Posted on 04/01/2013 12:04:14 PM PDT by lowbridge
As a result, the reign of the Governator aside, California has been solidly Democratic since the late 1990s. And ever since the political balance shifted, conservatives have declared the state doomed. Their specifics keep changing, but the moral is always the same: liberal do-gooders are bringing California to its knees.
A dozen years ago, the state was supposedly doomed by all its environmentalists. You see, the eco-freaks were blocking power plants, and the result was crippling blackouts and soaring power prices. “The country’s showcase state,” gloated The Wall Street Journal, “has come to look like a hapless banana republic.”
But a funny thing happened on the road to collapse: it turned out that the main culprit in the electricity crisis was deregulation, which opened the door for ruthless market manipulation. When the market manipulation went away, so did the blackouts.
Undeterred, a few years later conservatives found another line of attack. This time they said that liberal big spending and overpaid public employees were bringing on collapse.
And the state has indeed spent the past few years facing a severe fiscal crunch. When the national housing bubble burst, California was hit especially hard, and the combined effects of the plunge in home prices and the economic downturn led to sharply reduced revenue. Once more there were gleeful pronouncements of imminent doom: California, declared one pundit after another, is America’s Greece.
Again, however, reports of the state’s demise proved premature. Unemployment in California remains high, but it’s coming down — and there’s a projected budget surplus, in part because the implosion of the state’s Republican Party finally gave Democrats a big enough political advantage to push through some desperately needed tax increases. Far from presiding over a Greek-style crisis, Gov. Jerry Brown is proclaiming a comeback.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Proclaiming such does not make it such. Until the migration of businesses and families reverses back into the state, it's still bleeding.
That boys “bout as sharp as a bowling ball”....!
(there’s a projected budget surplus, in part because the implosion of the state’s Republican Party finally gave Democrats a big enough political advantage to push through some desperately needed tax increases).
LOL! There’s always a projected surplus from tax increases. It’s too bad that in reality what is collected is almost always less than what was expected, and the “projected” surplus evaporates.
All the morons hear about it and think "well if a Nobel Prize winner says it's okay, then it must be okay!"
Sure, the state will turn a “surplus” as a result of tax hikes, but that’s the shock result of a one-year dynamic. Things won’t be quite so rosy in the coming years, as businesses still depart that state.
Finally! A Krugman article to the contrary! Now I know for sure CA is doomed.
Compared to last year, so are the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats. What's the point?
LLS
It hasn’t collapsed yet, so obviously never will.
And if this agenda is successful
I heard it from some guy regarding people predicting collapses that even if they are right, they almost always get the timing way off. It always takes longer than they think in will before the unravelling begins. But once it does, it unravels at a pace far faster than they predicted.
We’ll see. I personally think the story is rubbish. It’s like saying, sure your car is only firing on half its cylinders and reverse doesn’t work and it has bald tires, but hey, we were able to touch up that rust spot.
Krugman is a complete moron. How about the fact that California has a negative net worth in excess of $100 Billion, Paulie?
“...Gov. Jerry Brown is proclaiming a comeback...”
That’s why they call him moonbeam....
We don’t need lifeboats: the ship is completely unsinkable.
Krugman has a serious credibility gap.
movies have long left california. They only stay for the tax credits.
Silicone valey is just following the only broker world before decentralization. Wallstreet is a museum not an actual trading location.
California has a net loss in producers and is being replaced by illegal aliens and ganbangers.
Where does krugman live? NYC? City of the gutless, and metropolis of the sheep.
someone needs to post that picture of chamberlain declaring PEACE IN OUR TIME!
rofl
Sounds like 13% is just a start, eh?
Krugman is the Dick Morris of economics.
Everything he predicts will NEVER come true.
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