Posted on 03/07/2013 4:41:10 AM PST by Kaslin
California now works on the principle of the mordida, or "bite." Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state.
Gov. Jerry Brown made that assumption explicit in his latest back-and-forth with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who keeps luring Californians to lower-tax, higher-employment Texas. Recently, Brown said of Texas, "Who would want to spend summers there in 110-degree heat inside some kind of fossil fuel air conditioner?"
Translated, Brown's retort meant that despite California's sluggish economy, high taxes and poor services, it's still worth staying there to enjoy its beautiful climate -- especially along the 1,000-mile-long coast, where most of the state's elites live comfortably without a need for high-priced air conditioning.
In November, California approved a measure to raise its sales tax and its income tax rates on the wealthy. According to the California Taxpayers Association, the state now has the highest sales tax and the highest top income tax rate in the nation. The state also just upped its gasoline taxes by nearly 10 percent to make them the costliest in the United States -- about 70 cents a gallon in combined federal, state and local taxes. The state already has among the most expensive refinery regulations in America. That means California pump prices, at well over $4 per gallon, are second only to Hawaii's.
Yet, unlike Hawaii, California's wells still produce more than 500,000 barrels of crude oil each day -- behind only Texas and Alaska. Its newly discovered Monterey Shale Formation may hold some 30 billion barrels of oil and gas. Perhaps no state has so much recoverable petroleum and yet such high fuel taxes and pump prices.
California's record taxes are not reflections of the costs incurred ensuring superior California public education. In fact, its public schools, in some surveys of national performance tests in math and English, rank near the nation's very bottom.
Nor do record gas taxes equate to wonderful freeways. The federal government concluded that only half of California's roads rate as acceptable. Private rankings put California's roads near dead last.
The problem is that California has exorbitant built-in costs unlike any other state and, in politically correct fashion, usually tries to keep mum about them. As the home to about a quarter of the nation's illegal immigrants, most from poorer areas of Latin America, California has public schools that enroll millions whose first language is not English. Someday, the infusion of young, motivated new Californians may prove a fiscal plus, but for the foreseeable future, illegal immigration translates into years of soaring health-care, housing, transportation, education and law-enforcement costs -- and billions of much-needed dollars lost from the state economy each year in remittances to Latin America.
California public unions are among the highest-paid in the nation. While Brown may have balanced next year's budget through higher taxes, he cannot do much about the more than $300 billion in unfunded pension fund liabilities and municipal bonds that were incurred, in part, to ensure the state and its localities could afford their public workforces.
Elite environmentalists -- who feel that to extend the conditions of their own affluent coastal enclaves to millions of others would tax the ecosystem -- have blocked new housing developments, cut off irrigation water to farmland, and opposed new energy production.
Yet if California has self-induced crises, it also has innate advantages. Aside from the best climate in North America, it has the richest farming area in the nation, along with huge natural endowments of gas, oil, minerals and timber.
California also enjoys an extravagant inheritance. Universities such as Stanford, Caltech and UC Berkeley continually rate among the best in the world. For decades, Silicon Valley, Napa Valley, Hollywood and Central Valley agriculture have earned hundreds of billions of dollars in the global marketplace.
In short, California is a wonderful place to live for Bay Area, 30-something Google executives; young, rich Stanford students; and Malibu celebrities -- or recent indigents fleeing the abject misery of Latin America and needing generous public help. But it is not such an accommodating a landscape if you are in the shrinking middle class and seeking a good-paying job in energy, construction or manufacturing; a safe daily commute on good roads; reasonable taxes; an affordable house; or a good public school.
The governor and the legislature believe that higher taxes, higher prices and more regulations are worth the pleasures of California's weather, natural beauty and chic culture. Who would leave all that for low-tax but scorching Texas or Nevada?
They may be right. I am still here, writing this column in 70-degree March weather, gazing out at the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains, amid blooming almond orchards on the small farm of my ancestors -- while computing my soaring taxes and picking up the daily litter tossed by the roadside, after another near-death experience on an archaic California freeway.
It's time to bring back the ice sheets and the big game!
Parenthetically, demographics indicate that people are leaving California in droves.
Elitists are always just so convinced of their own wonderfulness, they can’t fathom the notion that ordinary people might not want to pay for the privilege of living near them.
Absolutely! Why *would* someone want to move to Texas with its 110-degree summers, when they can live in the Central Valley and have those temperatures right at home in California! Unfortunately, along the coast, where summer isn't quite as hot, it is extremely expensive to live. And certain coastal regions are very crowded.
California has some deep problems. Although I would love to move back, the state I grew up in no longer exists--there is no place to move back to.
“It’s time to bring back the ice sheets and the big game! “
I agree. I ask only that I am allowed to nudge the ice sheets in my desired direction (s).
And get those mastodon clones going. I want one.
Big deal. Coastal Syria, Lebanon and Algeria have climates very similar to that of coastal California. Are people flocking to those areas?
We used to fly down to Burbank and rent a convertible for the day on Saturdays a lot. After a while, the whole area just became traffic, asphalt, cranky people that don’t speak English and graffiti. We’ll probably never go back. It was a great place a few decades ago.
I used to live in Aneheim and Napa. I lived a few blocks away from Disneyland for a while. There was an orange orchard across the street from our place. It’s now an industrial complex that looks like it has been there forever.
Easy decision for VDH as it is his family's land. For me, I was happy to leave, and only regret that every February.
Those who rant about the wonderful climate in Cali. ignore the inland areas where the summers are blazing hot. The area with the nearly perfect climate is only a small part of the entire state. I have been a few places, spent a year in the middle of San Francisco bay, a year in Keflavik, Iceland, almost killed by hurricane Dora in Florida in 1964, cruised the Mediterranean on the Saratoga, seen the bullfights in Spain under a blazing sun. All in all it’s hard to beat the weather here in South Carolina, a little hot and humid in the summer and occasionally cold in the winter but a lot of wonderful days when it’s great just to be alive. If I could afford to spend the summers in the Smokies and come back home for the rest of the year it would be almost perfect.
****it’s still worth staying there to enjoy its beautiful climate****
Reminds me of the Depression story of the two out of work hobos. One suggested they go to California. The other reminds him there is no work there either.
The first says “At least you can enjoy the beautiful climate while you starve.”
If the Jefferson Statehood project were ever successful I might move back there.
SoCal born and raised and worked as a state employee under Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown. Bailed in the mid ‘80’s and am now a proud resident of the great state of Texas.
My message to Jerry: “mordida” me......
Americans who pay taxes are leaving California in droves.
Mr. Hansen said that California is going feudal.
There are three classes, the coastal aristocracy, the state employee “clergy” and the inland serfs. The middle class is moving out.
“Absolutely! Why *would* someone want to move to Texas with its 110-degree summers, when they can live in the Central Valley and have those temperatures right at home in California!”
Oh come on! Yeah, the Central Valley does get hot in the summer, but there is very little associated humidity, which is what makes Texas unbearable. I’ve been in Houston when the streets are actually wet from the water being wrung out of the air by the auto air conditioners. Walk out of their “over air conditioned buildings” and your glasses frost up like a beer bottle! No, there is no correlation between the Central Valley climate and that of Texas, Get serious!
I lived in San Antonio for three years and in the Central Valley (near Sac) for nine years. Climate-wise, they're nearly identical. But in San Antonio, they make an effort to make the city look nice--all the overpasses are decorated, for instance. And there are some great cultural venues in San Antonio.
If California doesn't find its way back into sanity, I'll very likely be settling in Texas.
“Both California and Texas are too hot, or too clamy”
You’ve got to be kidding! Where did you live in California to make such a statement. Actually California has just about any climate you want, from the 4 seasons of the sierra’s to the almost constant year round incredible temperature of San Diego and most of the coast, to the hotter-than-Arizona Palm Springs and death valley, to Mark Twain’s “coldest winter I’ve ever spent” summers of San Francisco. And I suppose if you want some muggy weather you can find some of that too in the central valley.
California has a lot of political problems, but when it comes to weather and natural beauty and variety it is next to impossible to beat - that’s why it’s so hard to leave.
San Diego coastal environments are, for me, uncomfortable. The Sierras in late fall, early spring, and of course winter are OK except for the snow.
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