What Happened To California?

A dystopian nightmare:

Why is California choosing the path of Detroit — growing government that it cannot pay for, shorting the middle classes, hiking taxes but providing shoddy services and infrastructure in return, and obsessing over minor bumper-sticker issues while ignoring existential crises? 

 

The cause is political. California is a one-party state, without any serious audit of authorities in power...

 

But what turned a once bipartisan and purple state bright blue? 

 

A perfect storm of events.

 

Higher taxes and increased regulations have driven out lots of small-business owners. In the last few years, hundreds of thousands of disgruntled middle-of-the-road voters voted with their feet and left for no-tax Nevada, Texas, or Florida. 

 

The state devolved into a pyramid of the coastal wealthy and interior poor — the dual constituencies of the new progressive movement. 

 

A third of America’s welfare recipients reside in California. Nearly a quarter of Californians live below the poverty line. 

 

California’s long, thin coastal corridor has become a tony La-La land unto itself. Yet nowhere in America are there more billionaires.