Time Is on California's Side (deluded Californians and Time mag's shilling)

City Journal ^ | 10/28/09

[TigerLikesRooster]

Time Is on California’s Side

. . . but time isn’t.

28 October 2009

/snip

Contrarianism is not confined to high finance: newspapers and magazines are desperate to offer perspectives that set them apart from their competitors. Time, for example, has decided to make a contrarian play on California. In recent months, other publications have featured articles with titles like “Who Killed California?,” “Sundown for California,” “End State,” “Death of the California Dream,” and “California: Worst Place in the History of the Universe for Multicelled Organisms.” (Okay, not the last one, but the others are real.) Convinced that every scrap of negative information has already been “priced in” to California’s public profile, Time offers a cover story this week titled “Despite Its Woes, California’s Dream Still Lives.”

The question is whether California is Goldman Sachs or Lehman Brothers. Does the state, despite its current problems, remain a fundamentally sound enterprise whose residual strengths will secure a bright future? Or has this once proud and prosperous endeavor passed a tipping point after too many bad decisions and practices, with no options left except to prolong and mitigate its own decline?

/snip

Time argues—to be more precise, it labors to leave the impression—that California will be rescued and energized by its think-outside-the-box entrepreneurial culture, in which worker “creativity” inevitably outweighs mundane drawbacks like high taxes and stagnant wages. “We only do ideas that challenge the status quo, and California is the only place we’d do it,” says one innovator, while another tells the magazine, “Inventing a better gadget isn’t enough anymore. We’re trying to reshape the way people live.”

/snip

[TigerLikesRooster]

But as any Los Angeles Clippers fan will tell you, the essence of deluded optimism is habitually overvaluing every encouraging trend and dismissing the importance—or existence—of every ominous one.

He nailed it. LOL.

[TigerLikesRooster]

If they employ a Feng-sui shaman, he will tell them that all positive force has been sucked dry in California.:-)

[TigerLikesRooster]

Another gem of quote in the article:

Such is the fate of Californians: to live in a state where environmentalism is a religion and economics a superstition

[Amerigomag]

Here's the money quote:

And it’s going to occur to more and more entrepreneurial pathfinders that one of the boxes they can think outside is California itself.

[the anti-liberal]

That is a good one - I have to wonder what kind of intelligent entrepreneur would even think of starting a business in Cal. Or Ore., or Wash. Heck, in any of the coastal states.

[Savage Beast]

"Who Killed California?”

The (Once) Golden State committed suicide.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

That is a good one - I have to wonder what kind of intelligent entrepreneur would even think of starting a business in Cal.

The ones who graduate from Stanford - the most recent examples are the guys who founded Yahoo and Google. The University of California campuses are also very well represented in most Top 20 lists of the best engineering schools. Outstanding colleges, especially in the Bay Area, have fueled the California tech boom since the days of Hewlett-Packard (also founded by a couple of Stanford classmates).

[Oldexpat]

They may have some brains who choose to live in CA because of the weather and beauty left some places, but the production and consumption will be outside of CA.
The state govt and local govt’s go deeper in debt every day and nothing is beind done to address the issue.
The average education level of CA is sinking and dump people aren’t rich.

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

California has been destroyed by Democrats catering to their constituents: environmentalists, unions, welfare and illegal aliens.

[cold666pack]

This is a brilliant article, thanks for posting it.

[TigerLikesRooster]

This is a gem buried in an relatively obscure publication, but for some reason, does not elicit the reaction it deserves here. I wonder why.:-)

[SZonian]

I won’t buy Time to see if they railed against the “limitations imposed” by Prop. 13. I’m sure they did, but the author of this magnificent piece didn’t mention it.

He was spot on regarding his observations and if I know CA politics at all, the Time article will be touted by some dimwitted lib as some kind of legitmization of their stupid behavior.

SZ

[the anti-liberal]

Do you think those folks would start a business in Cal. today?

[cold666pack]

i think a lot of articles that get a lotta responses here wave around the red meat, and or, people just love articles that affirm their already held beliefs. I too have noticed good pieces, thought provoking ones, get very little attention and commentary or futher critical thinking. Sign of the times I think, even a lotta freepers are just lookin for the quick badda bam soundbite pieces. Just my humble opinion.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Do you think those folks would start a business in Cal. today?

There are new startups forming every day - some of them may well turn into the next Google or Yahoo (of course, if I knew which I'd be selling everything I own to fund them). California is an undoubted mess due to the misrule of Democrats and governors like Gray Davis and Arnold. The business climate is not good, income and property taxes are exorbitant, and the public sector keeps growing. But California engineering schools are still among the very best in the world, and those grads are still sticking around to work here and launch new ventures. It's not sustainable, but we aren't dead yet.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

California is doomed. I know. I live here. Now we are talking SERIOUSLY about a Constitutional Convention. Can you imagine the socialist utopian roadmap that our state Constitution would become resulting from that.

Truly, we are doomed. Another 10 long suffering years here until retirment, freedom, and readmission back to the USA when I flee the People’s Democratic Republic of Kalifornia.

[Pelham]

It isn’t just Democrats who wrecked California by catering to illegal aliens. Some of us remember all too well a President who chirped about “jobs Americans won’t do” and how “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande”. Political hacks who put their country second come in two flavors.