Rod Dreher

Wal-Mart Hates Capitalism, Law

What’s The Matter With California?

By Rod Dreher • April 23, 2012, 9:58 AM

According to the California-based demographer and urban affairs professor Joel Kotkin, a conservative Democrat, California is becoming a failed state because its politics and its economics are badly screwed up.

California used to be more like Texas—a jobs magnet. What happened? For one, says the demographer, Californians are now voting more based on social issues and less on fiscal ones than they did when Ronald Reagan was governor 40 years ago. Environmentalists are also more powerful than they used to be. And Mr. Brown facilitated the public-union takeover of the statehouse by allowing state workers to collectively bargain during his first stint as governor in 1977.

But wait! I thought Thomas Frank told us that only conservatives in states like Kansas voted on social issues, often against their own economic interests. So liberal Californians do it too. Imagine that. More:

Mr. Kotkin also notes that demographic changes are playing a role. As progressive policies drive out moderate and conservative members of the middle class, California’s politics become even more left-wing. It’s a classic case of natural selection, and increasingly the only ones fit to survive in California are the very rich and those who rely on government spending. In a nutshell, “the state is run for the very rich, the very poor, and the public employees.”

The economic Third-Worlding of California.

68 Responses to What’s The Matter With California?

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cp says:

April 23, 2012 at 7:29 pm

Speaking to two issues raised in the article: Housing and Energy.

Kotkin points out that California’s housing market is warped due to local restrictions on density and building, but then claims that attempts to remove those restrictions so that higher buildings with more density can be built are the cause of the housing problem and engages is a bit of class warfare to boot. Both statements cannot be true. Perhaps he needs to read Matthew Yglesias’ very good book on the topic The Rent Is Too Damn High.

Kotkin also points out that there’s lots of oil left in the ground, but seems ignorant to the fact that it costs more to extract and refine what’s left than it did to extract and refine what we’ve already pumped. Near my home is an oil field that was busy in the early 1970s (OPEC embargo) and then stopped pumping through the 80′s and 90′s, and is busy pumping again. That oil field was found nearly 100 years ago, and there’s surely oil down there, but it costs much to refine that oil and so when the price of oil is low no-one pumps it, and when the price of oil is high the pumping goes on 24/7. No new permits were required, what was needed was simply a price that justified the costs of refining the oil.

The truth is that the cost of oil will continue to increase, and at some point not so far down the road renewables will be less expensive than oil. Investing in infrastructure to be ready for that day is what most old-school conservatives would call “prudent.”
MH - secular misanthropist says:

April 23, 2012 at 7:33 pm

Polichinello said “This is your gross population growth, which includes foreign immigrants. You’ve lost native citizens.”

I’d like to see a pointer to this. However I don’t see how the composition of the population understates the unemployment rate as you claim. Most of the immigrants I know are high skills technology workers. So this isn’t like a sweat shop with foreign labor driving down wages and forcing the native population to flee.
Bar Bill says:

April 23, 2012 at 9:27 pm

“1) The former jocks, cheerleaders, and other go with the flow types are leading mundane–at best–lives.
2) The former punks, nerds, geeks, and other misfits look great and are doing well.”

Surprise! In our economic meritocracy, the higher-IQ “punks, nerds, geeks and other misfits” outperform the “jocks, cheerleaders, and other go with the flow types” as a group. Dog bites man, no California magic here.

I’m sure the nerds and geeks are doing OK in NY and Houston as well.
Jim says:

April 23, 2012 at 9:35 pm

Polichinello: You don’t know me so how about you not call me a liar. OK, sport? Thanks.
Commissar Wee Wee says:

April 23, 2012 at 10:08 pm

Mexicans are definitely hard workers, and nicer people than most. But they are notably low intellect, and have little in the way of future time orientation. The high school dropout rate for Latino students in the City Of Los Angeles is 60%. Yes, that’s right, only 4 out of 10 Latino kids graduate from high school. I don’t imagine the numbers of graduates are any higher up in Central Valley rural farming hellholes like Delano, Tulare or Mendota.

The single mother parent stat for Latinas is fast approaching African American levels, 52% last year. Half of all Latino men abandon the mothers of their children. And Steve Sailer crunched the numbers on the Mexican/Central American crime rate, and calculated it is 3.5 times higher than the white crime rate, straddling the middle ground between the white and black rates.

Libs like to say that illegals are ineligible for the host of California’s welfare goodies (12% of the US population, with 33% of its welfare caseloads), but that is only true if you don’t count their anchor babies. I work construction in Los Angeles, and believe me, the first thing the amigos do when they get to their fixed destination is find a mamacita to shack up and make babies with.

On the brighter side, one reason California hasn’t seen the black flash mobs that have plagued the Midwest and Philadelphia is that the large population of Mexicans and Asians wouldn’t put up with it. No white guilt to shake down and take advantage of. Blacks, along with sad sack Latinos, are being ethnically cleansed out of coastal California, being Section Eighted into imploded peripheral real estate towns like Lancaster, Palmdale and Victorville outside of LA, and Tracy and Stockton outside of SF.

Factor in the large communities of Armenians, Israelis, Persians, Vietnamese, Ethiopians, Russians, Koreans and Chinese, all of whom mainly are here to benefit themselves and have little fealty to the idea of America as a whole, and you have a large, beautiful patch of real estate that could eventually make Yugoslavia look like Luxembourg.

The monstrosity of state bureaucracy is another thing entirely, and it’s at least the equal to that of Greece.

I’m just glad I’m not trapped into a house, and can flee up to Washington or Oregon at any time.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

April 23, 2012 at 10:36 pm

Four million people had better move out of California. There never was enough water for all the people who tried to move there.
Brett R. says:

April 23, 2012 at 11:01 pm

Wasn’t most of California supposed to have fallen into the Pacific by now anyway?
Dangermouse says:

April 24, 2012 at 12:07 am

So the states that are strongest against immigration and liberalism and have been proponents of white power movements in the past are the poorest in the nation (West Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, etc.).

California’s got a strong enough economy to survive as its own nation more successful than most of Europe today. And it’s built that economic power on vices that infuriate social conservatives: wine, the internet, post-1800s science, Hollywood, rap music, porn, and agriculture that doesn’t involve corn or wheat. Dangerous and sinful things like almonds and figs.

It’s quite jarring when someone from a really poor state like Louisiana, a net welfare recipient of federal taxes, criticizes California, a net payer of federal taxes, even with all of those Mexicans your readers despise. Numbers from 2009: for every dollar paid by a Louisiana taxpayer, he got back $1.78 in federal pork… paid for by sinful, evil, browner states like California that only got back $0.78 for every dollar paid in federal taxes.

Please, please! Conservatives, keep trashing minorities and trying to punish California for some vague sin with economic arguments that fail on the math (which is probably sinful as well). And keep voting in all the pork that is sinless. Not only will you re-elect Obama but you’ll make the Republican Party a kooky third party.
Mitchell Young says:

April 24, 2012 at 1:08 am

“California already pays more taxes than it receives in federal spending. IOW, were it not for California there would be much less money to keep Mississippi, Alaska, and Louisiana awash in federal money”

Are we still going by that 2005 data that so often circulates during these discussions? Old data, which is not broken out by type of spending, is of no value here.

“In terms of exports, its intellectual and agricultural exports alone would likely create a blossoming economy if the U.S. had to set up trade deals for California produce and intellectual property.”

The US spends far more effort protecting ‘intellectual property’ than it does protecting actual industries. See the ‘digital millennium act’ or look into some recent customs enforcement efforts.

“Four million people had better move out of California. There never was enough water for all the people who tried to move there.”

You realize that for two decades California has domestic outmigration. Those excess four million are due exclusively to foreign immigration.
JonF says:

April 24, 2012 at 5:52 am

Re: On the brighter side, one reason California hasn’t seen the black flash mobs that have plagued the Midwest and Philadelphia is that the large population of Mexicans and Asians wouldn’t put up with it.

What “flash mobs plague”? This strikes me as a case of the media blowing a few rare incidents into a “plague”, just as they did with “wilding” a generation ago
Polichinello says:

April 24, 2012 at 9:38 am

California’s got a strong enough economy to survive as its own nation more successful than most of Europe today.

Wow. You should secede. That’ll show us.
Polichinello says:

April 24, 2012 at 9:41 am

Polichinello: You don’t know me so how about you not call me a liar. OK, sport? Thanks.

Don’t you think your story was a little too cliched, chief? Even if it was true, of which I have my doubts, it’s utterly irrelevant as a social guide, even on its own merits. We all know plenty of nerds and geeks who’ve wound up single pathetic cubicle drones, and plenty of jocks who’ve learned enough social skills to be acutal human beings.
Polichinello says:

April 24, 2012 at 9:46 am

I’m sure the nerds and geeks are doing OK in NY and Houston as well.

It depends. The ones who quit playing with their Jean-Luc Picard dolls do well. Those who don’t, don’t.

A lot of nerds and geeks like to pat themselves on the back for being unique and courageous individuals, but they’re all too often immature weirdoes who refuse to grow up. You know, just the sort of person you want to rely on.

You can see the value of that sort of personality in someone who has actual genius and can produce really great ideas, but those people are very few and far between. For the average guy with even above average intelligence, a lifetime of Sailor Moon fandom will not a successful citizen make.
David J. White says:

April 24, 2012 at 11:24 am

California’s got a strong enough economy to survive as its own nation more successful than most of Europe today.

We hear that secession nonsense here in Texas, too — “We’re doing great, maybe we should go it alone!” OK, fine. But an independent country needs to have — and pay for — all kinds of things that a state can rely on the federal government for. Such as defense. And a diplomatic corps. And a postal service. And treaties with foreign countries. You think an independent California or Texas will automatically be considered as a signatory to treaties to which the US is a party? Think again; when Quebec was last making serious secession noises from Canada in the 90s, the US State Dept. make it clear that it would not consider an independent Quebec to be a signatory to the treaties that exist between the US and Canada, but that Quebec would have to renegotiate these treaties on its own. What kind of terms would an independent California or Texas be able to get in negotiations with, say, the EU or China, as opposed to the terms that the US as a whole can get?

Texas was an independent country for nine years. One of the reasons it became a US state was because, as an independent country, it was drowning in debt.
Commissar Wee Wee says:

April 24, 2012 at 12:54 pm

As of 2010, it was calculated by no less than Barbara Boxer herself that California was getting back $1.45 from the Feds, for every dollar sent. So this trope is outdated, might want to refresh your script.

http://www.calwatchdog.com/2010/02/10/new-is-california-a-donor-state/

In regard to the “flash mob plague”, there is this invention called the internet now. And incidents are being documented by concerned individuals rightly piqued at the media for ignoring this disturbing new trend.

Were you to be so bold as to log on to Youtube, and enter “black flash mob” into the search box, you would find all sorts of disturbing video, for your viewing pleasure. These thugs have a stupid but refreshing habit of wanting to film their violent acts, which makes it easy to a.) lock them up behind bars, where they belong, and b.) show proof to Nervous Nellie libs who can’t believe such a thing could ever happen in our current Age Of Enlightenment.

http://violentflashmobs.com/
Siarlys Jenkins says:

April 24, 2012 at 1:28 pm

If flash mobs were such a pervasive hazard in the midwest, I would know all about it. They do happen. They are not daily occurences.

The liberal vs. conservative schtick doesn’t really apply, except in the minds of narcissists in both camps, who want to score brownie points for their side.

It is not a universal congenital trait of people with some percentage of African ancestry that they are all excruciatingly polite upwardly-mobile Baptist pacifists. Some are raucous heavy drinking foul-mouthed loud characters, not unlike “white” construction workers, or Jimmy Hoffa, or a white mega-church fundamentalist on Monday or Saturday. Only those who expect everyone of a given demographic to be either saints or devils would get wrapped up in such petty debates.

Young delinquents who indulge in flash mobs no doubt use their skin color as a cover, but set that aside. They’re not doing it because they’re black, any more than Mafia dons do what they do because they’re Italian. They want to perform mischief. and they use any excuse at hand.
Mitchell Young says:

April 24, 2012 at 2:42 pm

” agriculture that doesn’t involve corn or wheat”

Actually, California’s number one agricultural export (i.e. international export), is rice, much closer to wheat or corn than those ‘sinful’ figs and almonds.

Nuts are the number 2 export, and not coincidentally, both rice and nut production are highly mechanized. Even with ‘cheap’ illegal labor, there is no way California can compete with China or Chile on labor costs. In fact, California, home to ‘Garlic Capital of the World’ Gilroy, is now importing those pungent bulbs from China.
Jim says:

April 25, 2012 at 9:42 am

Polichinello: So in other words, I didn’t send Don a get well soon card or visit Jack at his boutique in San Francisco when I was there last year? Thanks for clearing that up.