“The Californication of the Democratic Party carries all sorts of risks. The most obvious is that California has the most dysfunctional politics in the country. The Golden State has one of the highest unemployment rates in America, at 9.3%, thanks to its high taxes, its unions, its anti-business climate and its gigantic housing bubble. Some 100,000 people have fled the state each year since the early 2000s. More would follow if they could sell their houses.
A second risk is party disunity. The rise of the Californians has already produced bloodshed: Mrs Pelosi beat Martin Frost, a Texan moderate, for the leadership, and Mr Waxman dethroned John Dingell, from Michigan, for the chairmanship of the energy committee. Sherrod Brown, a senator for Ohio, and Debbie Stabenow, a senator for Michigan, have both worried aloud about overzealous environmental legislation and the coastal bias against manufacturing.”
A friend of mine sent me the above excerpt from an Economist magazine article as I currently reside in California after spending many years in the North East. I chose to react to this as a now proud resident of CA.
I can’t comment on the political aspects of California, although the article is probably right and is / has been a cause of the states issues. Politics to me is the equivalent of a perpetual civil war… two sides fighting it out with little to no actual gain for the people it’s trying to defend.
Governor Schwarzenegger
As far as the unemployment rate - there’s several reasons in my opinion its high because there are more willing workers than jobs (i.e. population growth - vs the comment the article made about the 100,000 that fled each year) - this shows the increase in population each year since 2000, or actually since 1970.
California has a lot of wealthy investors - wealthy people period. Investments like hedge funds and the stock markets were big losers for the last year so these investors will not be paying capital gains taxes and have had to cut back on their lavish lifestyles (which might include surfboards). The crappy year for the wealthy is another reason California is facing a huge deficit — most taxes are collected from the rich.
Prior to the whole economy issue, California was the 6th or 8th largest economy in the world… so logically, if things are going to drop like they are, its going to hurt more here for longer.
NY would be the next closest match to CA as far as availability of jobs… most of which are in NYC. NYC was obviously hit with the financial markets and has lost a considerable amount of jobs. CA has equivalent job markets, size wise, in LA and SF/Silicon Valley so it gets hit twice as hard when things go wrong.
California Economic Crisis
I’m not really defending the state; I just think the media is quick to point fingers. The numbers are mostly accurate, but I don’t think you can pin it all one the few reasons they give, which are all negative. It just annoys me a little. It’s like “no, duh” if the state is massive and has a lot of jobs, and everything goes bad, what do you think is going to happen. If the state isn’t business friendly, then why are so many fortune 500 companies headquartered in CA. I know the state has many issues and is really stupid sometimes, and yes, politically its a mess.
I see Californians (which I’m not sure if I consider myself one yet) as being eternally optimistic and creative, and I believe this state will be able to dig itself out of this hole just like it’s dug itself out of every other hole (the end of the Gold Rush, the dotcom implosion, etc.). It has one of those “indian” type qualities that even through adversity, people are generally happy, still enjoy life, and don’t let the environment bring them down.
