By Victor Davis Hansen
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.
Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s annual deficit is still about $16 billion. It is estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet the state government wants to raise taxes even higher. California’s business climate already ranks near the bottom in most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid, on average, in the nation, but its public-school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.
The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes — at over 49 cents per gallon — are among the highest in the nation, but its once-unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.
The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran — a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European-style high-speed rail — as long as the noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.
As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shore and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources – largely wind and solar, which currently provide about 11 percent of the state’s electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.
How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? “California” is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, the two equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly; together, a disaster.
A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley; there the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming premodern.
On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers, and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno, and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.
In postmodern Palo Alto, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in premodern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.
In the interior, unemployment in many areas is over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class have fled the interior for the coast or for nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the nearly unbelievable statistics — as California’s population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.
But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood, and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about trivia — and so their legislators seek to outlaw foie gras, shut down irrigation projects in order to save the three-inch-long Delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.
But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the fuel for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil, and pasta.
On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts, and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high-school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.
The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. 2012 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Wonder how many middle income earners are joining the 2,000 high income earners leaving every week. I would guess it would be higher, because the ratio of income to expense would impact them more with the high cost of living and high taxes.
Living in CA is like being in an abusive relationship, with the government and people like Libby trying to control your life and money with mandates and verbal attacks. When people get fed up and decide to not take it any more they leave for a better life elsewhere.
Peggy I fully agree with your comment and think along the same lines. To take your question even further what happens in California when all these income producing people and business do leave. Who or how is California going to pay for all those governmental benefits that Liberals feel are necessary. Of course they will realize the need to replace the achievers to pay for current conditions. I guess the Movie industry could come to the rescue. Maybe California will move the tax burden onto to California;s percentage of the 47% nationwide that do not pay taxes currently. Maybe California will stop spending what they don’t have on what they don’t need, no on second thought that would require the voters to wake up and vote for politicians who encourage and sponsor a more self reliant type of legislation, instead of the current free lunch thinking of Sacramento
Wonder how many middle income earners are joining the 2,000 high income earners leaving every week. I would guess it would be higher, because the ratio of income to expense would impact them more with the high cost of living and high taxes.
Living in CA is like being in an abusive relationship, with the government and people like Libby trying to control your life and money with mandates and verbal attacks. When people get fed up and decide to not take it any more they leave for a better life elsewhere.
Harold, I addressed your concerns to Libby in another article, but she just doesnt get it because shes more concerned with getting what she didnt work from those of us who did. California is so full of people like Libby the states future can only be bankruptcy with no possibility of recovery.
Sadly the state legislature is full of adolescent children who believe the Fed will act like an enabling parent who will come to the rescue and bail the state out. The problem of course is theyre broke too and no state that has been fiscally responsible is going to be willing to pay for Californias mistakes. Why should they?
With businesses and people with money fleeing whos going to be left to pick up the tab? No one. Hope Ill be able to watch it from whatever state Im in when it happens.
The movie industry is already moving out to other states and countries. Only ones still here are the multi-million dollar actors with their vacation homes. Their legal residents are in other states and countries, like Pitt and Jolie.
We are regulated by Liberals, there are no Copnservatives in Sacramento that has a voice, where their vote matters. The following 4 bills that are coming up for votes is proof of the disaster in Sacramento.
To be heard in the Assembly…
SB 1172, introduced by Senator Ted Lieu, would limit counselors on how they can counsel those struggling with sexuality. This is a great infringement on our right to receive the counseling that we choose.
SB 1476 was introduced by Senator Leno. This bill would allow a child to have more than two legal parents. The proponents of this bill are aiming to extend parental rights to a child’s biological parent’s same-sex partner. This is yet another attempt to break down the traditional definition of the family.
To be heard in the Senate…
AB 1856 was introduced by Assemblyman Ammiano and requires foster parents to be trained in cultural competency and sensitivity related to LGBT lifestyles. Foster parents do not need to attend training on LGBT lifestyles to be able to provide adequate care and love for foster children. This is just another bill to force a lifestyle upon people who may not agree with it.
AB 2109 introduced by Assemblyman Pan seeks to take away a parent’s right to opt out of vaccinations. This bill requires parents who would like to opt of out vaccines to fill out a form that requires a healthcare official’s signature to do so. It makes it much more difficult to opt out of vaccines.
Please contact your legislator and urge them to vote NO on all four of the above bills.
All these liberals know is to demand more, more, more!
That’s what Jerky Brown, Molly Mongrell, Johnny Perez and Darrel Steinbug want and if they have their way you all will be paying more in taxes. (Same with the Gang of 5 on the city council and Tommy Lando.)
But of course even without the tax increases these state policiticans manage to give their staffs raises, handout money so illegal aliens can go to college and of course there is plenty of money for bullet trains to nowhere. And lets not forget all the tens of millions so many state agencies have stashed away.
And just wait until their cap-n-trade kicks in.
And then there is this? Is the Gang of 5 on the city council listening?
Moodys warns of mass Calif. municipal bankruptcies
Every city in the state is looking on with some concern, said Dave Vossbrink, spokesman for the city of San Jose.
You think things are bad now? Well, you ain’t seen nothin’.
Ahnode Schwarzenwhatever is right when he prounounces this state “Colliefornia.” It has gone to the dogs.
“On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers, and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno, and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.”
I could not ever have hoped to hear the “them” v. “us” put more succinctly.
Whatcha gonna do about it?
The only way to save this state is to split it up. Let’s get it on the ballot.
Too late…SoCal wants our assets, they won’t let us go. They’ve got the votes to hold us and take whatever they want from northern resources, starting with our water.
You could be just like Palestine: they got the water, but Israel’s got everything else. Or you could be just like Southern Sudan: they got the oil, but that nasty man, al-Bashir, has got everything else.
Nah, I would be thinking more about integration … would it really kill ya?
Or … you could just cut the cable. What do you care about any of this political stuff anyway? You want to live the frugal life of the rugged individual? What’s stopping you?