I think it’s both better, and worse, than the article maintains.
On the “better” side, there’s no better place than the coast of California in the world to set up shop if you need talent. If you are in a business that requires extremely smart and hardworking professionals, there are a heck of a lot them there. Moreover, the allure of living in California is such that any position you can’t fill locally, you can persuade pretty much anyone from anywhere in the world to move there, as long as the salary is right.
Also on the “better” side is the fact that, inland from the Coast, direct costs of business aren’t that high, particularly when you factor in proximity to the talent markets on the coast, the ports and airports, etc. LOTS of warehouses, relatively cheap housing for your owkers, and inexpensive hard working unskilled and semiskilled labor.
On the “worse” side of course is the implacable hostility of regulators to physical production / manufacturing businesses (other than agriculture, which is politically protected), the high corporate tax rate, the high income tax rate, the high property tax rate for purchases and improvements (Prop 13 only protects current owners of existing structures).
I think California’s demographic changes are actually in the “remain to be seen” category. I don’t see the rising generation of Hispanic politicians as tending towards the kind of disastrous thinking that led the African American politicians who took over many big cities in the 1960s and 1970s. They’d like to have their cake (a productive private sector paying taxes) and eat it (strong labor regulations, high public expenditure on social benefits and education) too, but there’s no detachment from reality.
All but the most radical know that tax rates are at upper bounds, and that public spending is likely to have to decline. Frankly, I much prefer the young Hispanic politicians — whom political reality requires to be highly sensitive to their small business owner and private sector employee constituencies, and balance their concerns with those of the public employee union bosses who try to call the shots — to the Democrats representing White and White/Asian districts, whose noisy constituents tend to be toally addle-brained liberals. The Hispanic politican’s constituents have to live in the real world — the richer white liberals simply don’t.
First, the work force access you have in California for certain business remains unparalleld.
You forget one of the great gifts California has that most states don’t have ( other than Hawaii ) -— GREAT WEATHER ALL YEAR ROUND.
That alone makes it a great place to live. But then any God-given gift can be made irrelevant if the people and their government ruins everything.
And when the cost of power skyrockets because of more California regulations and the rolling blackouts start because power plants are shutting down, how productive will that talent be?
Great, but with the current tax burden out there, along with excessive regulation and hair-trigger opportunities to drag businesses to court...
I'd say, "thanks but no thanks." Far better opportunities exist elsewhere.
But it's not what you think.........