The Decline and Fall of California
Joel Kotkin details the rise, and then the perplexing decline and fall, of the great state of California.
It turns out that Californians were the barbarians at their own gates; it was an act of self-destruction, fueled by the unforeseen (but should-have-been-foreseen) consequences of a change in the nature of “progressive” policies in the state:
During the second half of the 20th century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city ”“ as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.
I remember seeing the transformation myself. I lived in California for one year during the mid-70s, but from 1970 until quite recently I spent quite a bit of time there visiting friends and relatives.
Read the whole thing—and reflect on the fact that Jerry Brown is running for, and might even win, the governorship of California.
Lets not forget Prop 187- passed by California voters several years ago but overturned by a federal Judge. The Bill tried to stop Illegal aliens from collecting welfare from the taxpayers. One Hispanic politician called it -paraphrased from memory- “the last gasp of whites in California.”
Lets also not forget Obama once saying something about the US needing to be more like California- perhaps someone has a link to that speech….
The parasite never realizes that it is in its own interest to keep the host alive.
I’ve lived in California since 1975 and we’ve volunteered to set an example to the nation of what not to do. The lesson shall be quite instructional but not recommended for children’s viewing.
1. Bill West Says:
The parasite never realizes that it is in its own interest to keep the host alive.
The trouble is that there are many parasites, and they are sophisticated playas. Each parasite is planning to continue business as usual while the others make the necessary sacrifices (to the limited extent that sacrifices are admitted to be necessary).
By the time that the need for across-the-board cuts becomes inarguable, there may be so many outright malignant organisms among the parasites that nothing will be done.
2. I live in MA and afaic we would be in the same situation as CA if not for the geographical accident that we do not border an impoverished country.
3. In historical terms, the speed of the decline is astonishing. A little more than ten years ago, the USA was wiring the planet, the world was entering the Second American Century, and California was at the center of it all. (Remember that Bush and Gore debated what to do with the budget surplus, and each of them treated it as a natural given, like sunlight.)
One of Jerry Brown’s many miscues as governor was extending collective bargaining rights to state workers in 1977. Since then, the unions have successfully pushed for a greatly expanded payroll, increased wages at rates that far surpass any relevant inflation or productivity (?) levels, and expanded the states’ pension liability by 2000% in just the past ten years. Using campaign contributions as leverage, the state’s unionized prison guards played Schwarzener’s predecessor and Brown’s one-time chief of staff, Gray Davis, like a marionette.
It should not be forgotten, though, that California has had several Republican governors since Brown left office, including the current catastrophe, and none of them took any serious steps to address the growing powers of unions and pension liabilities. I have absolutely no faith that Meg Whitman would do any better.
Arnold the Terminator wasn’t much of a Republican, he also didn’t stand a chance against the cancer infesting Sacramento.
California will continue to be bailed out by the Fed up until the U.S. collapses.
The state is so far gone, it won’t matter who is governor.
Neo, the article first appeared in the indispensible City Journal. Here is a link to encourage people to subscribe.
I recall as a kid thinking how cool a place about 3000 miles from me called California was. I envisioned this mysterious forward looking land with people so creative they invented surfing and the Beach Boys. They had Disney Land. They had Hollywood. A virtual garden of eden in my young mind.
They had it all and just pissed it away. Like nothing in the world mattered besides figuring out how to one up the system and screw their fellow man along the way. Now i’m just ashamed of them.
I’m a lifelong Southern Californian and miss the gorgeous geography. I’m a mountain guy and Florida doesn’t have more than a 200-foot bump in the whole state, now my adopted home. BUT, the Batshiite Crazy culture, politics, PC-Madness, etc. are little things I NEVER miss. I have long marveled at the mere self-destructiveness and cluelessness of the elites there–whether media, entertainment or political–to hang on to the Titanic, no matter how much water she’s taking on.
Dumb and Dumber ain’t just a movie.
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
You’d think that California lefties would read a book titled “The Gay Science”.
I have no sympathy for California when poor states like Alabama and Mississippi balance their budgets every year through careful spending and cuts when necessary. Liberalism does not work and Obama is doing to the U.S. what has failed in California.
The goose that lays the golden eggs can be killed. States like California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey show how the mighty can fall when people think there are no limits to what government can do.
Addendum.
The Toyota plant which closed in California is being replaced with a brand new plant near Tupelo, Mississippi which will employ 2000 workers at good wages. This follows the success of the major Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi where the Altima is built.
Let’s clarify. People who’ve moved to California in the last, say, 20 years, are not Californians. They merely live here now. They’re refugees, and mostly degenerates, from other states that liberals, like themselves, ran into the ground. Having fouled their own nests, they came here and fouled ours too.
At a recent business lunch people were swapping life stories. I was the only one who wasn’t a recent immigrant to California, and perhaps coincidentally, the only one who wasn’t a liberal. They’d all come, like cockroaches but less desirable, from New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois, and like houseflies brought with them liberal fecal matter on their foot pads. Now we suffer from the political dysentery they brought.
Forty years ago California was prosperous, a world-beater, with high educational performance, and conservative (electing Reagan, twice, as governor). Now it’s liberal-infested, second from last in academic performance, and broke. Coincidence? No. Cause and effect. California’s experience provides both positive and negative controls for anyone with eyes to see.
For those who are unfamiliar with the state, the vast majority of it geographically is still conservative; it’s only the cities that have a liberal/ homosexual/ communist infestation problem. Fumigating SF and LA would solve California’s problems in a heartbeat. I live in hope that if al-Qaeda strikes again, it does so in SF or a liberal part of LA. If I knew of such a plot, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it.
Sorry, but I’m bitter about this. It didn’t need to happen. And if liberals weren’t so effing stupid, it wouldn’t be happening now. They fail to grasp that the reason their original home states became shitholes was…because they were there. So they move on, the same problems arise, yet don’t make the connection: it’s their attitudes that cause the problems.
I should mention that a former colleague is trying to get us to move to Texas, and makes it sound attractive: pro-American, pro-business, and pro-family.
We’re thinking about it. California is in a power dive that is unlikely to end well. People like me have bullseyes on their backs to pay for all the liberal pipedreams.
November will tell.
Occam’s Beard:
I live in hope that if al-Qaeda strikes again, it does so in SF or a liberal part of LA. If I knew of such a plot, I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop it.
I don’t blame you a bit. The same phenomenon, on a much smaller scale, is happening in Pennsylvania. The rural parts of the state are still very conservative. The suburbs used to be, but that’s changing. Part of it is an influx of New Yorkers and New Jerseyites, but I think the main reason is the rot in our educational system, which keeps churning out liberals. The majority of the liberals I know are not from elsewhere.
Twenty years ago Pennsylvania was a pretty solid red state, with bright blue cities. Today the blue is spreading into the suburbs, and it’s become a purple state overall.
Lived in California several times. 1956-58, 63-71, 85-90.
The stint from 85-90 was in San Diego and intended as the place to retire. When we saw the growing illegal problems, the interminable traffic, inerringly liberal politics, and the ever higher taxes; we guessed that things were not going to get better. So, we were out of there.
In 1956, when we first moved there, 1500 people per day were moving in. Now they’re losing that many or more. 54 years from rising star to burnt out comet.
Is there no way the people of the state cannot see the need to restrain their government? Are they all so brain dead as to keep electing dems who spend them into bankruptcy? If so, what does that say about representative government? The example of representative government failing because the people learn they can vote for politicians who will bribe them with their own tax money is taking place before our eyes. It is not a pleasant sight.
Part of the problem with California might be the proliferation of ballot initiatives, which is pretty close to pure direct democracy, aka mob rule.
I haven’t studied the matter, so that’s just a thought off the top of my head.
I hear a lot of talk about conservatives from other states moving to Texas, and I think that’s a good thing.
Texas must hold the line. If it ever flips to Democrat, as California has done, it’s all over for the U.S. The Electoral College will have an unassailable Democrat majority.
That’s probably why the Dems are so hell-bent on encouraging illegal immigration with eventual amnesty.
Rick, thanks for your support. I typed that with some trepidation, but spoke from the heart. I wouldn’t be at all sorry to see the PC crowd reap what they’ve sown.
JJ, I fully empathize with your cri de coeur, having thought the same thing many times. I cannot express my exasperation at having fiscally prudent liberal friends babbling support for state fiscal policies that they would view as anathema in their personal finances. Don’t they see the contradiction? Apparently not, and my exasperation and frustration knows no bounds. It’s all I can do to keep from throttling them. I could at least give them credit for consistency if they were heavily in debt, borrowing to sustain their lifestyle, and saw no problem with the state/Federal government doing the same. But to see “penny saved, penny earned,” “neither a borrower nor a lender be” types support drunken-sailor-in-whorehouse fiscal policies drives me to distraction.
Yes. It is America’s Alamo. That’s one of the reasons for contemplating moving there, in fact. Texans have a long history of independence, and not taking any crap from anybody, nor particularly caring what anyone else thinks. Texas may be our nation’s salvation.
I dont know if Texas can hold the line guys. Our Rick Perry tries to play both sides on the whole illegal immigration thing. He said the Arizona law was not for Texas. The Houston chronicle reported a few years ago that he went down to Mexico and spoke for free flow of labor across the border. And he was deeply involved in that push for the Trans Texas coorridor- aka “NAFTA superhighway”.
Now we are down to a choice of Perry or the democrat Bill White for govenor!
Actually, I am starting to see more of the Texas State Flags with the word “Secede” on them on vehicles now-though they are still a very rare thing.
I don’t want to “secede” I just want the US to come to its senses! Or if all else fails- kick the liberal parts out! lol
Besides, we would have to fight two countries for our independence this time around!
And it was recently reported that in Texas alone there were 60,000 babies born to illegals in one year! Do you understand how fast we are being overun?!
Occam, I too don’t get it with liberals who live personal lives completely opposite from the fiscal mess they vote for governments. I believe they simply can’t take the pop culture peer pressure of having succesful lives while the less prudent do not. The concept of tough love is unthinkable to such minds. Maybe because they don’t really love themselves.
These things in the end are all problems on paper and can be fixed with some painful life lessons involving paper money. I bet those California Sequoia and Redwood trees look around at grimaced human faces and wonder what’s the big deal. Life is good.
The description of O.B. of liberal migrants moving to California is also a problem in the South. When people from states like New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania move south, they try to recreate what they left. They frequently say that up north they did things better. They want to expand government spending, raise taxes, and remake the schools. That’s how states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida have come into play for the Democrats. These people don’t seem to tie the failures of the states they left to the policies they push for.
Steve said, “Occam, I too don’t get it with liberals who live personal lives completely opposite from the fiscal mess they vote for governments.”
It’s one of those strange dichotomies that exist in the liberal mind. My colleague holds the party line on taxes, big government, etc. Yet he sees no incongruency in the fact that two years ago he was called in for an audit by the IRS for cheating on his taxes. He’s alaways calling for more taxes yets goes out of his way to avoid paying his own. Strange people.
More OT: when I think of California I think of the past great technology corporations that existed there. Places that provided jobs and innovation. Lockheed and the Skunkworks stand out to me.
Occam, I want to move to Texas too!! (currently in New England). I remember recently in one of the big newspapers (WaPo??) there was a map showing where people are moving away from and where people are moving to. Texas showed a virtual onslaught of incomers.
Let’s hope they don’t mess it up like they did California.
I grew up in California, went to college there, have family still living there, even own a patch of wilderness land, near Julian, in northern SD county, and I have been watching the decline with a great deal of sadness, also. I endured 20 years in the Air Force with people assuming that because I was from there that I must be a Shirley Maclaine-type nutball. And I would explain, over and over again, that it only SF and the nuttier parts of LA that are hopelessly weird – that most of the state was fairly sane and at least somewhat conservative. But when I retired from the military, I couldn’t afford to go back to California. I couldn’t buy a house on retired pay and working at secretarial job and I couldn’t afford to educate my daughter. So I stayed in Texas, which turns out to have been a very fortunate thing, after all. I think of Texas as a sort of American demi-glace, a concentrated essence of what is best in us.
My family has been in CA since 1870. I have a ranch on land my granpa obtained (traded for other land and some other stuff) in the 1890s. I myself was born here in 1963.
The ballot iniatives are part of the problem, but low and behold, CA voters often get them right. We didn’t ban handguns, we attempted to crack down on illegals, etc.
The big problems are the huge public employee pensions (which I believe they invested in real estate–smart move), and the massive regulation.
The leftist running the place could get away with a lot, because there was a large skilled high tech work force and lots of industry already here, and relocation has its costs. It is mostly that they just went farther then the state could afford.
I somewhat disagree with the linked article. It is very good, and something that I might recommend to a concerned liberal who’s worried about the current path.
However, the old school progressives are the same as the newer ones for the most part: New Deal (including SS), Great Society (Medicare and Medicaid and welfare), and repeated attempts at socialized medical care (FDR,Truman, Clinton . . .).
The American left has been on the wrong path for a long time.
Well if Texas goes down, there is always Australia. Or not…
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/014691.html
In a debate/argument with a liberal friend who was disparaging the Tea Party for “not supporting the Administration” (as if he’d supported the previous one), I replied that I just wanted the government to adopt the same fiscal policies he and I both have for our families. Simple as that. It’s a one-step program. Repeat after me: “We can’t afford that.” (Not followed by “ah, but what the hell?”)
There. Is that so hard?
As regular readers will know, I’m a big fan of Mexicans in general for their industry, their honor, and their family orientation. Having said that, driving through a seedy part of LA I caught a distinct Third World vibe (discarded tires in the road, etc.) and thought, “Guys (Eses?), you’re recreating a community just like the one you fled from. There’s nothing wrong with Mexico’s geography; it’s the social structure in Mexico. Come here, but adopt our (traditional American, not contemporary liberal) ways, and leave yours behind. You have voted with your feet for which works better.”
LOL! We just returned from Sequoia National Park, and the Sequoias did look serene and totally unperturbed. Wait until they find out the Democrats are going to start taxing them by height (with a steep progression, of course), and implementing arboreal affirmative action to help all trees achieve the same height (if necessary lopping the tops off of the taller trees). It’s for the saplings! /g
Agreed, although liberal judges and bureaucrats often do their best to frustrate the will of the people (Walker’s Prop. 8 Diktat being a topical case in point).
As a young and foolish college student I voted against Prop. 17 reinstituting the death penalty. Shortly thereafter Charles Manson & Co. worked their handicraft, and I regretted my vote, and was glad that wiser heads had prevailed. But now another judge/court has ruled that lethal injection has to be carried out by a physician, which of course violates the Hippocratic Oath (as if they didn’t know).
Prop. 13 also helped; imagine the nightmare if the state could raise property taxes at will. Woohoo! Free ponies for everyone, including other ponies!
On the other hand, some initatives have created our current problems. For example, the teachers’ union managed to get Prop. 98 passed, which — as a Constitutional amendment, no less — mandates that a minimum of 39% of the state budget must go to K-12 education. Now there’s a budget buster for ya.
Can you believe that? Wait — there’s more. Last year we spent $40 BN on K-12 education, and finished next to last in results, just ahead of Mississippi. I want to move to the parallel universe where this all makes sense.
Re. initiatives, I recall that the LA Times blamed our fiscal woes on initiatives in an editorial maybe a year ago. The premise was that the dumb people keep voting for initiatives, tying the hands of the legislature that must carve out money as dictated by the voters.
And then some blogger dug up all the LA Times editorials on these initiatives and found that for something in the neighborhood of 90% of the initiatives the Times editorial board had RECOMMENDED approval of the initiatives. Apparently the voters became stupid by listening to the LA Times. Not that the Times will ever connect those two dots that are staring them in the face.
Several commenters have talked about the fact that it’s only the urban areas that are liberal in their states (CA and PA were among those mentioned). The rural areas in these states tend to be solidly conservative.
If you look at a map of the entire USA BY COUNTY for the 2008 election, you’ll see the same phenomenon. Rural America voted Republican.
I have a theory about that. I think that as people are squeezed together, they are forced into more “cooperation” amongst themselves..meaning doing things for the good “of the whole” rather than being independent and responsible for the results of their own actions. They simply don’t bump into each other as much and don’t need a government to regulate their activities as much as when people are more concentrated.
Years ago, I read an article that sheds light on this phenomenon even more. A project was implemented in which crowding of laboratory rats was studied. At first, there was no crowding in a living space for the rats. The rats were happy and healthy. Then, as more and more rats were added to the same space, the rats began to become “psychotic”. There was more fighting, poorer physical health, even more homosexual acts as well as other signs of stress. An attenuated version of same thing may well be happening to humans in cities versus the countryside.
I think that over millions of years, humans evolved so that an ideal size for a community was about 30 families…enough for the males to hunt large animals and protect the community from attacks by them. There’s no reason why we should have changed much in the last 4000 – 6000 years.
I’m glad I live in rural Texas. I’m only an hour’s drive from Austin but politically, it’s like we are on a different planet. Central Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston are also liberal.
I just hope Texas cities don’t fill up too fast.
The effects of crowding are heavily influenced by culture. Japan and Holland have very high population density and very little interpersonal violence. When people who grew up in rural areas (think black migration to northern cities or Mexican peasants to big cities), things can get rough.
California’s present is the Nation’s future. We cannot escape except by the most vigorous, most rapid, united action, and that simply will not happen. The tsunami has been building for 50 years, and most of us are still on the beach under our little palapas with no sense of urgency.
Bad news for you TX lovers: it is not the high ground you seek and need. It might look good from CA, but it isn’t what you hope for.
OB said,
“Wait until they find out the Democrats are going to start taxing them by height (with a steep progression, of course), and implementing arboreal affirmative action to help all trees achieve the same height (if necessary lopping the tops off of the taller trees). It’s for the saplings! ”
Such a perfect analogy! Gentle snark combined with the beloved natural world. Will be using it on my liberal family members. If that doesn’t open their eyes, nothing will. Thanks!
Okay folks, I mostly agree with you all, but I wish you would stop with the “drunken sailor” analogies.
I have been both a sailor and drunken. ( And on occasion, both at the same time.) And there are two reasons the analogy falls apart:
1 – A drunken sailor is spending his own money.
2 – When that money is gone, he stops.
Just sayin is all…
Occam’s Beard August 20th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
“… They fail to grasp that the reason their original home states became shitholes was…because they were there. So they move on, the same problems arise, yet don’t make the connection: it’s their attitudes that cause the problems.”
======================
Oooh, good one!
William F Buckley Jr made a similar point 30+ years ago in a National Review article.
I think he was talking about immigrants from Ghana specifically; but the point was that when immigrants come here they MUST be required to adopt American customs and to follow American laws, otherwise you wind up NOT with “Americans from Ghana”, you wind up with “all the miseries of Ghana transplanted into America”.
In this case, California wound up with “all the miseries Liberal-Progressives create”. (But unfortunately, individual states can’t prohibit immigration by citizens from other states. Bummer.)
Tom says : “Bad news for you TX lovers: it is not the high ground you seek and need. It might look good from CA, but it isn’t what you hope for.”
Back in 2007 I did some work for a guy from California that had moved here to Texas. He was suprised that the electricity stayed on all day in the hot summer. I later thought about well, thats because Texas isn’t a third world state like California. lol
The problem is, our electric demand is growing-our population exploding- but the enviros have been blocking new coal plants in Texas from being built- so we are heading that way. There are winds farms in the west- Texas has been the largest wind power state for a while-but the major populations centers are in the Eastern and southern parts of the state-a long way to transmit electricity.
Occam’s Beard:
“And the Trees are all kept Equal
By Hatchet, Axe, and Saw!”
Rush, The Trees
My conjecture: high population density predisposes citizens to assume that someone else of the myriad other residents will deal with any problems that arise, and that they therefore need do nothing, nor assume any responsibility for their surroundings (from litter to murder), so ultimately no one does anything (the Kitty Genovese effect). Residents of smaller communities tend to identify more strongly with those communities, and to realize that each such resident has a role to play in shaping how the community functions.
As a corollary, I think cities tend to attract highly specialized people (e.g., concert musicians, poets, and playwrights) whom smaller communities cannot afford to support, and the more outre minorities (e.g., homosexuals), where they can achieve critical mass as a subcommunity. (No gay bars in towns of a few thousand, for example.)
Last and certainly least, parasites such as muggers, drug dealers, conmen, pimps, and prostitutes who suck the blood of the productive also seek out cities. Parasites want a large host population both as inventory and also for anonymity. Such people in smaller towns would rapidly gain a reputation with both citizenry and police that would impede their nefarious efforts.
I think the conjecture above accounts for this observation; in these countries everyone is crowded in together, so there’s no self-aggregation taking place. Also, in the case of Japanese culture, the extreme crowding has placed a cultural premium on elaborate politeness, possibly as a way to mitigate interpersonal friction.
One thing about Holland too, it is worthwhile to note that their language has a word for “bad behavior that we don’t like but tolerate”. Historically, they have been “tolerant” in the real sense of the word, not the liberal hijacked sense, so that might explain some features of their culture.
It also explains why they have become a mecca for legalized drugs and prostitution. A lot of actual Dutch people really do not like what their country has become but since their culture is to tolerate, they can’t not tolerate it, not to be too tautological about it. Similar phenomenon to New England in a way.
So that might explain why there are still “normal” Dutch people despite other weirdness.
So I just actually read that OC Register article, and it basically said that the Cal Dems are fantasizing when they say that Cali can pull itself up with a “creative green” economy. It also mentions a “strong public sector”. Weird, where have I heard that before?
Oh I remember. From the jokers who have been running my state for the last 25 years. Probably why it is such a train wreck.
this from the comments section:
Conservative or Libertarian: Have you studied economics?
Liberal: Yes, I’ve read Robin Hood several times.
The Schadenfreude side of me hopes Gov Moonbeam wins. The self-wrought suffering needs to continue under the folks that they elected these last 40 years. A modest bailout now under Whitman is not what CA deserves.
But what about the loyal Americans here? We’re stuck with Moonbeam, who wrought more than his share of damage the first time around.
I don’t want CA bailed out, regardless of who is governor, but I certainly don’t want that cretin Brown back in office. We’ve got to start moving in the right direction.
Like I said, it’s the Schadenfreude side of me. But even with Whitman, a correction will take forever, if accomplished, and sometimes it’s better to just let things blow up and accept the inevitable, minimizing collateral damage.
As a young oncologist, I learned that no matter how hard I try, folks will die of their cancers. I’ve had, over the years, patients sent to me with slow-growing, huge lung cancers, totally untreatable, which grew under the eyes of their PCPs who did nothing because of the patients’ other poor-prognosis problems.
You can’t fix the unfixable. You must deal with it early to even have a chance. That time has passed for CA, long ago.