
Is it any wonder so many Californians are heading to Texas or Arizona? We can look at specific policies that California officials can (but won't) take to make this state the magnet that it once was, but it starts with a change of perspective. Perhaps good ideas require new politicians.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
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Let the Progtards enjoy their progressive paradise they propagated.
No state bailouts!
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Yup. Californians have other pols to vote for. If they do not, seems like a CA problem and I would rather sever them from the US then help them.
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California should secede. I mean the non-hillbilly parts should secede from the hillbilly parts. Both would be happier. Let the rural cousin fuckers fuck their cousins in peace!
You would think both sides would be happier with an amicable split, but the progressive side doesn’t want to leave anyone alone to govern themselves — they are all about control and will only be happy if they can control everyone.
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I don’t think that’s the core problem.
The core problem is that all states are really purple. Also, there is no defined mechanism to split, and, in fact, a civil war happened last time there was an attempt at secession.
No. The progressives are welcome to leave. They should even be forced out of America. They have no place here. They’re all dirty commie traitors.
Cram it traitor! You’re the one who wants to throw out an election!
Make him, soyboy!
I mean the non-hillbilly parts should secede from the hillbilly
parts.
Good plan. It’s the “hillbilly” parts that have intrinsic value.
Nope. The hillbilly parts are filled with inbred far right rednecks. They can fuck right off!
It will be good when Americans have had enough and wipe out you progs. Probably won’t be long now. Being a bunch of anti gun pussies that can’t fight, shoot, or do anything useful is really going to bite you in the ass.
Hillbillies gonna fuck you up progtard.
Nope.
Why do you hate America you goddamn fascist traitor?
LOL I’m learning to enjoy your whining. That’s bad. The comment sections here corrupt people almost as much as the ones on twitter.
You can have all the cities full of latte-sipping soycialists and we’ll take the rural rednecks with their farms, oil fields, and privately owned guns. Sounds like a win-win for both sides to me.
But then the Mormons Will all move to L.A.
Hopefully a lot of them. Mostly the one’s that owe it money.
Careful. You came dangerously close to making sense.
Nice save with your last sentence, though.
“California should secede” — That’s the best idea you’ve ever had. Please do — The rest of the USA is tired of California’s Anti-American influence in D.C. and without California; We’ll actually become a Republic again instead of a [WE] mobs rule country.
Actual question: what does “[WE]” mean?
It’s the pronoun of communist/socialist thinking patterns. Instead of seeing people as individuals many socialistic minds can only see gangs of identity collective [WE] mobs.
….and the most popular communistic word of the Democratic party; just skim over their platform website. Listen to a Democrat debate. Everything is about [WE] mobs POWER; it’s never about an individuals liberty or justice.
Sell your Individual Soul to the [WE] foundation; because YOU don’t own YOU… [WE] own you.
I agree. The “non hillbilly parts” can then deal with having water that has been taken away from the “hillbilly” parts being reclaimed by them and the coast become the desert it should be.
Glorious!
“All this country needs is a little more water and a better class of people to move in,” said a newcomer near Fort Smith, Arkansas. The cowboy he was talking to grinned and responded, “Yeah, they say that’s all Hell needs.”
https://slife.org/the-old-west-quotes/
California needs new politicians. Or flying unicorns that shit gold nickels. I’d suggest the unicorns are at least an order of magnitude more likely than the politicians. You ain’t getting rid of a politician with something so easy as a banana and a cookie.
As Rep. Tom McClintock (R–Calif.) likes to say…
MCClintock is an excellent example of a California politician who has made quite a career of being in a permanent minority political party. Republicans outside of Californian follow his example at the nation’s peril.
It’s a shame. He’s the rare politician with integrity.
“Integrity” being “A desire to give in to Dems on every issue”.
We desperately need a right wing James Hodgkinson to be more successful than the left wing one was.
The recall effort of Newsom is well underway. Expect his monkey ass to become the third governor in American history to be recalled and removed before the year is over.
So what, his replacement will be cut from the same cloth…..maybe even worse.
A substantial proportion of voters would vorte for an AOC clone who reopens the bars and Disneyland.
Sure, she would fuck up business and the state in other ways, but at least she would not directly close down businesses.
How did governor Schwarzenegger fare?
How did governor Schwarzenegger fare?
He won two terms, both of which he served to completion.
He served to their termination.
*polite golf clap*
He did make it back for one sequel.
LOL
I don’t expect a recall to succeed, but Newsom will lose reelection. Unfortunately his opponent will agree with him on 95% of policies.
My favorite article about California, from the Hoover Institution:
“California businesses are leaving the state in droves. In just 2018 and 2019—economic boom years—765 commercial facilities left California. This exodus doesn’t count Charles Schwab’s announcement to leave San Francisco next year. Nor does it include the 13,000 estimated businesses to have left between 2009 and 2016.
The reason? Economics, plain and simple. California is too expensive, and its taxes and regulations are too high. The Tax Foundation ranks California 48th in terms of business climate. California is also ranked 48th in terms of regulatory burdens. And California’s cost of living is 50 percent higher than the national average.”
OR IN OTHER WORDS: DEMOCRATS
It’s a peek into the future SleepyJoe regime.
Hey now. He has no mean tweets. Just ignore the authoritarianism he promises on his very own website. Instead believe the fact checkers instead of the very words that came out of the mouth of his campaign. Reason does. Just believe the narrative.
Ah, for the days when all Trump did was mean tweets. Now it’s all batshit crazy tweets.
Expatriate the progressives until they are no longer a problem. Expatriation will be compulsory.
They are best used for fertilizer. And, it’s a Green plan, so, I’m sure with the correct wording, they can be manipulated, erm, convinced to dig their own graves.
The Tax Foundation ranks California 48th in terms of business climate.
Not any more. They’ve been dropped to 49th for the new year.
https://taxfoundation.org/2021-state-business-tax-climate-index/
I guess their business-attracting slogan should be, “Come to California. Hey, we’re not New Jersey!”
” . . .yet . . .”
To get new politicians, California needs new voters.
Good point.
They already got that. Their sanctuary policies did what they were intended to do.
I can’t wait for California to burn. LA and SF are literally flaming piles of shit
A couple of tests of our nuclear arsenal seem appropriate.
Don’t need nukes. They just need to give better stoves to the people living on the sidewalks.
It was not lost on veteran engineers in Silicon Valley, that have seen the rise and fall of tech companies, that SGI died shortly after constructing their fancy headquarters. Or that Apple has their fancy spaceship headquarters but are not coming up with new ideas.
Their new chip architecture is pretty remarkable. That’s definitely set a new bar for processor speed and efficiency.
Also, since when do we expect companies to create paradigm shifting products repeatedly? Most companies never have even 1. They simply make a good enough gadget. Apple has had at least 3, which is as many or more than any modern company.
You have a point. Apple isn’t innovating like they were under Steve Jobs, but their new chips are good and their support for user privacy (because they are not an advertising-baser business) is a good thing.
Even your favorite liberal magazine isn’t dumb enough to buy apples false promises. But you prefer lazy ignorance.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/apples-hypocritical-defense-data-privacy/581680/
Jesus, JesseAz, calm down. I buy Apple’s promised to about the appropriate degree that they should be trusted. I.e. a little.
Apple had some innovations, but far fewer real ones than the cult of Steve Jobs imagines.
A lot of their achievements were not technical breakthroughs, but aesthetic and marketing, packaging technical ideas together at a level of perfection in design that others didn’t push for.
And then there was the hockey puck mouse.
Apple is a cash printing machine. But every big company gets too bloated and too bureaucratic eventually, and lives off the creative genius of earlier generations until it fizzles out.
They can keep doing well for a long time but their old mojo isn’t there.
Amount of times Apple’s death was predicted – 10,000,000
Amount of times Apple died – 0
Has to suck, though, that they alive solely because Bill Gates kept them so.
“the Democratic leadership … pretends that wealth is something that fell miraculously out of the sky, and that their job on Earth is to redistribute it. ”
I’m stealing that line, too good to not pass on.
Kick California out of the union and let it go the way of Greece.
Or just let your bae biden force California onto all 50 states. To think you once seemed like a federalist and believed in federalism so people could choose the majority of rules they wanted to live with. But no, you clapped along under promises of Biden and a move to globalism. Good work buddy. Happy new year.
One of these days you’ll reply to something I actually said instead of making stuff up. Maybe.
Nah, don’t just kick them out. Give it back to Mexico.
Keep CA. Get rid of the Californians.
We already had a war with Mexico — why do you want another?
Just kick the progressives out. Why let them have anything? Send them all to Venezuela.
Is this not just the natural order of things? It seems that California already has too many people and conditions are not going to favor more. A large part of the south is desert and the water is drying up. Maybe in the long term its is better for California to decline. The question is not politicians who can save the California of today but rather those that can guide it to a future point of sustainability.
As for those companies moving, I suspect they will bring people and ideas that will move Texas and Arizona more towards California values. Then the cycle will repeat.
They will bring their California ideas with them.
It’s what I fear most about the idea that many companies will permanently switch to remote work. Many people will choose to leave the big city shitholes, but they’re gonna bring their shitty big city politics with them.
I think most, once they no longer have to live in a big city, will just ignore politics. In the big city they couldn’t get away from it, they had to strike first or be struck at.
California could easily support tens of millions more people. They just need reliable power (from nuclear plants or tidal power) and water (from desalination plants). But current residents and politicians would never try anything that might actually work.
California actively is trying to destroy their infrastructure. Their failures are their own. They are not natural but all man made.
In other revealing news, in the Jan 1 NYTimes Paul Krugman, who for four years predicted how Trump would crater the US economy, now predicts that the economy will soar with Biden.
Given Krugman’s accuracy, I am tempted to cash in my investments.
Well Krugman seem on track. Trump was given a good economy, did little to improve it (numbers never hits promises), hindered it with tariffs and finally crashed it with a poor response to the pandemic.
Krugman was certain of a massive stock market crash. Not being stupid, he probably loaded up on tech stocks in 2016 and rode them up to the current record levels. But he’ll still claim that that Trump crashed the markets, basing that on Trump’s questionable judgement on tariffs, and fairly neutral approach to the corona panic. It is the lock-down fascist governors and mayors that have had the most harmful effect on the economy.
The original comment addressed the economy not the market. The market is good at adjusting to problems and has recovered from the pandemic crash, because investor corrected.
Trump effects are directed at the economy. He increased debt but never got the expansion promised, his tariffs hindered the economy and gave China leverage, his poor response to the pandemic resulted in more drastic lockdowns than would have been needed had he responded better.
I could not tell you if Biden will do better. I can tell you it would be difficult to do worse.
We had the best working class economy in 60 years and lowest black unemployment in history before the media created the Wuflu panic. As it happens I live in that working class world and the people I meet are not happy with the prospect of a Biden administration. Obama gave us a bankers economy for 8 years and Biden is promising to take us right back. The bankers will be fine. That’s why they elected this asshole.
M4ever is a racist who hates the fact that blacks did so well under Trump that he got more of their votes in 2020. Like all Donkeys he would keep them poor and dependent on the Donkey plantation.
You just love the liberal narrative. Lol. Man, vox doesn’t even go this far.
SleepyJoe will user in a booming economy with crushing taxes, mandates and regulations.
the economy might tank, but he will definitely reduce inequality
Progressive policies entrench inequality everywhere they are tried. That’s the idea.
keep blaming the lockdowns on Trump, at the same time you blame him for not locking down harder nationally….
Well Krugman seem on track.
Krugman predicted the stock markets and global economy would crash shortly after Trump won in 2016. That you think he’s “on track” makes you look even dumber than him.
“Trump was given a good economy,..”
Bullshit
“…did little to improve it (numbers never hits promises)…”
Bullshit
“…hindered it with tariffs…”
Should have but never did; more bullshit.
“..and finally crashed it with a poor response to the pandemic…”
TDS-infected shit’s attempt to bail out that fucking tin-pot dictator Newsom and his compatriots by transferring blame to Trump.
More bullshit from TDS-infected shit.
Stuff your TDS up your ass, so your head has some company, shitstain.
I support this comment.
Even better, the economy was so strong it could weather the tariffs.
It’s hard to fathom how that shell of a human still has gainful employment.
Put the clingers in charge? Arrange California’ emulation of conservative states such as Alabama (bigotry), Oklahoma (backwater religious education), West Virginia (desolation), Mississippi (belligerent ignorance), Wyoming (19th century infrastructure), South Carolina (more bigotry), and Kentucky (poverty, ignorance, and bigotry)?
To be fair, the city of San Francisco has its share of 19th Century infrastructure.
They also have their fair share of bigotry. Just look at the list of supporters of Cali’s 2020 version of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a.k.a. Prop 16.
You may be correct. It’s very closeted, though. Sometimes there, but no self realization it’s there.
Arthur…I am all for CA spending themselves silly, trying to create a progressive paradise. They can knock themselves out. But there will be no bailout for them when they fail. Remember that.
There is no need to foist CA’s future failure on the rest of America.
California is among the educated, modern, accomplished states that subsidize our southern and rural communities (and the depleted human residue that remains in those can’t-keep-up, conservative backwaters after generations on the wrong end of bright flight).
Arthur, CA is welcome to spend themselves into oblivion. Just as long as they don’t come knocking on my door, asking for a bail out. Because that is not happening. WRT education, how are CA’s standardized test scores relative to the country? Truly worthy of emulation?
A once great educational system in CA is now worse than those Southern states they all hate.
Art,
In what way does Cali, who earns over 14% of the income and only pays ~12% of the taxes subsidize southern/rural communities like Arkansas who earns 0.65% of the income yet pays 1% of the taxes? It seems to me that Cali gets an extra 16% from their taxes while AR loses 35% of their taxes. Even NJ who pay 4.7% of the taxes and only gets 3.2% of the income isn’t as hard hit as AR. Perhaps you need to rethink who the “donor states” really are.
1. An educated fool is still a fool (think of yourself minus the “educated” part).
2. Tell it to Elon Musk, new citizen of the great state of Texas.
“…California is among the educated, modern, accomplished states that subsidize our southern and rural communities (and the depleted human residue that remains in those can’t-keep-up, conservative backwaters after generations on the wrong end of bright flight)…”
Asshole bigot checking in, not familiar with the ‘bright flight’ from CA to TX.
But asshole bigot has never really shown any degree of intelligence, just assholish bigotry.
Then why can’t they keep the fucking lights on all summer?
Thank you, for (once again) displaying your complete and utter ignorance.
“poverty”
You’re usually so intellectually rigorous, Art. What happened this time? How did you miss this — “California has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the Census Bureau statistics that consider cost-of-living data.”
Instead of pretending only red states have high poverty, I believe we Koch / Reason libertarians should celebrate California’s spot at the top of the list. After all, we promote policies (open borders, $0.00 / hour minimum wage, etc.) explicitly designed to amplify economic inequality; poverty is a natural consequence of that.
#LibertariansFor50Californias
California already has the bigotry. I don’t know what about that state – if you’ve ever been there – would lead you to believe it wasn’t.
And Californians can’t ding on Wyoming’s 19th century infrastructure. Not the state that can’t supply itself with enough water and electricity because of its own decisions.
If California had better citizens it would get better politicians.
Remember those citizens are moving to Texas and Arizona.
Although, the Californians that are leaving for conservative states tend to be conservative.
Nope. They’ve already turned half of arizona and are doing so to Colorado and Idaho and soon Wyoming. Do you even bother with facts? There is a political shift driven by California refugees on each of those states.
It’s like a cancer that is spreading.
That’s exactly what it is.
They move in, drive prices higher while stagnating the economy with wealth-hating bullshit laws and high taxes. Then they blame nonexistent republicans to their children, who don’t know any better, but can’t find a job in their parents’ society, so they move on to the next place, bringing their parents’ ridiculous policy ideas with them.
Eventually you just have to amputate.
Pthe only way to stop cancer is to kill it.
I say we take off and nuke the entire state from orbit.
It’s the only way to be sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
I have a front row seat. Personally experiencing it. You misunderstand a lot.
You bullshit a LOT.
don’t forget Georgia
Georgia has possibly the most libera city in the South sitting in the middle of it, to loveconstitution1789’s great consternation.
All that city needed to do to upset Georgia’s historical redness was grow a bit or have a high liberal turnout, like they might get after four years of a total asshole Republican as President.
Don’t be so sure. What the article hinted at are that the people leaving are the young, because the prices are too high. These are young people who have always accepted LGBT people, young people who looked beyond race (many intermarry), young people who accept climate change, and young people who see health care as something government should provide.
Looked beyond race? They’re obsessed with race.
No, they are obsessed with racism and homophobia. It makes no sense to them.
These are kids who have grown up friends, maybe even have spouse that are of a different race. They have friend or family members who are gay. We understand racism and homophobia because it has been around all our lives. They look at it and simple don’t understand it. They look at David Duke and have no idea of why he would think the way he does. We understand the ignorance behind his beliefs.
No, they are obsessed with racism and homophobia. It makes no sense to them.
White liberals are the only ethno-political demographic that displays negative in-group bias, so that makes sense.
I just wish people who hated their own skin color that much would kill themselves rather than try and make other white people hate themselves, too.
They are the new Catholics. You can’t live unless you live with guilt.
Yes, maybe I should amend what I said. Families that are moving out of California tend to be conservative.
“Yes, maybe I should amend what I said. Families that are moving out of California tend to be conservative.”
As always, TDS-infected shits have no support for claims, TDS-infected shit.
California is the result of unrestricted immigration and far left politicians trying to implement a socialist system akin to the former soviet union or the current chicoms.
There is a strong correlation between left wing progressive politics and poverty. If you want a functioning society you must remove those who hold a far left ideology from power and influence.
It ain’t the poor people driving California liberalism. It’s all the college-educated people who moved there to concentrate in industries like high tech and film.
You partially had me until you put college-educated people and film together. I can’t believe there are that many college-educated aspiring actors and actresses working as baristas and bartenders.
Plus most tech folk I know are interested only in tech things and believe the techno-utopia that will solve the worlds problems is coming making politics obsolete. Unfortunately most also bought into the myth that team blue is also on the “utopian” path.
One interesting thing about Cali is that the immigrants do shift politically but it isn’t unilaterally. Most of Vietnamese immigrants I know were running from communism and vote team red while most Taiwanese immigrants I know weren’t and vote team blue. How much of that is merely a product of the times, I don’t know. Unfortunately immigrants from other parts of the America’s tend to vote almost exactly as they did in their original countries like Venezuela probably because of the praise heaped on by the likes of Bernie Sanders, Sean Penn, et al.
Not the actors. All the people who work in special effects, animation, and some of the people in behind the scenes roles like marketing, finance, video game tie-ins, etc.
Your point is right on target. When the far right talks about film and Hollywood they are always thinking the actors. They are actually about 30% of the industry. And many of those are not stars but working actors (background, characters). That leaves the 70% that are clerical, technical and finance. These are people with degrees that are not likely different than any other industry.
I grew up in L.A. I rarely met an actor, but know people like you describe that work in the industry.
Which can also be easily moved anywhere, which was why the post you were responding was differentiating between that sort of activity and “making” hardware.
“Unfortunately immigrants from other parts of the America’s tend to vote almost exactly as they did in their original countries like Venezuela probably because of the praise heaped on by the likes of Bernie Sanders, Sean Penn, et al.”
I don’t buy that. All immigrants I know from communist countries, and I know a lot, are in America because they wanted to get the hell out.
Granted, where I spent my lost decade in SoCal there were oddly only a handful of neighbors from South or Central America but they were solidly team blue. In fairness most were also likely second generation or more and I did note that Sanchez, who ran against Harris in 2016, was on team red many years ago.
Oh, yeah. Second generation immigrants, in my experience, are completely assimilated and take in the same politics as their native peers.
Why don’t you learn from their experience? If you don’t want communism stop supporting democrats.
“Most of Vietnamese immigrants I know were running from communism and vote team red while most Taiwanese immigrants I know weren’t and vote team blue.”
You’re about to see Taiwanese — and pretty much all other non-PRC Asian — immigrants leave team blue. Once Biden starts doing Beijing’s bidding, they will see how their homelands are being hurt, and the Dems won’t be able to spin hard enough, fast enough or loud enough to hide it.
Who are now poor people because they decided taking a minimum wage job at Yelp!, including moving to San Francisco, was a good idea.
And then write op-ed about how Yelp! doesn’t pay them enough to live within 10 miles of work and afford the occasional latte and avocado toast treat.
https://medium.com/@taliajane/an-open-letter-to-my-ceo-fb73df021e7a#.v8a05i406
Blast from the Millennial past
It even has a reference to her 8 year old self. Its amazing how smart and aware all these 8 year olds have become over the last decade.
on the other hand, if you want to seize power by offering cash and benefits to those in poverty, it’s helpful to promote policies that increase poverty. the true believer socialist Dems think they’re helping. the true power-broker Dems know how things really work.
Didn’t most monarchies throw coins to the poor? Was that to be kind or just make it look like they were feeding livestock?
Californians, like all democrats, are locusts.
B.S. Californians are people, not that different from anywhere else in the U.S. There is even a sizable conservative minority.
Progressives aren’t people. If you want to be a person, don’t be a progressive.
Unfortuantely, there is a much larger population of parasites who are thrilled when lefty-shit politicos promise them free shit, since it’s their ‘right’.
TDS-infected shits tend to miss that, TDS-infected shit.
JesseAz, respectfully I think you understate this. Why?
Locusts merely consume everything in their path. But this does not do a modern progressive justice. You see, progressives are a hybrid between a locust and a canker sore. Progressives consume everything and really make it painful for you as well.
more like a virus, and no one is wearing masks for this
It will take a long time for reality to penetrate the groupthink of California.
They brag about the size of their economy while they hate wealth. It’s like a state of people who hate themselves but don’t know it. It’s the frame of mind of accidental suicide. They think you can’t hate republicans and be stupid at the same time, so they must be smart. It’s a small country of egotistical idiots.
That is an accurate description of one political faction in California, but not the only one. They are the majority, so they run things under the winner takes all nature of California’s democracy with a Democratic thumb on the scale.
But the balance can shift. There are other factions and demographics.
The Socialists and Marxists have taken over CA; they are a super-majority in the Legislature. Let them own the consequences of their policies. All I know is that there is no damned bail out for profligate spending states. Take your lumps in the capital markets.
Yours is an interesting point. By having the election go to the top two vote getter, who may both be of a single party, the Democrats dominate. The question I have is why Republicans can’t get back into running? Why they can’t even get into the number two spot to get a chance. California has had its share of Republicans, including a number of Governors. Why have they shifted so much out of the mainstream?
“…The question I have is why Republicans can’t get back into running?..”
I’m sure that is a mystery to you.
Hint: The CA GOP doesn’t offer free shit. They tend to think in terms of personal responsibility, anathema to the voters who really don’t want to grow up. Sorta like you.
See how easy that is?
It was like that before “top two”. “Top two” (i.e. nonpartisan election, then runoff) might actually ameliorate that if conditions are juuust right in a district. First, the Republicans can’t be so far down they’re hopeless. Second, the Democrats have to have little party solidarity. The idea is that many Democrats will run and split the vote between them in the first round, and a Republican will come in second, and then in the runoff the Democrat who came in #1 won’t pick up votes from those who favored the other Democrats. Of course this could happen if the parties held separate primaries too, but is a little more likely with a “jungle primary” like California’s because Democrats whose preferred candidate didn’t finish in the top 2 will feel like they’ve been shut out and won’t vote in the runoff. It’s basically psychologic. But in the great majority of cases it makes no difference.
There’s also a long shot chance the Republicans could wind up as both of the top 2, if they have just 2 run while the Democrats have a slough of candidates who together make up a majority but none of whom are popular enough to finish as high as second.
However, the top-2 system was sold to the general public as favoring moderation, thinking the parties would have to move toward the center to assure themselves of having at least one candidate among the top 2.
This hits at my question. Have the Republican moved to more moderate candidates or are primary voters (always extreme) goin for farther right candidates?
Silicon Valley barely makes silicon any more, or any kind of hardware. It’s becoming social media valley, which can go anywhere.
Partially true. As someone pointed out above, Apple has just launched a whole new generation of CPUs.
Apple has just launched a whole new generation of CPUs.
Which are manufactured by Apple’s partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Yes, not manufactured in Silicon Valley, but designed there.
You bought that? Good I was worried people didn’t believe that “designed in California” thing anymore.
Strictly speaking yes there are some designers there in Cupertino. In reality the true design happens elsewhere.
But that’s their schtick make em believe it’s an American company.
Design houses can be anywhere. Manufacturing complexes are harder to relocate.
California needs new voters.
Cali likes to tout the size of it’s economy but it often overlooks that a good part of that is because the real estate market is so screwed up. Consider that real estate and rentals are about 18% of the economy which makes it the largest segment of their economy by far. Add in another few percent for the financing and insuring that real estate and 3.8% for construction and it paints an interesting picture.
Now look at housing starts in Cali. Over 5,000 fewer in the first three quarters this year compared to last year. LA and San Fran being the two biggest players being down almost 2,900 and 3,400 respectively. If not for Sacramento adding over 1,000 starts the number would be much more worse.
It’s not going to be an easy path out of the housing problem having painted themselves into a corner with Mello-Roos and similar legislation. Even if you change the political climate there’s still decades of work just to start untying the Gordian knot they’ve made and I doubt many would take the shock and pain that cutting it all at once would bring even if it meant a quicker recovery. They’ll probably just get run over when that light at the end of the tunnel does indeed turn out to be a train.
We libertarians criticize wealthy Californians’ NIMBYism, and it’s a valid criticism.
But there’s another problem underneath that of aging and inadequate infrastructure. If you build a new suburb in Texas or similar place where you are just paving over what was farmland, you can put in all new infrastructure.
Absolutely, it’s how developing nations like Cambodia can leapfrog developed nations in wireless tech. They start out with nothing to upgrade so they can start out with the latest and greatest while developed nations have to keep things like 2G, 3G, LTE, etc. because of the installed base. Having a small service area is also a bonus.
My point was that given the huge impact that real estate plays in Cali’s economy they’ll need to make tremendous changes including to Mello-Roos, for one, in order for it to be anywhere near sustainable. It’s clear from the data that NIMBYism isn’t going away so the only other path is expansion and M-R effectively kills that.
I saw something the other day about which cities in the U.S. had the most housing starts last year and there wasn’t a California city or town among the top 50.
Would it surprise you to find that their neighbors are leading the way? AZ +26%, NM +5%. And their direct competition isn’t lagging either; TX +8%, FL +5%. Unmentioned are SC +13% and coastal stalwarts WA -9% and OR -17%. It seems the left coast has lost its luster.
Most of the cities and towns were in the southeast, which also had old housing stock, but which will usually get torn down to build new homes rather than people paying $600k for a 900 square foot, 2 BR, 1 BA house built in 1932.
California has the oldest housing stock west of the Mississippi River. Not quite as old as the Rust Belt and Northeast – but then again, declining population and old housing stock go together.
Unfortunately the easy simple explanation is – always – wrong. And the articles and commenters – on this issue – tend to be easy simple and
FFS. No wonder CA is in such a stinking mess. The people who purport to know the solution are in fact part of the problem.
The key reason for the continuing exodus is real estate is so unaffordable here that only established firms and families can afford the tab.
From a grain of truth grows utter blindness. Yes the key reason for the problem is unaffordable real estate. That’s a direct consequence of the way in which established firms/families chose to create expensive real estate for themselves. Via Prop13 and its corollaries. Not via ‘progressive’ anything – a term which has imo become an utterly useless bogey for libertarians in the same way that ‘fascism’ has for the left. It means nothing and everything and, like a bell, is mostly intended to induce salivation.
You wanna know why TX has affordable real estate and CA doesn’t? Well a major reason is that:
1. TX has the 3rd highest median prop tax rate in the US (1.81%) compared to CA 34th with 0.74%.
2. Far more significantly, TX applies that rate roughly the same across different uses/owners. CA doesn’t – and the effect is that places like Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, Malibu, Newport Beach pay an effective prop tax rate that is 1/4 or so of the rate paid in SanBern, Riverside, Inland, etc. Which means that in Silicon Valley and coastal LA long-time owners don’t sell their house – and don’t even get their prop tax rates reset when they die.
This is not ‘progressive’ anything. It is feudalism. A landed gentry that decided in 1976 to create one set of rules for the established and a different set of rules for the new. And forty years later, after doubling down on that multiple times, hey presto.
Good analysis. The problem in California is that those that “have”, are working hard to prevent anyone else from “getting some”. Again the solution maybe for people to just move alternate places. This is a cyclic thing.
The problem is they bring their shitty voting habits with them. Progtards need to stay the fuck away.
You’re right! California just needs to prog harder! Don’t let up until all the “haves” have been taxed and regulated into the absolute penury they so richly deserve. And when no one (finally!) has anything, glorious Utopia will be at hand!
Just stop welfare for illegals..that will downsize the state and it’s govt outflows quickly. Won’t occur of course. Best thing is for the “red countries” to move to free market states…Nevada and Idaho and Arizona would be great places for all the “red counties” in Cali.
Not exactly accurate as you’re leaving out Mello-Roos which kicks the rate for new development outside the magic lines. Many years ago before we left we looked at condos and there was a really nice one under a half million but the taxes – ~$5k standard and $15k M-R – was more than enough for us to stay far far away.
That said, you’re pretty much spot on and median property taxes in Cali is a meaningless measure since it’s tied to when you bought in and has nothing to do with anyone looking to relocate. A mistake I made – once, long ago yet managed to eek out a profit from last year, just.
eke
Eke? Did I misspeak? I’ll have a peek. Eek! What a freak, eek is weak, it’s eke I seek because eke is chic.
“…Via Prop13 and its corollaries…”
JFree makes an ass of himself yet again.
No, this is a problem that Howard Jarvis acknowledged before he died, even though didn’t see the full fruition of it. Proposition 13 was a solution for the problem as it was then, and it’s a good thing it won, even if mostly for the signal it sent to the rest of the nation. However, it and successor measures it inspired had the defect of shifting value to people sitting in place.
Taxes were too high, and especially bad for retirees. But the pressure wasn’t put evenly to resist taxation generally, and the result on real estate and politics generally is as complained of. But that’s far from their only political problem.
If you’re a progressive wanting to leave California, whatever you do, don’t move to Texas. It’s hotter than hell, we all carry guns, and everyone talks like Slim Pickens. You’d absolutely hate it here!
Why don’t you go to Illinois instead? I hear they have a lot of vacancies there. And they’re your kind of people.
Birth rate is driven by liberal welfare policies..that has to stop first. Second the public sector unions need to be disbanded. Third areas outside of LA and the Bay need more say in Sacramento. Forth, get rid of direct democracy/ballots..they are insane and sow the failure of “direct democracy.” On the plus side social media firms are on their way down (they don’t produce anything anyway) and Hollywood..the bastion of cultural marxism that has been one main driver to this failure called Cali is done for by covid..
I don’t think any of the changes needed will occur..why would anyone who is enriched by the current situation want to change anything (see Detroit or Chicago..). When enough folks make a living directly or indirectly through govt…its all over.
Ballot initiatives and recall are some of their best tools to ameliorate their representative democracy problems. The fact that their tools aren’t always wielded in the direction we’d like is a problem with all tools and weapons. That doesn’t mean they’d be better off without them.
The best tool to ameliorate the representation problem is to amend the state constitution to increase the size of the assmebly.
The CA constitution fixed the size of the assembly at 80 members – in 1880 when the population of the state was under 900k. Today, each assemblyman represents 475,000 people.
Put another way – if a modern voter were to time travel back to 1880 to ratify a constitution – would anyone even remotely consider an Assembly of TWO as representative? Would they have been run out of the state by people back then who would have thought such a proposal to be a sick joke?
We accept that. Worse, I’ve never heard a Californian even express it as a problem even though the California assembly is now one of the least representative legislatures in the world (India, China, US, Pakistan, Bangladesh, EU) and by far the least representative direct (first-line) legislature.
While Greenhut’s analysis is correct, he forgot to mention that a significant majority of people in CA (i.e. those who vote Democrat) have repeatedly voted FOR the politicians who have created and perpetuated these problems in CA that Greenhut criticizes.
With Gavin Newsome’s unscientific and disastrous covid lockdowns, many more folks in CA will be moving out of state (as Newsome or his replacement could impose new lockdowns for virtually any reason/issue they decide to exploit).
They’ll just import them from China
[D] California going down the sh*tter.
[D] Detroit already went down the sh*tter.
[D] Party Members, “It’s ALL those other [R] States / Politicians screwing up!”
Compulsively blaming the unrelated for one’s own faults = Stupid.
You can’t fix Stupid until that first step of not being Stupid occurs.
nice argument..
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I would like to see an analysis of the fifth largest economy part that takes out the parts supported by the federal government. You know, all the military personnel, all the military contractors, all the ‘secret’ research at the universities, the federal agencies and courts, payrolls going to employees with federal security clearances, the federal parks and forests and so forth.
All the parts that would NOT be there if they seceded.
Although I do support succession; ideally, they would join with Washington, Oregon, and Hawaii and form the Peoples Republic of Pacifica.
The trouble is that they don’t just need new politicians, they need a new polity. The bad news is that they’re getting the new people — but from Central America. The new people aren’t voters, so they can’t do anything about the politicians directly, but the politicians are doing what they think is good for the new people, which sucks. In the long run, though, the politicians are shaping the polity rather than vice versa.
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CA won’t be out of their mess unless the insane CA democrats lose their monopoly over the state. It’s really that simple. The writers here will pout that “the GOP won’t be any better”, which is nonsense.
If the state turned varying degree of red and elected either Romney or Trump equivalent to run the state, it would almost certainly better than how the state is ran now. Maybe only marginally, in that at minimum no republican would go out of their way to kill the gig industry, push insane green agenda and squelch school choice. But still better.
TBH I have very little hope for this state. If it was split into several states they might hand the democrats several new senators. Recall at best replaces Newsom with a moderate democrat, but odds are he’ll be replaced by someone like Gascon. Even if the vaccine reopens everything, local corporations will anticipate that the state will tax them to oblivion to make up for covid losses and to fund their social justice. They’ll leave.
But CA has so many of the vulnerable population that it’ll be stuck in covid hell longer than anyone else.
Is there any constitutional barrier why a county can’t leave it’s State and join another State? A “Red Migration” is what parts of Cali, western Oregon/Wash, southern Illinois, western NY need badly. Just join another State. Not talking about forming another State..just moving some local districts around. I’d love to see this.
That is so true
“Politicans have screwed the place up, so let’s get some more politicians!”
Riiiiiight.
BTW, why is a soi-disant libertarian saying politicans are the answer to anything except “what makes slime look good”?
Please, no more from CA! My Arizona is being Californicated!
Of course the problem is, these Californians that leave because it’s too expensive to stay there tend to take their politics with them. Then they vote for the same policies that ruined California.
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