Forget the left vs. right arguments about why California is collapsing says Urbanophile.
California has simply now outgrown its youth and is now well into its middle age. Like the Rust Belt before it, California is now old. As with people as they age, “chronic lifestyle diseases” hit places too. These are: unfunded liabilities, the end of growth economics, and institutional rigidity, each of which builds on the one before it.
Add to that a gamed and deliberately paralyzed system of government that insures that change is difficult to make. The proposition ballot system has burdened the state with all manner of liabilities and mandates that budget matters must pass by 2/3’s. Add to that the cynical deal a while back that apportioned legislative districts into hard Republican or hard Democrat, something which makes genuine democracy difficult and you get, oh, “unfunded liabilities” and “institutional rigidity,” don’t you?
Oh, “the end of growth economics,” except for cleantech, is apparent too here in California.
Golden State not worth it – an analysis of high-tax high-benefit (but not good benefit) vs. low-tax low-benefit
Desperate California increases withholding, essentially borrowing interest-free from W-2 employees.
Physics is everything, everything is physics. Wheels coming off implies momentum. Momentum implies a degree of anticipation of where the wheels will go.
Is it not far better to view not accounts in dusty old tomes but to live each turning page as times so interesting unfold?
Someone, maybe you, wrote earlier today about how to traditional socialists and their ilk the lack of motivation lay in this not being “their” moment, or the traditionally perceived moment, the proper “revolutionary” moment, too which I’d simply disagree: it’s really a stunning disbelief, or disregard, that the moment is actually upon us [them].
See Dr. Zhivago. Middle-class “what-if” games come true.