The Results of One-Party Rule in the People's Democratik Republik of Kalifornia

You don't have to like it, but the numbers don't lie:

Whereas many states might have envied California for its tech growth, they may be less impressed by its absurdly high cost of living, high energy prices and nation-leading poverty rate. A state where one in four people is poor, and as many as one in three households, according to United Way, live on poverty’s doorstep...

(Governor-elect Gavin) Newsom, who identifies himself with the tech oligarchs, will see any IPO or resurgence in tech stock prices as a means to boost spending without pain. Yet he also will find himself asked to pay for programs — housing subsidies, renewable energy and expanded free healthcare — that could un-balance even the healthiest budgets. Under the “frugal” Jerry Brown the state budget since 2011 grew 53 percent while the population expanded by a mere 5 percent. One can only imagine what happens now with an even less “stingy” chief executive.

The wish list of new expensive programs — single-payer healthcare alone would up to double the state budget — means Newsom must likely raise taxes ever higher. This likely will not be tough on tech firms themselves, which are adept at tax avoidance, but on upper-middle class taxpayers who have been drifting for decades to the Democrats...

Overall the top 1 percent pay nearly half of all income taxes, which accounts for two-thirds of the state budget. “We are very dependent on millionaires,” Mike Genest, former budget director for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “If the millionaires get a cold, we all die of the flu.”

Doomed.