It's easy to be lulled into illusions there, especially the illusion that so copious a bounty is inextinguishably self-generating and will always be there. Millions have been.
Like irresponsible, pleasure loving children of wealthy parents, unable to understand the source of their good fortune or to imagine that it could be taken away, California Leftists rebel against the very virtues that created the bounty they take for granted and even hold them in contempt.
They are deluded.
Reality can be evaded, but its consequences cannot.
Sooner or later, reality comes crashing through even the most convincing delusions. In fact, the more convincing the delusions, the more terrible the tragedy when reality shatters them.
It's fun to be irresponsible. It's also dangerous.
California is whooping it up in an endless party. It's going to be a bitter shock when the endless party comes to an end.
Boy, it seemed like that when I lived in Oceanside/Monrovia from the late 60s to the late 80s. I worked my way up from $7,200 a year to $35,000 (decent money in the beginning, subsistence wages later on).
During the Cold War years the Germans had a term for how the Communists worked. They called it "The Artichoke Principle". You kept peeling off a leaf at a time until nothing was left.
It was the same with California. I started noticing the ever-increasing auto "fees". The property taxes shot through the ceiling and my mortgage was going up in $100 increments (pre-Prop 13 days). Sewer, water, and power bills increased almost monthly despite our conserving at every turn. State income taxes went from once a year to being deducted from weekly paychecks "to make it easier on the taxpayer". I didn't buy that and knew what was coming. Sure enough, next year's tax was doubled. In the early days IRAs were not deductible on State taxes. By 1988 the last leaf was stripped away and we bailed out - and like others, never look back.
When I visit friends and relatives there today I am appalled at the crowding and Third World aspect the state has taken on. It seems to be a microcosm of what's in our future if the public doesn't wise up.