This is from one of George Will’s recent columns.
“Kevin Starr, author of an eight-volume — so far — history of the (formerly) Golden State, says California is "on the verge" of becoming something without an American precedent — "a failed state." William Voegeli, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, tartly says that "Rome wasn’t sacked in a day, and California didn’t become Argentina overnight." Indeed.
It took years for liberalism’s redistributive itch to create an income tax so steeply progressive that it prompts the flight from the state of wealth-creators: "Between 1990 and 2007," Voegeli writes, "some 3.4 million more Americans moved from California to one of the other 49 states than moved to California from another state." “
Changing the incentive structure to punish the productive will have no consequences.
“It took years for liberalism’s mania for micromanaging life with entangling regulations to make California’s once creative economy resemble Gulliver immobilized by the Lilliputians’ many threads. The state, which between 1990 and 2007 lost 26 percent of its factory jobs and 35 percent of its high-tech manufacturing jobs, ranks behind only New York, another of liberalism’s laboratories, in the number of outward-bound moving vans.” “
As people vote for incentives with their feet, or wheels, take your pick of metaphors.
“It took years for compassionate liberalism to make California’s welfare menu contribute to the state becoming an importer of Mexico’s poverty. It took years for servile liberalism to turn the state into what Voegeli calls a "unionocracy," run by and for unionized public employees, such as public safety employees who can retire at 50 and receive 90 percent of the final year’s pay for life.”
This is eerily similar to Ontario–liberal and broke. The only saving grace is that we call our liberals Liberals. It’s true–look it up. That’s about as amazing a coincidence as Lou Gehrig getting Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s not that the start of the decline was indiscernible in either jurisdiction. At least we’ll always have General Motors–too big to fail and too incompetent to succeed. We’ll have “this valuable resource” so long as we keep subsidizing it. Only a politician could believe something that needs to be subsidized is “valuable”.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
