I don’t have a problem with Californians destroying their own state. Whatever, that is their choice. My problem, particularly as a Coloradian is them moving to another state and going “Hmm… let’s try that again.”
Californians are moving to a lot of states trying to escape the dysfunction. I’ve noticed an influx in CO. I too hope they can be prevented from bringing the dysfunction with them.
by almost any measure, California is a wealthy state. Yet it is also dysfunctional. Being wealthy does not prevent people from making ridiculous decisions. NY is also wealthy, and people are leaving it, too. Doesn’t make all wealthy people bad human beings, but being rich often means no more than being able to avoid the ill effects of your voting decisions.
Any Californian who brings the social destruction of unlimited homeless unilmited illegals bad employment practice will destroy that state. Don’t californicate Texas-Colorado-Utah-Nevada.
Years ago, Money Magazine rated Prescott AZ as the best place to retire so many many Californians moved to the relatively small town and settled – raising housing prices beyond the reach of most natives. When they realized that there was really no upscale shopping in Prescott, they prevailed on the town fathers to destroy a mountain in order to establish a convenient shopping center.
Did they breed dysfunction? It may be in the eyes of the beholder. Prescott now has a pretty decent community college and hospital system and is trying to become a high tech area but housing prices are still beyond the reach of most people and traffic is horrendous. THen there is the water issue . There is not enough but hey, there is enough now so why worry about the future.
If you’re affluent, anywhere is functional. Rich people can buy their way out of dysfunction. The problem is that most Californians, the vast majority in fact, are not affluent. And the rich like to keep them that way. Who do you think is financially supporting people like Pelosi and Newsom?
They do and they vote. With their feet, money and votes. Literally. Surely by now California would be empty….? Mexican immigrants would be “crashing” in Malibu beach houses…
Yes, they vote for dysfunction for others but not for themselves. They have the dough to avoid the dysfunction. What do you think all those gated mansions are for? So they can live among the homeless like other Californians have to?
People are escaping California if, again, they have the dough. Those that can’t, well, they just can’t.
I’m multi-generation Californian. Grew-up in a family business, that still exists, my great-grandfather started in 1929. I live in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in California. One of the best of the best school districts, have a wonderful lifestyle …and you have no idea what you are talking about.
just a few stats:
1 in 4 people in California are living below the poverty line
1 in 5 were not born in the US
We have the highest taxes and our infrastructure rates 49th of the 50 states.
Our school system is near the bottom also. we have 60k homeless and counting, opiod deaths in the 1000’s, looks like a 3rd world country in some places and growing, no joke.
There are no homeless in my neighborhood, they don’t last an hour. They are driven to the nearest poor neighborhood and dropped off. The list of problems here are unfortunately too long to mention.
And yes my husband and I are planning on leaving the state I used to love in just a few years.
Rich people are leaving here in high numbers. But what California is really missing is the middle class. When the lower or middle class have no hope of upward mobility. people leave.
Another stat for you…
to rent a U-haul out of California is 1000’s but to rent a U-haul into California is $500.
It depends upon type of wealth. Where there are landowning families with a tradition of military services they are often very tough. They grow up with the village children. In Skyfall Bond returns to his family home. If one grew up stalking deer and attending schools such as Rannoch, Ampleforth, Sedburgh, Stonyhurst , where rugby, cross country runs and cold showers are compulsory, one soon toughens up. When it comes to the rugby pitch or elite military selection, money, does not protect one from pain. Sensible wealthy families bring a degree of Spartan conditioning to the bringing up of their children.
Rich people have plenty of issues. I live in an affluent neighborhood in Southern California, near LA. Everything is shiny on the outside. People come from liberal States to go to college in Cal and never leave.
Writing as a None-American born and living in the UK, the rich are the ones who breed dysfunction. There the ones “inventing” problems as you can see by Maslows Needs Pyramid, the vast majority of people are busy with putting food on tables, roofs over their heads and worrying about their kids education. The chattering classes, spend their days, inventing new sexes, new outrages they can cancel, and human rights for their pets. Their cooks, nanny’s, gardeners do all their worrying. So yes , when they move to your State, they will carry on as nothing changed. Its happening/happened in the UK where immigrants aren’t supposed to fit in, the indigenous are supposed change for a better fit. You might not like my answer, but you will find out I’m more right then wrong, the hard way.
Oh yeah they do. Especially if they were born into wealth and think that they earned it. I offer you Justin Turdeau as an example. The guy went from drama teacher/snowboard dude to Prime Minister of Canada. He is poorly educated and dumb as a rock. But he is in the unique position of growing Canada’s debts past all sanity. The population that pays that debt back is way less wealthy than he is. His policy choices are all woke, and as stupid as you might expect given that. He is affluent, and so are his sycophantic fellow Liberals. The rest of you, us, can eat shit and pay the bills.
An yet… Did you read the big brag in the Times article on how the election was “fortified” It seems once your broken Nazi detector gives you permission, cheating is no obstacle to success. No wonder people booed Biden’s video at the Super Bowl.
They should be banned from voting in whatever state they move to for a period of 30 years, and they should pay an impact tax to the existing residents for the rise in living costs they’ll force on them.
Steve Hall
3 years ago
The inevitable product of taking neoliberalism’s principle of free movement of capital, goods and labour too seriously. Outsource your manufacturing to a cheap-labour mercantilist regime abroad – which certainly doesn’t take the aforementioned principle too seriously – and watch your skilled working class and middle-managerial class disappear to be replaced by a precariat in insecure service jobs. Then import mass labour to undercut wages in the service economy and make them feel even more insecure. The global investment elite, the rentiers, the tech nerds and their lawyers etc. get rich while everyone else gets poor. Mask all this with identity politics posturing and dumbed-down woke education, and the Ship of Fools sails on. Little wonder we’re seeing the rise of angry, headless populism leaning to the nationalist right. Then call them all racist rednecks on mass media and social media, threaten to throw them in jail for rioting and watch them get even angrier, and rightfully so. Brilliant. The genius of liberalism at work.
Liberals are at fault simply because they cannot bare to ally themselves with conservatives as somehow they may lose their identity. An identity that the far left progressives are stripping away from them, you’re either a wokeist or you are a fascist neo Nazi and no in between according to the far left. Wake up Liberals and ally with the conservatives as you have more in common than you think. Ps Conservatives does not mean far right either.
Exactly right, but I wouldn’t call it liberalism. It’s the alliance of corporate globalist neoliberalism with wokeism. Real liberals hate it as much as anyone.
Germany and Switzerland moved into advanced technology by mid 1990s ; there is little low and medium tech. This requires a German /Swiss mindset and education systems which do not exist in the Uk and USA apart from a few small areas.
Making robots whose arm moves with a precision of 0.01mm and Swiss watches of cannot be done outside of these countries; assembling cars in some countries can be done in countries like Slovakia . Basically it is machine tools and robots which are the key.
It seems that California, and much of the liberal West has yet to gird their loins and admit that post-nationalist globalization and the welfare state are incompatible. What I call the ‘social globalists’ are all for the great human migration of the have-nots to the land of the haves. To protest such policies is simply racist and xenophobic. At the same time ‘corporate globalists’ are free to travel the world. showering their money and jobs on whatever pasture that they assess to be the greenest which in today’s terms means whichever jurisdiction bribes them with tax breaks and incentives.
So sooner or later you have a large portion of the economic demographic consisting of an uneducated and unskilled underclass that can’t pay taxes and a wealthy class that will simply move away if they feel over-taxed – taking their money and jobs with them. The hollowed-out middle class which is mostly stuck where it is, can’t fill the void,
Up against that is the welfare state that insists on doubling down, spending money as if the new realities of globalism didn’t exist. So poverty district schools aren’t performing poorly because some immigrants don’t value education – it’s all due to a “lack of funding because the rich don’t pay their fair share”. The middle class gets hit with tax and fee hikes and has to buy Chinese toasters at Walmart to make ends meet.
We are going to have to choose. The math doesn’t work.
Like all things it’s about balance. Globalism is here to stay in some form as it has been since the industrial revolution , that though does not mean that nations cannot be their own masters. Taxes are also a balanced necessity, they are needed, enough to fill the govt coffers for governance but not so high as to stifle growth. Same with welfare, enough to be a safety net ( hopefully short term ) till people get back on their feet but not enough to become a way of life. It’s all about balance.
Tom Hawk
3 years ago
Reading the article and comments, I feel people are missing the elephant. Instead of comparing California against other US states and south American countries, people should be looking at China and seeing what is happening there.
China is a threat in a way that Russian communism never was. It is centralised and planning how to deliver but using capitalist incentives to encourage effort and productivity.
… the MSS presence in California is estimated to be greater than in all but one other State … and not all by any means clustered around Stanford, Silicon Valley, Berkeley etcetera … yiu don’t have to be Chinese to take their red gold …
Company ( computer Games) my son works at in LA was bought ago by a Chinese Billionaire 2 years ago. Many Chinese set up their companies in Kanada and buy US Firms. Very interesting…
Oh but at what cost to the individual humanity and soul. Golden prison bars are still prison bars.
Jeff Mason
3 years ago
Newsome saying another round of IPOs is a sign of California’s overall fiscal health is like Louis XVI saying the French economy was in great shape because he has just built another palace. Lesson from history: It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. California destroyed itself. It did not see its primary industry collapse due to globalism like the rust belt. It did not suffer from a boom that went bust or depletion of resources like some old west mining town. It simply shot itself in the foot – repeatedly. It was once a prosperous and well run state. Now it is a test tube for every wacky and insane progressive idea. It continues to stagger on. Like a hippo being starved, it will take a while but eventually it will collapse. Please, when you flee the state for Arizona or Texas, don’t vote for the same kind of idiots who destroyed California.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
California is the poster child of self-inflicted wounds without the self-awareness to realize the problem. Its expats, who leave while griping about taxes or housing prices, have this habit of then infecting their new homes with the same poison. It’s almost a punch line. The state is and has been poorly governed for decades, and shows no sign of changing. Even if Newsom is recalled, does anyone think his replacement will be a vastly different version?
No, he or she will not. And to some extent we have to say that Californians have made their bed and now must lie in it. If people insist on living this way, they surely have the right to do so.
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
Why do Californians keep voting for people who create and/or allow these problems to make life so difficult and unpleasant for Californians? Do they not know what or rather who is causing it? Do they not know that people in other states don’t have to put up with what they do?
“The California dream was, in a sense, America on steroids.“
This I think is a key point. California is a great place to live if one is highly educated and well off.
This is not unique to California: the US system (eg taxation, employment law (including maternity/paternity benefits), healthcare, education, and entry into the professions) is set up to benefit the wealthy and the well-connected.
Being America’s most populous and wealthiest state (and the world’s 5th largest economy, just ahead of the UK), California illustrates what happens when there is such extreme inequality on a large scale. Quite evidently, it’s not good for society.
Anywhere is a great place to live if you have a lot of money, California isn’t alone in that. But you missed the key point. The key point is actually that California is a great place to live ONLY if you have a lot of money. It is a horrible place to live if you don’t have a lot of money and that’s the vast majority of Californians. Inequality is worse in California than it is in Mexico. You cannot make that case against other states, which is why so many people are leaving California. It’s not enough to be a great place only for rich people.
What you miss is that while California is wallowing in all the problems mentioned in the article, other states are moving ahead. You’re going backwards.
I agree with your concerns, if not your zero-sum mindset. California will remain the largest US economy for decades to come, and continue to attract ambitious and well-qualified people due to world class universities like Stanford and Berkeley and the high-tech industries they cultivate.
California has a lot of reforming to do. Hopefully the other large states with high poverty rates including Texas, Florida, and New York etc learn from California’s mistakes and take action to improve the quality of life of all citizens.
And I personally hope the smaller states like Colorado can model their economies more on the highly innovative/entrepreneurial/high quality-of-life Scandinavian economies.
Yes, we agree that other states should learn what NOT to do from California. The problem is that escapees from California try to infect other states with the same policies that brought such misery to California. Maybe they should volunteer not to vote for a couple of election cycles in their new states until they can acclimatize to an environment where more than just the rich matter. Sort of a zero California dysfunction strategy. Suppress the dysfunction.
Being the largest economy means nothing when only the rich can thrive. China has a huge economy, would you want to be poor there?
You seem to be making a partisan political point, whereas I’m looking at structural issues (taxation, labor rights, education, healthcare, etc etc).
My concern is that the entire US system is set up so that only the rich can thrive. It’s perhaps just more obvious in California given its size and diversity.
It’s very democratic not to want to live with massive inequality. Yes California has vast structural issues, that’s the problem. Who do you think caused these, Santa Claus? It’s the people you elect.
The entire US system is not set up the way California is. This level of dysfunction is specific to California. That’s why you have problems other states do not. Although New York is nearly as bad a basket case.
I’m sure you wouldn’t live in China, so you DO understand that it isn’t the size of the economy that makes for great quality of life. Even though China’s surely a great place if you’re privileged and filthy rich, just like California. Do you see the problem now?
I take your point, but China simply isn’t a great comparator, as it’s not a liberal democracy.
I think I know what you’re getting at more generally, but perhaps you would be a bit more explicit: If it isn’t eg tax policy or the absence of universal health care or lack of European-style labor rights or affordable university education that you think are California’s structural problems, what are the structural problems you think Cali has that other states don’t?
Of course China works as an example of a huge economy it sucks to live in if you’re not rich. It’s a huge economy isn’t it? Much much bigger than California’s.
Taxes in California are an enormous problem and your tax base is shrinking because poor people don’t pay much tax. The rich are escaping because of the taxes and the business unfriendly environment. Highest sales taxes in the nation, highest state income taxes. There are much more business friendly states.
California teachers are among the most highly paid while your students rank at the bottom in both math and reading. What are you paying for? You also pay for schools for millions of people there illegally. Do you think that’s a good idea?
Unfunded pension liabilities means you have more debt than any other state.
Californians healthcare problems are a result of your politicians insisting on the taxpayers covering the costs of millions of illegal immigrants. Do you know how expensive that is with as many illegals as you have? Your sanctuary cities invite illegals who you then get to pay for. Other states don’t do that.
California is not a right to work state so the unions can keep you out of your job.
You have more homeless people than any other state. You can set up tent cities and block business entrances. You can lie around in hotel entrances so people have to step over you. And you can use the public streets as a toilet.
These are all things forced upon you by your elected leaders and every one of them reduces your quality of life. The article of course lists many more.
Ah got it. You think a supply side pro-business/low tax economy improves quality of life of the working class? Has that ever worked for the working class anywhere? I guess you don’t think the Scandi/European-style mixed economy with high innovation and strong social welfare is a good idea?
Read the article. The author highlights many of the political missteps that make CA so dysfunctional. I do not think bad schools, the highest number of homeless, streets used as toilets, the highest poverty rate in the nation, the highest number of illegal immigrants, the highest state debt and a business unfriendly climate make for quality of life, no.
But perhaps the onus is on you to explain how all these things make life great for the highest number of poor people in the country.
CA doesn’t have the highest poverty rate in the country.
It has the highest “cost-adjusted poverty rate” in the country. Big difference.
In any event, I don’t disagree with you that CA needs to improve schools and address homelessness. Doubt anyone would tbh.
But I’m curious about the working class/middle class (ie not just the poorest). In Europe, these socioeconomic classes don’t have to eg pay for healthcare or eg pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for university/college, plus they get maternity/paternity leave and at least 5 weeks vacation etc (although of course that is threatened in the gig economy; I’m talking relative to the US, I’m not suggesting Europe is heaven on earth). In that regard, I wonder whether any state in the US is particularly well structured to allow people not in the top 10% or so to have a European-style quality of life.
In addition to topping the poverty chart, it has the highest number of people on welfare as well. Congratulations. You’re the tops!
California doesn’t have a middle class, that’s the problem. It has very rich and very poor. It used to have a middle class but those days are gone. Today, no state has higher inequality than CA. How are those progressive politicians working out for you?
CA is aging 50% faster that the rest of the country because young people are leaving. How is that sustainable?
Other states have fewer poor, fewer illegals to support, lesser unfunded pension liabilities and subsequent state debt. All these things affect businesses and people. Only Hawaii, Nevada and NJ have higher unemployment than CA. This really hurts the poor. Well paid jobs are going to Texas and Arizona as the author points out.
The author highlights some of the better managed states in the article as well as the reasons they are better managed. But the issue is California. After all, other states can’t accept the entire population of CA and most states won’t take the illegal immigrants. So CA really has to fix its problems, escape will work for some but not for everyone in CA. Fixing CA is the answer.
But the questions for Californians include:
How do you fix your schools? It’s not money, your teachers are already among the highest paid but your test scores are very poor.
How do you fix your homeless situation? You’re broke so you can’t start building facilities. Is it okay for them to set up tent cities on public streets? What should the non homeless use to get around if the streets are blocked? Is public defecation legal? If so, should it be? If not, what do you plan to do about it? SF already has a map of human excrement sites so the public can avoid them. Is that okay?
How do you fund your pension liabilities? Raise taxes again? Are your public pension liabilities reasonable?
Do you want to accept any and all illegal immigrants who want to live in CA? If yes, how do you plan to pay for them all, healthcare and education? If not, why the sanctuary cities? Should illegals who commit numerous crimes be deported and if so, why aren’t your leaders doing so?
Why is your LA DA ending cash bail even after it was voted down by the public?
Those sorts of questions may help Californians decide if they do want to dig out of the hole and how they can do so. California could also look to other states that have more able political leaders. California is a US state, not a country. What it needs to do is figure out how to become a well managed US state. Otherwise it could always secede. 🙂
Annette, you have a habit of making good points that I (and I suspect any reasonable person) would agree with, but then you follow your preconceived worldviews down a rabbit hole, including your preoccupation with illegal immigrants.
For instance, it is silly to describe California as “broke” or to suggest that the homeless crisis is caused by a lack of money. First, CA has ready access to the capital markets; check the credit default swaps on its debt. Second, CA has spent billions of dollars of public and private money on homelessness the past few years.
In a free country, one cannot simply permanently lockup homeless people who are mentally ill, drug addicted, or pretty criminals. However, I would suggest it’s obviously right that there should be a role for mental health institutions (“sectioning” in British parlance) alongside a developed social welfare system that can support continued rehabilitation in the community where appropriate. It’s ridiculous that in CA homeless people are endless jailed and released. Arizona for example does a far better job in seeing this holistically as a law enforcement/social care issue, not just the former.
I absolutely agree CA needs more effective management of these issues. Building more affordable housing is obviously essential too. But money is not the main problem.
The homeless crisis isn’t caused by a lack of money. It’s caused by politicians who are okay with tent cities blocking public streets and businesses. Who are okay with people using the street for a bathroom.
But you should give some thought as to why California is the state with more homeless people than any other. And no, it isn’t the weather. Rather than scraping the barrel trying to defend California, why don’t you try to figure out what California political leaders are doing wrong. Unless you think that somehow they cannot solve the problem or even address it. In which case I would agree with you and suggest you hire different leaders.
Annette, I’m not defending anyone; I agreed with you that California needs to address the issue. And I already identified e.g. the treatment of mental health and addiction as a major issue that needs addressing. It’s a hugely complex problem: a quick google will show you the dozens of high quality research papers, policy proposals, and newspaper articles devoted to the subject. I don’t think any rational person is denying the problem.
So the big question is why isn’t your political leadership addressing the issues? Do you not elect people to do this or are they completely off the hook for all of California’s problems? And why don’t you elect different people once it’s clear that the ones you elected can’t do the job? Political leaders are not hired to write research papers, they are hired to solve problems. And yours do not.
Repeated failure on the part of your elected leaders to address everything from homelessness to power outages to failing schools to unfunded pension liabilities to illegal immigration to unemployment don’t seem to get anyone tossed out of office. That leaves only one possible answer – Californians don’t mind living with these massive systemic problems.
Well, I’m not an American so I don’t get to vote. I’ve lived in the US (MA, CT, NY, Cali), Asia, and Europe, and as I’ve made clear I think California has its problems, including the morally unacceptable housing crisis. But I have a different perspective having lived all over the world. California has many virtues too, including being welcoming of diversity. We don’t live in an absolutist/zero-sum world.
I guess I should be glad you can’t vote although the people who can vote in California don’t seem to be any more likely to hold politicians accountable than you are. I guess if you don’t mind living in a place that rivals Pyongyang for being unable to keep the lights on and Hades for being unable to keep the fires out, it’s your choice. But don’t try to convince anyone else that this is good or normal because it isn’t.
As ever Annette, you undermine your good points with ad hominem attacks and ridiculous falsities.
A few hours of energy cuts due to a poorly managed grid does not a Pyongyang make. Now I worry you one of those anti-renewable energy and electric car types, alongside all the other things that seem to enrage you so easily.
I look forward to the next exciting instalment of “Annette versus BlackRock and the rest of the rational world!” 😉
I made no ad hominem attack. I said nothing false. California has rolling blackouts every year. I hope you don’t have an electric car or you might not be going anywhere. But at least you mentioned the words “poorly managed” so we may be on the right track with you. We could soon even tip you over into an expectation that leaders actually do something. Do you really not know about California’s inability to manage land in a way that fires don’t ravage millions of acres every year?
I look forward to the next exciting installment of “Eva…..speaking for the rational world and other fantasies” 😉
Of course I have an electric car, Annette! I feel like you should know me better by now haha. A fun drive between LA and SF on the PCH. 0-60 in a couple of seconds. Barely anyone will be buying gas guzzlers in 10 years time. Check out GM’s Super Bowl advert about Norway’s electric cars. I’d love to know your reaction to that!
Electric cars are big batteries, Annette! Take a read about the technology and the market trends/financing. Internal combustion is dead. NextEra’s market cap already topped ExxonMobil’s last year. Writing’s on the wall.
I charge it either at a station on the highway (full coverage on the West coast) or from solar panels on my house. Democratisation of the energy grid. Anyway, we’ve veered off-topic. Have a read about it. And take a look at GM’s ad.
Sounds like you don’t know much about Norway’s electric cars. In any case, I’m not about subsidies for rich people I think they should pay more, not less.
But by all means, provide a full explanation of how EVs are purchased and operated in Norway and how it’s all paid for. Don’t run off now just when this is about to get fun.
You’re ancestry doesn’t really answer the question but we already know that you’re kind of a sucker for good marketing. Why don’t you explain the situation with Norway’s electric cars. Let’s see what you know. Let’s have some fun shall we? Here are a few starter questions for you…. 1) what amenities does Norway provide for both purchase and operation of EV? There’s at least 4. 2) how are these financed? IOW, who is paying for these amenities? And in reference to the super bowl ad, why would a supposedly smart company use Will Ferrell for any purpose? 🙂
Ahhh Annette, I’m not your personal google! What do you want to know? That electric car sales in Norway exceed internal combustion car sales? That Norway aims to end internal combustion car sales by 2025?
Well answer the questions I posted above for starters. Show me how much you know. About the vehicles, and how they are financed, not sales. And if you know the answers to the above questions, you’d also know that Norway could end non EV car sales tomorrow.
I had a feeling you might be missing more than a few pieces of information. And I sense that you may have figured out right about now that this was the wrong subject to challenge me on. And maybe you have suddenly discovered something you need to go do desperately? Lol, advertisers love people like you.
You haven’t answered so what would I be taking your word for? Here’s the questions again….
1) what amenities does Norway provide for both purchase and operation of EV? There’s at least 4.
2) how are these financed? IOW, who is paying for these amenities
And I’ll add another couple too. 3) when will EVs be self-sustaining, i.e. free of fossil fuel generated subsidies? 4) does mining battery-related minerals generate emissions? 5) what is the one innovation that has done the most to reduce emissions?
Surely your Norwegian/Swedish heritage provides the answers to these questions! Maybe Will Ferrell has the answers!
When did this turn into some kind of school test haha? These are involved questions and I don’t have the time/inclination to do justice to them point by point; you can research this yourself! As a starting point, take a look at McKinsey’s “The road ahead for e-mobility” (NB it’s from 2019 so not the latest numbers for Norway et al). Both EV and renewables markets are complex, but it’s a fascinating mix of technology and policy with lots of nuance and path-dependency, so hopefully you’ll enjoy learning. If you take a look at the top performing ETFs last year, you’ll see the returns are market-leading too.
“When did this turn into some kind of school test haha?”
The minute you mentioned Norway and EVs. I wanted to see what you actually knew about the subject, which isn’t much apparently. Your information is from a Will Ferrell commercial. Think about that for a minute. You’ll find it as amusing as I did.
“These are involved questions and I don’t have the time/inclination to do justice to them point by point; you can research this yourself”
They are indeed very involved, much more so than a Super Bowl ad. And have no fear, you never came close to doing them justice. I don’t have to look them up. I know the answers, you see unlike you Ms. Attorney, I learned never to ask a question that I don’t know the answer to.
In any case, if you’d like to be educated on the subject rather than appearing not to have a clue what you’re talking about, you can find the answers to every one of them. And it wouldn’t hurt you a bit. Although it may disillusion you a bit.
Any halfway decent renewable energy lawyer could name four things that Norway might provide for the purchase and operation of EVs. In fact, I’d bet any EV owner could do so even if they were not a “renewable energy lawyer”.
Any renewable energy lawyer could also answer if mineral mining for EV batteries generates emissions. And yet you cannot. Odd that.
The truth is not an ad hominem. It’s just the truth. Attorneys are not by definition, all good at their job. You disagree that a renewable energy attorney would be able to determine how Norway is paying for EVs?
That hurts Annette. I’m contemplating my inferior legal abilities as I watch the sun set over the ocean from my deck in the Palisades. A bit cloudy tonight. I do hope my electric car still starts in the morning 😉
Awww, you don’t seem to want to talk about Norway and EVs anymore. Yet you kept insisting on doing so. Did you not expect me to take you up on it? As any good lawyer knows, don’t ask the question if you don’t know the answer. Law school 101.
And I dropped so many hints to help you answer the questions on these very important issues. Perhaps your legal expertise is not in Norway or EVs. I certainly hope you don’t use Will Ferrell’s ad in any of your obviously important legal work. 😉
Hello, I’m back (glutton for rude treatment I guess!), and I really don’t understand your aggression, Annette. You come across as a very rude person, and I can’t help but wonder how far that has got you in life.
One does not need to be a New Haven-educated lawyer to get a good overview of the EV or RE markets. I assumed from your laundry list of questions (tell me if I’m wrong) that you were getting at the fact that Norway heavily subsidises EVs, including infrastructure/road use. I would then point out: e.g. Norway has ploughed its natural resource wealth into renewables via the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund (and that I think the US should similarly invest it’s wealth sustainably like Norway does as fossil fuel use winds down (cost of capital is just too high now to be competitive in long term with renewables, and that’s before one considers oil companies’ underpricing of stranded assets; see what Norway’s Equinor is doing in transition to RE)); that the US spends more on fossil fuel subsidies than renewable subsidies, and yet fossil subsidies have increased even as market price of renewables has fallen below the price-parity threshold with fossil fuels, etc etc. I would also point out that net zero or carbon neutrality does not mean that that there are no emissions or environmental harms associated with EVs, hence the “net” part etc etc. And finally I would say again that you shouldn’t take my word for it. Take a look at the returns on RE ETFs last year. Or Tesla’s market cap. Or have a read of Larry Fink’s letter to shareholders.
But I really don’t see why I should have to write out for you what I already guided to you (i.e. the McKinsey report) or what you can indeed google for yourself. This isn’t advanced stuff and certainly nothing to develop an inferiority complex over.
P.S. If it’s not clouds, what is it? Not ozone from internal combustion engines I hope?
I don’t think it’s aggressive to ask you what you know about a subject you brought up several times. In your long post above, you still do not answer the questions.
I asked very simple questions. Nothing tricky, just stuff like what 4 things does Norway provide to people for buying and driving EVs. Do you know the answer?
And then I asked as well how they fund it. You seemed immediately stumped as well as offended at even being asked.
Yes maybe the questions regarding emissions generated by EV battery metal mining were a bit deeper but should not have been beyond a renewable energy attorney. Should someone in your position NOT know what the most emission reducing innovation is?
Yet you immediately ruffled as though it was unreasonable for me to ask such questions since apparently everything anyone needed to know was in a Super Bowl ad. I’ve already told you. I know the answers, so why would I google? It was you being asked the questions, not me. I don’t know what it is that you think I’m not taking your word for since you didn’t answer the questions.
In any case, if you don’t want to talk about a subject, and you don’t know much about it to begin with, maybe you should not bring it up. If you do, be prepared to be questioned without getting ruffled and offended.
What percentage of the worlds oil does Norway export? How about natural gas. Do you know the percentage it exports on that? Throw in what percentage of the world’s population Norway represents. Any inkling on that?
Here’s another question. Why doesn’t Norway allow EV sales to develop without the 4 items it provides to drivers? Which you will of course have to know what it provides to answer the question. After all, Norwegians want to drive EVs don’t they?
I’m such a sucker Annette, because I do still genuinely want to have a proper policy discussion. I remain perplexed by why you think that making me google a load of technical stats facilitates such a discussion? I set out above a succinct but I think relatively decent snapshot of some of the key policy issues as I see them based on my experience, including regarding EV incentives and the Norwegian energy transition with Equinor. Contrary perhaps to the idea you have, lawyers are paid for their judgment, not their ability to recite lists, which a trained parrot can do.
So let’s have a policy discussion on EVs or RE by all means and you can cite any facts/sources you like and we can address them. (The burden is not on me to make or substantiate your arguments for you, as we lawyers might say.)
That would be a productive use of time. But I’m not going to google endless lists of stats for you when you can do that yourself! Especially when literally the first google hit for “norway EV policy” is the Norwegian EV website listing all their EV incentives! If you’d been to law school, you’d know that the ability to collate a list of stats isn’t a sign of intelligence. Having a cool-headed, reasoned policy debate using well-marshalled and authoritatively-sourced facts to support your position is.
P.S. Oh look how smart I am, I just copy/pasted a list from the Norwegian EV association’s website haha. I didn’t even know a single stat off the top of my head. I guess I must be really bad at my job financing hundreds of millions of dollars of renewable energy projects 😉
* * * *
The Norwegian EV incentives:
No purchase/import taxes (1990-)
Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase (2001-)
No annual road tax (1996-)
No charges on toll roads or ferries (1997- 2017).
Maximum 50% of the total amount on ferry fares for electric vehicles (2018-)
Maximum 50% of the total amount on toll roads (2019)
Free municipal parking (1999- 2017)
Parking fee for EVs was introduced locally with an upper limit of a maximum 50% of the full price (2018-)
Access to bus lanes (2005-).
New rules allow local authorities to limit the access to only include EVs that carry one or more passengers (2016)
50 % reduced company car tax (2000-2018).
Company car tax reduction reduced to 40% (2018-)
Exemption from 25% VAT on leasing (2015)
Fiscal compensation for the scrapping of fossil vans when converting to a zero-emission van (2018)
Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)
one mention: most of our homeless are on fentanyl supplied by China through the leaky border of Mexico. Many or most are mentally ill, from drugs, from living the conditions they do. We have ballot harvesting and other practices that used to be considered illegal. So it’s very difficult, if not impossible to have a fair election. It all started going down hill in the 90’s. Liberals aren’t liberals anymore in the US they have sold out. It’s no use for the US to pay for college, give free healthcare when students fill classes and majors of Women’s Studies, Black studies…no jobs for most of what college teaches. California legislature voted for government healthcare but the found out it would cost double the amount of the whole California budget $400b added on to the $200b budget.
The rich want cheap unskilled labor. The rich send their kids to private schools. These are some of the reasons they turn the other cheek to illegal migration. The liberals say we should open our doors but they lock theirs.
We legally accept a million immigrants a year with another 2 million standing in line playing by the rules.
The left has the loudest voices. We used to say, the protestors are all the Left leaning Liberals because the Right leaning Conservatives are working. Another problem is California’s education system has become a indoctrination rather then teaching how to critically think for yourself and learn skills that lead to a job.
“diversity”? Diversity of what? Class diversity – many wealthy, many poor, fewer middle. Racial – 50% Hispanic. Political – 85% Democrat. Age – Many youth, many seniors fewer middle aged. Bifurcated diversity isn’t diversity.
… when the MSS clusters en masse in a state you know that intellectual property of value exists and is being developed … and the door remains wide open.
Nope. I don’t even see tourists wanting to go to CA anymore, because of what they see globally in social media. The increasingly accepted remote working culture means people will be able to avoid the expensive clustering enforced by Big Tech (e.g. Salesforce).
I would say the danger is where the rich isolate themselves. The Duke of Wellington said the aristocracy should never isolate themselves as it would lead to their demise. The tradition of the landowners son boxing with the blacksmiths and playing cricket together and fighting together meant classes were not isolated. In France they were and it led to the Revolution. If one looks at village memorials from WW1, landowner and labourer died together.
Money does not turn cowardice into courage or venality into honesty.
The California Democratic Party defined itself as the pro-illegal immigration party to appeal to the children of illegal migrants who had voting rights. California used to be (pre-2000) split about evenly between the Democrats and Republicans, but is now a one party state based on the Latino vote. That is the problem. People don’t want to discuss the drawbacks to low-skilled immigration, but they are plain to see.
California has been swamped by low-skill immigration, legal and illegal. First of all, the state is wildly over-populated given the fragility of the existing ecology. Second, while there are some talented immigrants, most of them are very low-skilled. This has created a pool of labor to drive down wages for low-skill jobs (how many white people in California don’t have a cleaner?), but also created mass poverty and sky-high housing costs. Third, the state education system is completely dysfunctional because children don’t speak English and their parents don’t value education.
Yep, uncontrolled immigration has dragged down the employment chances and wages from the bottom of the scale and distorted the elections, the demographic and the labour market. The nail in the coffin after shipping all the manufacturing jobs to China et al. What was interesting in the 2020 election was listening to the proportion of black and Asian Americans, who recognised this attack on their communities had to end, turn away from the Dems and become Trump Patriots #blexit #lexit etc
What was interesting in the 2020 election was listening to the proportion of black and Asian Americans, who recognised this attack on their communities had to end, turn away from the Dems and become Trump Patriots #blexit #lexit etc
But how come Trump didn’t win the any of the 2 presidential election in California?
Hispanics (and they’re not Cuban-Americans) now make up about 40% of California’s population. The proportion of white people has fallen by 50% in a generation. Trump was never within miles of winning in California.
Reading the posts from the UK its fascinating how similar the issues are! It is about immigration ( not immigrants) and their presence does drive down wages and disempowers the existing poor. Increasing inequality in the UK – and Europe and probably China and India. Too many people in the world with too efficient communication all with enhanced expectations equals problems.
Except in the USA, the immigrants are given a “holy innocent” status not found anywhere else. Here no one is allowed to question in the slightest whether the immigrants are criminals or whether we should have so many. Trump won because of his stand on immigrants, and the Dems are setting themselves up for another round of “immigrant policy losses”.
That’s right., blame the immigrants and the poor. In all these discussions irrespective of where they are centred it is always the immigrants and the poor who are to blame. The poor get poorer because of an influx of cheap labour driving down wage levels. Housing costs go up because of the imbalance between supply and demand. The list is endless. But what is never discussed is the role of the rich, both indigent and incomer in benefitting from this process. In the current situation the poor are getting poorer but the rich are getting richer. The two phenomena are never tied together. It being much more satifying to decry the former and laud the latter. Immigration is a problem but its exploitation to bolster the wealth and well being of those who exploit it is equally problematic. Not least for those who are being exploited.
Illegals drive down wages, drive up poverty, destroy schools, destroy neighborhoods. There are too many. Trump was right. Deport deport deport deport deport. You say “Housing costs go up because of an imbalance between supply and demand”. Yes, moron, very true – the illegals drive up the cost because there is an infinite number of them.
People need housing once they are ‘here’. Whether they should be where they are and how they got there is another topic. Those requiring housing do not drive up the cost. Those that provide the housing do. Simple economics. Illegals, as you term them also provide services to the sorts of people who support Trump, as much as Biden, and they most certainly do not destroy the schools, neighborhoods,wages, or drive down the wealth of those who those who live off the backs of immigrants, both legal and illegal. Deporting them might marginally help the poor but there are other reasons that people remain poor in the richest country in the world, and those get little consideration when immigrants remain so easy a target.
Whether they should be where they are and how they got there is another topic. That IS the topic. Immigration is meant to benefit the host country, not the immigrant. “Illegals” is what they are; shifting to undocumented or some other euphemism does not change the underlying reality. Those services, by the way, were provided before they arrived. The US did not magically discover hotel housekeeping and residential grounds maintenance only when the influx of illegals began.
they most certainly do not destroy the schools, neighborhoods,wages, Of course, they do. Destroy may be harsh but they certainly impact these things, especially wages.
When a teacher spends huge amounts of time on non-English speakers, the other students suffer. CA schools went from the USA’s best to 49 under the unrelenting pressure of millions of illegal kids.
In Canada, the 3 largest cities are also the destination point for foreign migrants, The population growth and housing costs have skyrocketed, the local group whose generations built it are now a minority and most can not even think of owning their own home where they were born and raised. The current Liberal govt is making dramatic increases in foreign immigration in the next two years. To even question or make valid criticism of these immigration policies brings the left progressive cancel cult accusations and persecution . First, we need to restore , uphold and protect the human right of free speech from those who have suppressed and violated it for so long.
The fact that the rich are getting richer does not mean the poor have to get poorer. In fact, in a economically growing society with no barriers to movement (but restricted borders) then most of the population will get richer. On a world scale that applies also, and has done so over the last 40 years as the growth of enterprise has greatly reduced poverty – not eliminated it, but greatly reduced it.
The problem now though is that governments do not do what they should do to allow this process to continue, by breaking down barriers to the poor to move up, especially in education which in most of the West has become a disgrace. It does not help of course that monopolies seem to be encouraged – just look at the success of a certain on-line retailer and the enormous damage it has done to so many small stores which used to create much middle class wealth, and a way from working class lives up the income ladder. Ditto the vast food supermarkets
Barriers to education, spot on. In California today, school boards are focused on renaming closed schools with offensive names like George Washington. Meanwhile other states are opening schools, some have been open since last fall. California students not in private schools will, of course, be even more behind. But that choice was made by Californians.
The poor get poorer because of an influx of cheap labour driving down wage levels. Weren’t you saying that the illegal immigrant is blameless? Yes, of course, cheap labor drives down wage levels. Employers can pay what they like because who will the illegal complain to?
But what is never discussed is the role of the rich, both indigent and incomer in benefitting from this process. Plenty of people are willing to discuss it, but the gatekeepers of such discussions – elected officials, media, business – tend to stifle that discussion because it makes them look bad.
Its telling that domestic state to state migration can be criticized without comment but mass culture changing foreign migration brings forth immigrant bashing accusation. It mirrors the left liberal Democrats taking down of borders fences and obstacles on the southern border and putting up fences and soldiers in the capital to keep out those “other “demonised Americans hyped but unrealized” domestic terrorist” threat. Hopefully , at least here,we can openly discuss the public issues that profoundly affect our lives and world without the tiresome self appointed intolerant woke censor trolls policing and parsing the discussion .
Because – brace yourself – the “other” party is crazy. And, life in California is pretty good. There are serious problems but when people move (and they do) they move to other liberal “areas” like Austin (TX) or Colorado. They don’t move to Alabama.
if they did move to Alabama, they would find a city with more per-capita engineers than any other city, or close to it. They would find housing that is far more affordable without the homeless population, the idiocy of cosmetic names changes of schools, and all the rest. Those rednecks you seem to hate don’t have to deal with rolling blackouts during summer months, either, in a state that is known for heat and humidity. But, sure; one party Dem rule for decades is the ‘other’ party’s fault.
He has a problem with all places that he perceives to be inhabited by people ‘who vote the wrong way’ . For the UK his go to examples are Clacton, Blackpool and Skegness.
You are mistaken, I don’t have a problem as I don’t care at all about Blackpool. The painful reality (that you pretend that it doesn’t exit) is that those places are left behind because no one really wants to live there. The people that live there don’t want to live there – but they are stuck.
Housing is affordable because no one wants to live there…. And 1 state party rule (Dems) NY/CA is richer than 1 party rule (Reps) in Alabama or Mississippi. ALl the good stuff (music, food, art, culture, science, innovation) all happens in liberal places…not the backwoods of ‘bama!
Does the photo attached to the article look like life is good? I mean, if you’re very rich and you can seal yourself off from this, sure. But most people aren’t very rich, even in California.
The only way out if for the Hispanic communities of California to move to the right and vote in populist republicans to oust the Democratic apparatus. This is possible. Florida is a model.
Cubans in FL (not all) are better educated than the Mexicans ones for example (Or Central America) The ones that arrvied in the 60s were affluent and highly educated (the upper classes of Cuba) The new arrivals are still better educated that Mexicans . The middle class Mexican migrants moved to Texas not California.
Florida (geography) generally attracts rich/middle classes of Latin America. You can not “cross the border” on foot like in CA or AZ. I don’t know the stats about the new Cuban arrivals but Cuba in general has a better education system than Central America.
Good point. Immigrants do better outside of California than inside though as the author says. Isn’t it just easier for them to move? Florida is a great example.
The reason why for generations the most deprived areas (I am from one) of the UK kept voting Labour notwithstanding the fact that doing so never improved their lot. Certainly the people the labour party and their acolytes did well enough. If you were a cynical you might conclude that keeping the population poor kept them voting labour.
Pete Kreff
3 years ago
“acronyms are a symptom of white supremacy culture”
At least we now know what an English Literature degree from the University of Pennsylvania is worth.
Judy Englander
3 years ago
Perhaps I’m being nitpicky here, but I’m puzzled by the use of ‘feudalism’ to describe California. Feudalism was a system of mutual responsibilities in a rigid hierarchy of social class.Those at the top had to protect those lower down; those lower down had clearly defined obligations to serve in certain situations and at certain times of the year. But California as you describe it is divided between haves and have-nots with no oblesse oblige.
You’re quite right of course but probably the writer means feudal in the colloquial sense of ‘all the power and most of the money concentrated into the barons’ hands, the king in his position only with their consent’. That’s an incomplete description of feudalism but a reasonably accurate one of, well, California.
I’ve heard accounting firms, law firms, the acting business and some sports such as cricket described as feudal. It’s usually shorthand for ‘a small number of people making pots of money thanks to serf underlings making next to nothing’.
Yes, I’m sure that’s what’s meant, Jon. I was being nitpicky!
Tim Corn
3 years ago
Working, in the UK, for a Palo Alto based company, I once told my Sonoma-resident boss that I was planning to blow the leaves off my lawn at the weekend. “Don’t you have Mexicans?”, he inquired with a smile.
They say Americans don’t understand the word irony. Ironic really.
David Bell
3 years ago
California is living proof that the “progressive” left have no answers. Their policy of not control burring created the perfect conditions for wild fires. There police of not improving (and reducing) water collection causes lack of water in cities. This is not climate change, as they like to claim, but bad management.
Anyone who ran for office in California on a platform of keeping the electricity on, keeping the excrement off the streets, preventing the homeless from setting up tent cities wherever they want to, reforming pension liabilities, stopping illegal immigration and being a bit more business friendly would immediately lose.
Because the left wing scare the electorate by lying to them about the Conservative agenda – think “privatise the NHS” and “XX days/hours to save the NHS” as a case study in how the left lie!
It’s just an experiment in combining globalization with the welfare state. And it can’t work for the obvious reasons that politicians in California can’t or won’t admit. But then they are sealed off from the people they think don’t matter.
regnad.kcin.fst
3 years ago
The majority of the tech jobs are given to visa workers. There are millions of H-1Bs, L-1, OPT, J-1, E-2, and other classes. Some of these get US FEDERAL TAX BREAKS – in other words, the US Federal government gives you a tax break to not hire a USA citizen. The digital serfs are paid under the prevailing wage. Although some qualify for Green cards (first step to citizenship), country limits mean that the wait is now 20 years (this is due to a per country limit, and 80% of the serfs are Indian).
Jeffrey Chongsathien
3 years ago
This essay doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of Cali’s problems. The typhus outbreaks, the human faeces and urine, the trash and rats, the tent cities everywhere (the Venice boardwalk has never seen so many homeless), the non-obvious homeless living in cars but discounted from the statistics, the used needles all over SF, LAX as a homeless shelter, the riots, the massive corruption by government employees bleeding the taxpayer dry, the indicted city councillors, the pre-2020 traffic, the Calexit is real – not just the high profile names like Musk and Rogan but what’s left of the middle-class.
“This “woke” agenda was taken to a new extreme this week when the San Francisco School Board decided to rename 44 schools because they were named after people connected to racism or slavery.”
Funny how the folk promoting this renaming and distancing symbolism never turn their attention to the symbols and teachings of a certain Middle-Eastern religion – you know, the one which was invented by the warlord (“the perfect man” to his adherents) who kept slaves, advocated slavery, and more…
Its not possible if its the state’s own median wage but is if its the national median wage, in their haste the writer probably didn’t check their own syllogy.
Richard Cooper
3 years ago
My Californian cousins have joined the “Texodus”. The parents are delighted but their teenage daughters loathe it.
Teenagers are not known to like moving. It’s part of being a teenager. Losing your friends is paramount. I have some sympathy for them. But their parents probably know they are far better off out of California.
I have a son in law from LA but thankfully he knows not to go back. They’re happy in Colorado.
Iliya Kuryakin
3 years ago
Yes, but nowhere in this article does the author point out the obvious, that California is run by the Democrats.
Sean MacSweeney
3 years ago
I assume that the fact these idiots keep voting for the “Democrats” means the like living in a failed state, I totally understand why Texas wants to leave the “United States” as they don’t want these idiots turning the lone star state into another left wing failure
… Roger must have known only late hippies … the originals were far from envenomed … especially in Summer on the slopes of Mt Tamalpais …
Quentin Vole
3 years ago
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. Edward Abbey (1927-89)
Sgt Dad
3 years ago
Not only have these incidents exposed his cluelessness, but also the political class’ imperviousness to the needs of non-elite business and ordinary citizens of the state.
Laissez-les manger du gâteau
Eugene Norman
3 years ago
80% of jobs earning less than the median wage is impossible. By definition that’s always 50%.
David Smith
3 years ago
mass immigration did this to CA, and if its not stopped now will do this to the rest of America
Earl King
3 years ago
As has been pointed out, CA is failing. It is failing because “progressives” cannot learn. They are committed to social policy regardless of whether it works or achieves any of the goals set out. The problem with progressive policies is that they are based on a lie. They are based on human behavior that doesn’t exist. Systemic Racism…There is still a dearth of examples. For example, cash bail is often pointed out to an example of systemic racism. It is empirically not. They point out that is impacts Black Americans more than any other race. That may point out to a greater instance of criminal behavior in a community but that still is not systemic racism. If you poor, no matter what color…white, green, yellow, brown are of zero consequence if you cannot put up anything of value nor have the 10% cash you need for bail. Cash bail is a problem for systemic poverty not the amount of melanin in ones skin. Black poverty rate is 22%, the avg. in America is 11%. For married Black Americans it is 7%…..Gee that statistic should point to the problem but progressives will fail to see facts. Systemic poverty is the problem, not skin color.
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
You can go to the beach (be LA or San Fran) and hit the slopes. Only Northern Italy and Provence can give you that!
But you’re not actually going to do either because you’ll be sitting in traffic for hours (actually, probably days) on end to get from the beach to the ski slopes.
Well, the modern Lebanon was built by the French as you probably know. So if it’s not the bombing season it is/was very pleasant. Skiing by floodlight is novel, if not terribly taxing. Inland off course you have Baalbek and Anjar to admire, plus excellent vino from the Beqaa Valley.
Cyprus skiing on Mt Olympus, 6000′ high, put in place by the British during the halcyon days of Empire. Again not terrible exhilarating but the drive up, through the Troodos Mts makes it all worth it.
Parts of it from East Beirut through Jounieh up to Byblos and Batroun, if you never left that area you’d never guess it wasn’t fully Christian. The boozing is legendary. And there are some great places to see along that way. I hope they can recover from this miserable last 18 months, it’s a brilliant place.
Derek M
3 years ago
As goes California so goes the USA, as goes the USA so goes the rest of the west (at least the Anglosphere) ……..it’s coming to a town near you (if it isn’t there already)
David J
3 years ago
The VAPA decision surely marks a high-water level in Woke stupidity. Bright but dim, and noisy with it, is my view of those responsible.
Derrick Byford
3 years ago
“Over the past decade, 80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage” Very interesting article and sorry to be pedantic, but isn’t the median wage the point where 50% earn less and 50% earn more?
Lizzie J
3 years ago
As a Brit visiting California last year I was really surprised to see the very ordinary 2 bed flat that our friend’s son was renting, living there with his wife and three children. In his late 30s, he has an MBA from a top school and a job in investment management. His wife worked full time in PR until her third pregnancy. They are struggling to buy a house (or even an apartment). Compared to a comparable family in London he was living to a much lower standard. So much for the Californian dream.
LCarey Rowland
3 years ago
When I was kid in the 1950’s-60’s, growing up in the South, a tv sitcom came along about a hillbilly family leaving their shabby Appalachian homestead and trucking out to southern Cal with grandma on a rocker on the back of the truck. The theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies featured this advice:
“They said California is the place ye oughter be, so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. . . Hills, that is . . . swimmin’ pools, movie stars. . . ” blah blah blah
Then a little while later Scott Mckenzie came along with his huge hit song: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. . .” which generated some serious interest and migration among my boomer generation.
Meanwhile there were a few significant omens along the way, Otis Redding sittin’ on a dock of the bay, watchin’ the tide roll away. . . left my home in Georgia headed for the Frisco bay . . .” with a note regret in his tone.
By ‘n by, after the Shockley transistors and after Jobs and Wozniak, after Larry and Sergei and Yahoo and Facebook and venture capitalists and the demise of Hotel California, not to mention Hollywood and downtown Burbank . . .
Now it seems California is the place folks don’t necessarily wanna be any more and so Jed and all his kin are picking up states and moving back Easterly.
That’s America for ye! We always were a pioneering people, seeking out the places where the grass is greener on the other side of the Great Divide. Turn off the lights on your way out, folks.
LCarey Rowland
3 years ago
When I was kid in the 1950’s-60’s, growing up in the South, a tv sitcom came along about a hillbilly family leaving their shabby Appalachian homestead and trucking out to southern Cal with grandma on a rocker on the back of the truck. The theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies featured this advice:
“They said California is the place ye oughter be, so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. . . Hills, that is . . . swimmin’ pools, movie stars. . . ” blah blah blah
Then a little while later Scott Mckenzie came along with his huge hit song: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. . .” which generated some serious interest and migration among my boomer generation.
Meanwhile there were a few significant omens along the way, Otis Redding sittin’ on a dock of the bay, watchin’ the tide roll away. . . left my home in Georgia headed for the Frisco bay . . .” with a note regret in his tone.
By ‘n by, after the Shockley transistors and after Jobs and Wozniak, after Larry and Sergei and Yahoo and Facebook and venture capitalists and the demise of Hotel California, not to mention Hollywood and downtown Burbank . . .
Now it seems California is the place folks don’t necessarily wanna be any more and so Jed and all his kin are picking up states and moving back Easterly.
That’s America for ye! We always were a pioneering people, seeking out the places where the grass is greener on the other side of the Great Divide. Turn off the lights on your way out, folks.
Peter de Barra
3 years ago
… for me, a final, pivotal fact was the discovery that the pious, once respected Sierra Club had ” in return for a huge, accepted donation ” been bribed to forever remain silent in the environmental cost and damage caused by the soaring influx of illegal incomers … silence bought. Ojai and Sea Ranch ” farewell from me.
M Spahn
3 years ago
80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage
I think perhaps you do not know what a median is.
eugene power
3 years ago
Very interesting. Why did so many Calis vote for Buydung ? can we expect the next republican Pres to come from Cali.. a sort of son of Trump on a surfboard ?
The same reason they vote for people like Pelosi and Gavin Newsom.
Tom Krehbiel
3 years ago
I am wondering about one thing in particular in the article: how can 80% of jobs pay below the median wage? I’m fairly certain that no more than half can. Good comments, BTW, from many of the folks here on the site.
Nicholas Rynn
3 years ago
The confusion of activity with achievement.
Stan Glib
3 years ago
The Tech Nerds are often lumped together in contexts like this, but it’s worth pointing out that there are huge rifts in that world too.
The ‘libs’ ie the progressives/SJWs form allegiances of the oppressed, who aim to cleanse corporations of its Cis White Maleness. Look out for pronouns and lots of emojis in their bios, diversity training and antiracism classes.
Then there’s the anti-woke, the self-described rationalists who want tech to return to its greasy masculine origins -they consume a lot of Jordan Peterson videos and feel that the previously ‘apolitical’ world of tech is being ruined by ‘Politics’. They hold equal parts resentment that nobody appreciates their immensely high IQ, and growing uneasiness about losing promotions to equally talented female programmers who are not completely socially inept and unpleasant to be around, which they put entirely down to positive discrimination.
It may seem overwhelmingly progressive on the surface but I think there’s a lot of growing resentment there beneath the surface.
Richard Brown
3 years ago
What, in the end, has technology brought us? Fairly obvious now – the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That’s not just a Californian problem – the globe either suffers from it now, or will suffer from it shortly, and not just in banana republics, like Zimbabwe.
And our Liberal elites are mostly on the right side of this divide. When they’ve finished telling us how to think, they will find they’ve been preaching to a vast mass of people who are not listening, but who do have votes.
Is there a genuinely working-class political party left in the world? One that represents the feelings of its members/class, I mean, rather than one which dictates the agenda of the rich and/or powerful.
Elaine Hunt
3 years ago
I don’t think what is happening in California , or other globalist dominated economies, can be properly described as feudalism
Feudal systems involved the formation and retention of long term hierarchies,,often across many generations, which were tied to landholding. Of course the people in the upper tiers received far more benefits , both economic and social, than those in the lower tiers, but there were still basic obligations from the lord to his vassals, particularly of protection from predators both human and animal. Vassalage between an armed man and his lord could be cancelled by the latters failure to come to his aid if requested.
This sense of long term commitment to both place and person seems entirely lacking in the new ‘elite’ : indeed, that is one of its most troubling and exploitative characteristics.
Annette Kralendijk
3 years ago
I wonder how all those Texans without power feel right now. Not too long ago a poster was boasting about how much of their power Texans get from wind. Well, the wind turbines apparently froze leaving much of the state with rolling blackouts. It used to be that rolling blackouts were a California thing but there are now so many Californians infecting Texas with their kooky ideas that I guess it’s spread. Enjoy your California lifestyle Texas!
David Boulding
3 years ago
“Progressives”? What an abuse of language. There is nothing “progressive” about socialism as it always ends in disaster. People who call themselves “progressive” are like those countries which name themselves “democratic”
I don’t have a problem with Californians destroying their own state. Whatever, that is their choice. My problem, particularly as a Coloradian is them moving to another state and going “Hmm… let’s try that again.”
Californians are moving to a lot of states trying to escape the dysfunction. I’ve noticed an influx in CO. I too hope they can be prevented from bringing the dysfunction with them.
by almost any measure, California is a wealthy state. Yet it is also dysfunctional. Being wealthy does not prevent people from making ridiculous decisions. NY is also wealthy, and people are leaving it, too. Doesn’t make all wealthy people bad human beings, but being rich often means no more than being able to avoid the ill effects of your voting decisions.
All that is true, but what are you gonna do about it?
Make CA/NY migration illegal?
if only we could
Any Californian who brings the social destruction of unlimited homeless unilmited illegals bad employment practice will destroy that state. Don’t californicate Texas-Colorado-Utah-Nevada.
It is already happening – so what are you gonna do about it?
you forgot AZ
Years ago, Money Magazine rated Prescott AZ as the best place to retire so many many Californians moved to the relatively small town and settled – raising housing prices beyond the reach of most natives. When they realized that there was really no upscale shopping in Prescott, they prevailed on the town fathers to destroy a mountain in order to establish a convenient shopping center.
Did they breed dysfunction? It may be in the eyes of the beholder. Prescott now has a pretty decent community college and hospital system and is trying to become a high tech area but housing prices are still beyond the reach of most people and traffic is horrendous. THen there is the water issue . There is not enough but hey, there is enough now so why worry about the future.
Rather like the Cotswolds in England
They do in California
Been to Newport Beach, have a friend there. Very affluent and very functional.
If you’re affluent, anywhere is functional. Rich people can buy their way out of dysfunction. The problem is that most Californians, the vast majority in fact, are not affluent. And the rich like to keep them that way. Who do you think is financially supporting people like Pelosi and Newsom?
They do and they vote. With their feet, money and votes. Literally.
Surely by now California would be empty….?
Mexican immigrants would be “crashing” in Malibu beach houses…
Yes, they vote for dysfunction for others but not for themselves. They have the dough to avoid the dysfunction. What do you think all those gated mansions are for? So they can live among the homeless like other Californians have to?
People are escaping California if, again, they have the dough. Those that can’t, well, they just can’t.
No gated mansions in Texas?
Texas has a middle class. And not nearly as many homeless. Why does California have so many homeless? What are they doing wrong?
very high housing costs in areas were service jobs are plentiful..
Your first sentence is perfection.
I’m multi-generation Californian. Grew-up in a family business, that still exists, my great-grandfather started in 1929. I live in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in California. One of the best of the best school districts, have a wonderful lifestyle …and you have no idea what you are talking about.
just a few stats:
1 in 4 people in California are living below the poverty line
1 in 5 were not born in the US
We have the highest taxes and our infrastructure rates 49th of the 50 states.
Our school system is near the bottom also. we have 60k homeless and counting, opiod deaths in the 1000’s, looks like a 3rd world country in some places and growing, no joke.
There are no homeless in my neighborhood, they don’t last an hour. They are driven to the nearest poor neighborhood and dropped off. The list of problems here are unfortunately too long to mention.
And yes my husband and I are planning on leaving the state I used to love in just a few years.
Rich people are leaving here in high numbers. But what California is really missing is the middle class. When the lower or middle class have no hope of upward mobility. people leave.
Another stat for you…
to rent a U-haul out of California is 1000’s but to rent a U-haul into California is $500.
It depends upon type of wealth. Where there are landowning families with a tradition of military services they are often very tough. They grow up with the village children. In Skyfall Bond returns to his family home. If one grew up stalking deer and attending schools such as Rannoch, Ampleforth, Sedburgh, Stonyhurst , where rugby, cross country runs and cold showers are compulsory, one soon toughens up. When it comes to the rugby pitch or elite military selection, money, does not protect one from pain. Sensible wealthy families bring a degree of Spartan conditioning to the bringing up of their children.
Rich people have plenty of issues. I live in an affluent neighborhood in Southern California, near LA. Everything is shiny on the outside. People come from liberal States to go to college in Cal and never leave.
Nope.
Affluent people caused the dysfunction in California. Didn’t you read the article?
It isn’t the middle-class or working class who are running the state and it’s political system.
Writing as a None-American born and living in the UK, the rich are the ones who breed dysfunction. There the ones “inventing” problems as you can see by Maslows Needs Pyramid, the vast majority of people are busy with putting food on tables, roofs over their heads and worrying about their kids education. The chattering classes, spend their days, inventing new sexes, new outrages they can cancel, and human rights for their pets. Their cooks, nanny’s, gardeners do all their worrying.
So yes , when they move to your State, they will carry on as nothing changed. Its happening/happened in the UK where immigrants aren’t supposed to fit in, the indigenous are supposed change for a better fit.
You might not like my answer, but you will find out I’m more right then wrong, the hard way.
I wouldn’t be so sure. History is full of examples (France, Iran, China….) of ruling classes that dug their own graves by supporting harmful policies.
They can especially as affluence can bankroll their superior woke virtue effluence.
Have you not met Antifa?
Oh yeah they do. Especially if they were born into wealth and think that they earned it. I offer you Justin Turdeau as an example. The guy went from drama teacher/snowboard dude to Prime Minister of Canada. He is poorly educated and dumb as a rock. But he is in the unique position of growing Canada’s debts past all sanity. The population that pays that debt back is way less wealthy than he is. His policy choices are all woke, and as stupid as you might expect given that. He is affluent, and so are his sycophantic fellow Liberals. The rest of you, us, can eat shit and pay the bills.
You gone make it illegal for Californians to move to Co or vote?
Sort of Hukou systems as in China?
Voting restrictions never applied to any Democrat in the past.
And those democrats are now all Deep South Republicans.
An yet… Did you read the big brag in the Times article on how the election was “fortified” It seems once your broken Nazi detector gives you permission, cheating is no obstacle to success. No wonder people booed Biden’s video at the Super Bowl.
… dolled up CA femmes in the Plaza at Santa Fe ? ” too much – we moved out …
“Hmm…let’s try that again” should be part of the lyrics of the Internationale.
Why don’t you turn off the water?
They should be banned from voting in whatever state they move to for a period of 30 years, and they should pay an impact tax to the existing residents for the rise in living costs they’ll force on them.
The inevitable product of taking neoliberalism’s principle of free movement of capital, goods and labour too seriously. Outsource your manufacturing to a cheap-labour mercantilist regime abroad – which certainly doesn’t take the aforementioned principle too seriously – and watch your skilled working class and middle-managerial class disappear to be replaced by a precariat in insecure service jobs. Then import mass labour to undercut wages in the service economy and make them feel even more insecure. The global investment elite, the rentiers, the tech nerds and their lawyers etc. get rich while everyone else gets poor. Mask all this with identity politics posturing and dumbed-down woke education, and the Ship of Fools sails on. Little wonder we’re seeing the rise of angry, headless populism leaning to the nationalist right. Then call them all racist rednecks on mass media and social media, threaten to throw them in jail for rioting and watch them get even angrier, and rightfully so. Brilliant. The genius of liberalism at work.
Progressive rather than Liberal in the JS Mill or WE Gladstone sense, but you are correct.
Liberals are at fault simply because they cannot bare to ally themselves with conservatives as somehow they may lose their identity. An identity that the far left progressives are stripping away from them, you’re either a wokeist or you are a fascist neo Nazi and no in between according to the far left. Wake up Liberals and ally with the conservatives as you have more in common than you think. Ps Conservatives does not mean far right either.
Exactly right, but I wouldn’t call it liberalism. It’s the alliance of corporate globalist neoliberalism with wokeism. Real liberals hate it as much as anyone.
True and that is why they need to swallow their pride and ally with the conservatives , which are not far right, they’re a different breed again.
Germany and Switzerland moved into advanced technology by mid 1990s ; there is little low and medium tech. This requires a German /Swiss mindset and education systems which do not exist in the Uk and USA apart from a few small areas.
Making robots whose arm moves with a precision of 0.01mm and Swiss watches of cannot be done outside of these countries; assembling cars in some countries can be done in countries like Slovakia . Basically it is machine tools and robots which are the key.
Eloquently said.
It seems that California, and much of the liberal West has yet to gird their loins and admit that post-nationalist globalization and the welfare state are incompatible.
What I call the ‘social globalists’ are all for the great human migration of the have-nots to the land of the haves.
To protest such policies is simply racist and xenophobic.
At the same time ‘corporate globalists’ are free to travel the world. showering their money and jobs on whatever pasture that they assess to be the greenest which in today’s terms means whichever jurisdiction bribes them with tax breaks and incentives.
So sooner or later you have a large portion of the economic demographic consisting of an uneducated and unskilled underclass that can’t pay taxes and a wealthy class that will simply move away if they feel over-taxed – taking their money and jobs with them.
The hollowed-out middle class which is mostly stuck where it is, can’t fill the void,
Up against that is the welfare state that insists on doubling down, spending money as if the new realities of globalism didn’t exist.
So poverty district schools aren’t performing poorly because some immigrants don’t value education – it’s all due to a “lack of funding because the rich don’t pay their fair share”.
The middle class gets hit with tax and fee hikes and has to buy Chinese toasters at Walmart to make ends meet.
We are going to have to choose.
The math doesn’t work.
Like all things it’s about balance. Globalism is here to stay in some form as it has been since the industrial revolution , that though does not mean that nations cannot be their own masters. Taxes are also a balanced necessity, they are needed, enough to fill the govt coffers for governance but not so high as to stifle growth. Same with welfare, enough to be a safety net ( hopefully short term ) till people get back on their feet but not enough to become a way of life. It’s all about balance.
Reading the article and comments, I feel people are missing the elephant. Instead of comparing California against other US states and south American countries, people should be looking at China and seeing what is happening there.
China is a threat in a way that Russian communism never was. It is centralised and planning how to deliver but using capitalist incentives to encourage effort and productivity.
… the MSS presence in California is estimated to be greater than in all but one other State … and not all by any means clustered around Stanford, Silicon Valley, Berkeley etcetera … yiu don’t have to be Chinese to take their red gold …
Company ( computer Games) my son works at in LA was bought ago by a Chinese Billionaire 2 years ago. Many Chinese set up their companies in Kanada and buy US Firms. Very interesting…
Oh but at what cost to the individual humanity and soul. Golden prison bars are still prison bars.
Newsome saying another round of IPOs is a sign of California’s overall fiscal health is like Louis XVI saying the French economy was in great shape because he has just built another palace. Lesson from history: It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. California destroyed itself. It did not see its primary industry collapse due to globalism like the rust belt. It did not suffer from a boom that went bust or depletion of resources like some old west mining town. It simply shot itself in the foot – repeatedly. It was once a prosperous and well run state. Now it is a test tube for every wacky and insane progressive idea. It continues to stagger on. Like a hippo being starved, it will take a while but eventually it will collapse. Please, when you flee the state for Arizona or Texas, don’t vote for the same kind of idiots who destroyed California.
California is the poster child of self-inflicted wounds without the self-awareness to realize the problem. Its expats, who leave while griping about taxes or housing prices, have this habit of then infecting their new homes with the same poison. It’s almost a punch line. The state is and has been poorly governed for decades, and shows no sign of changing. Even if Newsom is recalled, does anyone think his replacement will be a vastly different version?
No, he or she will not. And to some extent we have to say that Californians have made their bed and now must lie in it. If people insist on living this way, they surely have the right to do so.
Why do Californians keep voting for people who create and/or allow these problems to make life so difficult and unpleasant for Californians? Do they not know what or rather who is causing it? Do they not know that people in other states don’t have to put up with what they do?
“The California dream was, in a sense, America on steroids.“
This I think is a key point. California is a great place to live if one is highly educated and well off.
This is not unique to California: the US system (eg taxation, employment law (including maternity/paternity benefits), healthcare, education, and entry into the professions) is set up to benefit the wealthy and the well-connected.
Being America’s most populous and wealthiest state (and the world’s 5th largest economy, just ahead of the UK), California illustrates what happens when there is such extreme inequality on a large scale. Quite evidently, it’s not good for society.
Anywhere is a great place to live if you have a lot of money, California isn’t alone in that. But you missed the key point. The key point is actually that California is a great place to live ONLY if you have a lot of money. It is a horrible place to live if you don’t have a lot of money and that’s the vast majority of Californians. Inequality is worse in California than it is in Mexico. You cannot make that case against other states, which is why so many people are leaving California. It’s not enough to be a great place only for rich people.
What you miss is that while California is wallowing in all the problems mentioned in the article, other states are moving ahead. You’re going backwards.
I agree with your concerns, if not your zero-sum mindset. California will remain the largest US economy for decades to come, and continue to attract ambitious and well-qualified people due to world class universities like Stanford and Berkeley and the high-tech industries they cultivate.
California has a lot of reforming to do. Hopefully the other large states with high poverty rates including Texas, Florida, and New York etc learn from California’s mistakes and take action to improve the quality of life of all citizens.
And I personally hope the smaller states like Colorado can model their economies more on the highly innovative/entrepreneurial/high quality-of-life Scandinavian economies.
Yes, we agree that other states should learn what NOT to do from California. The problem is that escapees from California try to infect other states with the same policies that brought such misery to California. Maybe they should volunteer not to vote for a couple of election cycles in their new states until they can acclimatize to an environment where more than just the rich matter. Sort of a zero California dysfunction strategy. Suppress the dysfunction.
Being the largest economy means nothing when only the rich can thrive. China has a huge economy, would you want to be poor there?
How democratic of you, Annette.
You seem to be making a partisan political point, whereas I’m looking at structural issues (taxation, labor rights, education, healthcare, etc etc).
My concern is that the entire US system is set up so that only the rich can thrive. It’s perhaps just more obvious in California given its size and diversity.
It’s very democratic not to want to live with massive inequality. Yes California has vast structural issues, that’s the problem. Who do you think caused these, Santa Claus? It’s the people you elect.
The entire US system is not set up the way California is. This level of dysfunction is specific to California. That’s why you have problems other states do not. Although New York is nearly as bad a basket case.
I’m sure you wouldn’t live in China, so you DO understand that it isn’t the size of the economy that makes for great quality of life. Even though China’s surely a great place if you’re privileged and filthy rich, just like California. Do you see the problem now?
I take your point, but China simply isn’t a great comparator, as it’s not a liberal democracy.
I think I know what you’re getting at more generally, but perhaps you would be a bit more explicit: If it isn’t eg tax policy or the absence of universal health care or lack of European-style labor rights or affordable university education that you think are California’s structural problems, what are the structural problems you think Cali has that other states don’t?
Of course China works as an example of a huge economy it sucks to live in if you’re not rich. It’s a huge economy isn’t it? Much much bigger than California’s.
Taxes in California are an enormous problem and your tax base is shrinking because poor people don’t pay much tax. The rich are escaping because of the taxes and the business unfriendly environment. Highest sales taxes in the nation, highest state income taxes. There are much more business friendly states.
California teachers are among the most highly paid while your students rank at the bottom in both math and reading. What are you paying for? You also pay for schools for millions of people there illegally. Do you think that’s a good idea?
Unfunded pension liabilities means you have more debt than any other state.
Californians healthcare problems are a result of your politicians insisting on the taxpayers covering the costs of millions of illegal immigrants. Do you know how expensive that is with as many illegals as you have? Your sanctuary cities invite illegals who you then get to pay for. Other states don’t do that.
California is not a right to work state so the unions can keep you out of your job.
You have more homeless people than any other state. You can set up tent cities and block business entrances. You can lie around in hotel entrances so people have to step over you. And you can use the public streets as a toilet.
These are all things forced upon you by your elected leaders and every one of them reduces your quality of life. The article of course lists many more.
Ah got it. You think a supply side pro-business/low tax economy improves quality of life of the working class? Has that ever worked for the working class anywhere? I guess you don’t think the Scandi/European-style mixed economy with high innovation and strong social welfare is a good idea?
Read the article. The author highlights many of the political missteps that make CA so dysfunctional. I do not think bad schools, the highest number of homeless, streets used as toilets, the highest poverty rate in the nation, the highest number of illegal immigrants, the highest state debt and a business unfriendly climate make for quality of life, no.
But perhaps the onus is on you to explain how all these things make life great for the highest number of poor people in the country.
CA doesn’t have the highest poverty rate in the country.
It has the highest “cost-adjusted poverty rate” in the country. Big difference.
In any event, I don’t disagree with you that CA needs to improve schools and address homelessness. Doubt anyone would tbh.
But I’m curious about the working class/middle class (ie not just the poorest). In Europe, these socioeconomic classes don’t have to eg pay for healthcare or eg pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for university/college, plus they get maternity/paternity leave and at least 5 weeks vacation etc (although of course that is threatened in the gig economy; I’m talking relative to the US, I’m not suggesting Europe is heaven on earth). In that regard, I wonder whether any state in the US is particularly well structured to allow people not in the top 10% or so to have a European-style quality of life.
In addition to topping the poverty chart, it has the highest number of people on welfare as well. Congratulations. You’re the tops!
California doesn’t have a middle class, that’s the problem. It has very rich and very poor. It used to have a middle class but those days are gone. Today, no state has higher inequality than CA. How are those progressive politicians working out for you?
CA is aging 50% faster that the rest of the country because young people are leaving. How is that sustainable?
Other states have fewer poor, fewer illegals to support, lesser unfunded pension liabilities and subsequent state debt. All these things affect businesses and people. Only Hawaii, Nevada and NJ have higher unemployment than CA. This really hurts the poor. Well paid jobs are going to Texas and Arizona as the author points out.
The author highlights some of the better managed states in the article as well as the reasons they are better managed. But the issue is California. After all, other states can’t accept the entire population of CA and most states won’t take the illegal immigrants. So CA really has to fix its problems, escape will work for some but not for everyone in CA. Fixing CA is the answer.
But the questions for Californians include:
How do you fix your schools? It’s not money, your teachers are already among the highest paid but your test scores are very poor.
How do you fix your homeless situation? You’re broke so you can’t start building facilities. Is it okay for them to set up tent cities on public streets? What should the non homeless use to get around if the streets are blocked? Is public defecation legal? If so, should it be? If not, what do you plan to do about it? SF already has a map of human excrement sites so the public can avoid them. Is that okay?
How do you fund your pension liabilities? Raise taxes again? Are your public pension liabilities reasonable?
Do you want to accept any and all illegal immigrants who want to live in CA? If yes, how do you plan to pay for them all, healthcare and education? If not, why the sanctuary cities? Should illegals who commit numerous crimes be deported and if so, why aren’t your leaders doing so?
Why is your LA DA ending cash bail even after it was voted down by the public?
Those sorts of questions may help Californians decide if they do want to dig out of the hole and how they can do so. California could also look to other states that have more able political leaders. California is a US state, not a country. What it needs to do is figure out how to become a well managed US state. Otherwise it could always secede. 🙂
Annette, you have a habit of making good points that I (and I suspect any reasonable person) would agree with, but then you follow your preconceived worldviews down a rabbit hole, including your preoccupation with illegal immigrants.
For instance, it is silly to describe California as “broke” or to suggest that the homeless crisis is caused by a lack of money. First, CA has ready access to the capital markets; check the credit default swaps on its debt. Second, CA has spent billions of dollars of public and private money on homelessness the past few years.
In a free country, one cannot simply permanently lockup homeless people who are mentally ill, drug addicted, or pretty criminals. However, I would suggest it’s obviously right that there should be a role for mental health institutions (“sectioning” in British parlance) alongside a developed social welfare system that can support continued rehabilitation in the community where appropriate. It’s ridiculous that in CA homeless people are endless jailed and released. Arizona for example does a far better job in seeing this holistically as a law enforcement/social care issue, not just the former.
I absolutely agree CA needs more effective management of these issues. Building more affordable housing is obviously essential too. But money is not the main problem.
The homeless crisis isn’t caused by a lack of money. It’s caused by politicians who are okay with tent cities blocking public streets and businesses. Who are okay with people using the street for a bathroom.
But you should give some thought as to why California is the state with more homeless people than any other. And no, it isn’t the weather. Rather than scraping the barrel trying to defend California, why don’t you try to figure out what California political leaders are doing wrong. Unless you think that somehow they cannot solve the problem or even address it. In which case I would agree with you and suggest you hire different leaders.
Annette, I’m not defending anyone; I agreed with you that California needs to address the issue. And I already identified e.g. the treatment of mental health and addiction as a major issue that needs addressing. It’s a hugely complex problem: a quick google will show you the dozens of high quality research papers, policy proposals, and newspaper articles devoted to the subject. I don’t think any rational person is denying the problem.
You still are not answering the question, though.
So the big question is why isn’t your political leadership addressing the issues? Do you not elect people to do this or are they completely off the hook for all of California’s problems? And why don’t you elect different people once it’s clear that the ones you elected can’t do the job? Political leaders are not hired to write research papers, they are hired to solve problems. And yours do not.
Repeated failure on the part of your elected leaders to address everything from homelessness to power outages to failing schools to unfunded pension liabilities to illegal immigration to unemployment don’t seem to get anyone tossed out of office. That leaves only one possible answer – Californians don’t mind living with these massive systemic problems.
Well, I’m not an American so I don’t get to vote. I’ve lived in the US (MA, CT, NY, Cali), Asia, and Europe, and as I’ve made clear I think California has its problems, including the morally unacceptable housing crisis. But I have a different perspective having lived all over the world. California has many virtues too, including being welcoming of diversity. We don’t live in an absolutist/zero-sum world.
I guess I should be glad you can’t vote although the people who can vote in California don’t seem to be any more likely to hold politicians accountable than you are. I guess if you don’t mind living in a place that rivals Pyongyang for being unable to keep the lights on and Hades for being unable to keep the fires out, it’s your choice. But don’t try to convince anyone else that this is good or normal because it isn’t.
As ever Annette, you undermine your good points with ad hominem attacks and ridiculous falsities.
A few hours of energy cuts due to a poorly managed grid does not a Pyongyang make. Now I worry you one of those anti-renewable energy and electric car types, alongside all the other things that seem to enrage you so easily.
I look forward to the next exciting instalment of “Annette versus BlackRock and the rest of the rational world!” 😉
I made no ad hominem attack. I said nothing false. California has rolling blackouts every year. I hope you don’t have an electric car or you might not be going anywhere. But at least you mentioned the words “poorly managed” so we may be on the right track with you. We could soon even tip you over into an expectation that leaders actually do something. Do you really not know about California’s inability to manage land in a way that fires don’t ravage millions of acres every year?
I look forward to the next exciting installment of “Eva…..speaking for the rational world and other fantasies” 😉
Of course I have an electric car, Annette! I feel like you should know me better by now haha. A fun drive between LA and SF on the PCH. 0-60 in a couple of seconds. Barely anyone will be buying gas guzzlers in 10 years time. Check out GM’s Super Bowl advert about Norway’s electric cars. I’d love to know your reaction to that!
Oh my, what do you do when the power is off? Lol
Electric cars are big batteries, Annette! Take a read about the technology and the market trends/financing. Internal combustion is dead. NextEra’s market cap already topped ExxonMobil’s last year. Writing’s on the wall.
So you get to walk then? Lol hitchhike maybe?
I charge it either at a station on the highway (full coverage on the West coast) or from solar panels on my house. Democratisation of the energy grid. Anyway, we’ve veered off-topic. Have a read about it. And take a look at GM’s ad.
Sounds like you don’t know much about Norway’s electric cars. In any case, I’m not about subsidies for rich people I think they should pay more, not less.
But by all means, provide a full explanation of how EVs are purchased and operated in Norway and how it’s all paid for. Don’t run off now just when this is about to get fun.
I’m half Norwegian/Swedish, Annette. But sure, whatever you say hahahahaha. I’m calling it a day. Bye!
You’re ancestry doesn’t really answer the question but we already know that you’re kind of a sucker for good marketing. Why don’t you explain the situation with Norway’s electric cars. Let’s see what you know. Let’s have some fun shall we? Here are a few starter questions for you….
1) what amenities does Norway provide for both purchase and operation of EV? There’s at least 4.
2) how are these financed? IOW, who is paying for these amenities?
And in reference to the super bowl ad, why would a supposedly smart company use Will Ferrell for any purpose? 🙂
Ahhh Annette, I’m not your personal google! What do you want to know? That electric car sales in Norway exceed internal combustion car sales? That Norway aims to end internal combustion car sales by 2025?
Well answer the questions I posted above for starters. Show me how much you know. About the vehicles, and how they are financed, not sales. And if you know the answers to the above questions, you’d also know that Norway could end non EV car sales tomorrow.
I had a feeling you might be missing more than a few pieces of information. And I sense that you may have figured out right about now that this was the wrong subject to challenge me on. And maybe you have suddenly discovered something you need to go do desperately? Lol, advertisers love people like you.
Don’t take my word for it, just google it!
You haven’t answered so what would I be taking your word for? Here’s the questions again….
1) what amenities does Norway provide for both purchase and operation of EV? There’s at least 4.
2) how are these financed? IOW, who is paying for these amenities
And I’ll add another couple too.
3) when will EVs be self-sustaining, i.e. free of fossil fuel generated subsidies?
4) does mining battery-related minerals generate emissions?
5) what is the one innovation that has done the most to reduce emissions?
Surely your Norwegian/Swedish heritage provides the answers to these questions! Maybe Will Ferrell has the answers!
When did this turn into some kind of school test haha? These are involved questions and I don’t have the time/inclination to do justice to them point by point; you can research this yourself! As a starting point, take a look at McKinsey’s “The road ahead for e-mobility” (NB it’s from 2019 so not the latest numbers for Norway et al). Both EV and renewables markets are complex, but it’s a fascinating mix of technology and policy with lots of nuance and path-dependency, so hopefully you’ll enjoy learning. If you take a look at the top performing ETFs last year, you’ll see the returns are market-leading too.
“When did this turn into some kind of school test haha?”
The minute you mentioned Norway and EVs. I wanted to see what you actually knew about the subject, which isn’t much apparently. Your information is from a Will Ferrell commercial. Think about that for a minute. You’ll find it as amusing as I did.
“These are involved questions and I don’t have the time/inclination to do justice to them point by point; you can research this yourself”
They are indeed very involved, much more so than a Super Bowl ad. And have no fear, you never came close to doing them justice. I don’t have to look them up. I know the answers, you see unlike you Ms. Attorney, I learned never to ask a question that I don’t know the answer to.
In any case, if you’d like to be educated on the subject rather than appearing not to have a clue what you’re talking about, you can find the answers to every one of them. And it wouldn’t hurt you a bit. Although it may disillusion you a bit.
Hahahahahahahahahaha I’m a renewable energy lawyer
Do you refer to Super Bowl ads in your work?
Any halfway decent renewable energy lawyer could name four things that Norway might provide for the purchase and operation of EVs. In fact, I’d bet any EV owner could do so even if they were not a “renewable energy lawyer”.
Any renewable energy lawyer could also answer if mineral mining for EV batteries generates emissions. And yet you cannot. Odd that.
And there’s the ad hominem attack haha.
The truth is not an ad hominem. It’s just the truth. Attorneys are not by definition, all good at their job. You disagree that a renewable energy attorney would be able to determine how Norway is paying for EVs?
That hurts Annette. I’m contemplating my inferior legal abilities as I watch the sun set over the ocean from my deck in the Palisades. A bit cloudy tonight. I do hope my electric car still starts in the morning 😉
Awww, you don’t seem to want to talk about Norway and EVs anymore. Yet you kept insisting on doing so. Did you not expect me to take you up on it? As any good lawyer knows, don’t ask the question if you don’t know the answer. Law school 101.
And I dropped so many hints to help you answer the questions on these very important issues. Perhaps your legal expertise is not in Norway or EVs. I certainly hope you don’t use Will Ferrell’s ad in any of your obviously important legal work. 😉
Ps, it’s probably not clouds.
Hello, I’m back (glutton for rude treatment I guess!), and I really don’t understand your aggression, Annette. You come across as a very rude person, and I can’t help but wonder how far that has got you in life.
One does not need to be a New Haven-educated lawyer to get a good overview of the EV or RE markets. I assumed from your laundry list of questions (tell me if I’m wrong) that you were getting at the fact that Norway heavily subsidises EVs, including infrastructure/road use. I would then point out: e.g. Norway has ploughed its natural resource wealth into renewables via the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund (and that I think the US should similarly invest it’s wealth sustainably like Norway does as fossil fuel use winds down (cost of capital is just too high now to be competitive in long term with renewables, and that’s before one considers oil companies’ underpricing of stranded assets; see what Norway’s Equinor is doing in transition to RE)); that the US spends more on fossil fuel subsidies than renewable subsidies, and yet fossil subsidies have increased even as market price of renewables has fallen below the price-parity threshold with fossil fuels, etc etc. I would also point out that net zero or carbon neutrality does not mean that that there are no emissions or environmental harms associated with EVs, hence the “net” part etc etc. And finally I would say again that you shouldn’t take my word for it. Take a look at the returns on RE ETFs last year. Or Tesla’s market cap. Or have a read of Larry Fink’s letter to shareholders.
But I really don’t see why I should have to write out for you what I already guided to you (i.e. the McKinsey report) or what you can indeed google for yourself. This isn’t advanced stuff and certainly nothing to develop an inferiority complex over.
P.S. If it’s not clouds, what is it? Not ozone from internal combustion engines I hope?
I don’t think it’s aggressive to ask you what you know about a subject you brought up several times. In your long post above, you still do not answer the questions.
I asked very simple questions. Nothing tricky, just stuff like what 4 things does Norway provide to people for buying and driving EVs. Do you know the answer?
And then I asked as well how they fund it. You seemed immediately stumped as well as offended at even being asked.
Yes maybe the questions regarding emissions generated by EV battery metal mining were a bit deeper but should not have been beyond a renewable energy attorney. Should someone in your position NOT know what the most emission reducing innovation is?
Yet you immediately ruffled as though it was unreasonable for me to ask such questions since apparently everything anyone needed to know was in a Super Bowl ad. I’ve already told you. I know the answers, so why would I google? It was you being asked the questions, not me. I don’t know what it is that you think I’m not taking your word for since you didn’t answer the questions.
In any case, if you don’t want to talk about a subject, and you don’t know much about it to begin with, maybe you should not bring it up. If you do, be prepared to be questioned without getting ruffled and offended.
Crazy!
We could add a few more questions if you’d like.
What percentage of the worlds oil does Norway export? How about natural gas. Do you know the percentage it exports on that? Throw in what percentage of the world’s population Norway represents. Any inkling on that?
Here’s another question. Why doesn’t Norway allow EV sales to develop without the 4 items it provides to drivers? Which you will of course have to know what it provides to answer the question. After all, Norwegians want to drive EVs don’t they?
Lastly, who or what is underwriting Norway’s EVs?
You’ve discovered Google! Amazing!
Google didn’t come up with my questions I did. But you could google the answers. Do you know any of the answers?
It’s kind of important to think things through rather than simply accept advertising.
I’m such a sucker Annette, because I do still genuinely want to have a proper policy discussion. I remain perplexed by why you think that making me google a load of technical stats facilitates such a discussion? I set out above a succinct but I think relatively decent snapshot of some of the key policy issues as I see them based on my experience, including regarding EV incentives and the Norwegian energy transition with Equinor. Contrary perhaps to the idea you have, lawyers are paid for their judgment, not their ability to recite lists, which a trained parrot can do.
So let’s have a policy discussion on EVs or RE by all means and you can cite any facts/sources you like and we can address them. (The burden is not on me to make or substantiate your arguments for you, as we lawyers might say.)
That would be a productive use of time. But I’m not going to google endless lists of stats for you when you can do that yourself! Especially when literally the first google hit for “norway EV policy” is the Norwegian EV website listing all their EV incentives! If you’d been to law school, you’d know that the ability to collate a list of stats isn’t a sign of intelligence. Having a cool-headed, reasoned policy debate using well-marshalled and authoritatively-sourced facts to support your position is.
P.S. Oh look how smart I am, I just copy/pasted a list from the Norwegian EV association’s website haha. I didn’t even know a single stat off the top of my head. I guess I must be really bad at my job financing hundreds of millions of dollars of renewable energy projects 😉
* * * *
The Norwegian EV incentives:
No purchase/import taxes (1990-)
Exemption from 25% VAT on purchase (2001-)
No annual road tax (1996-)
No charges on toll roads or ferries (1997- 2017).
Maximum 50% of the total amount on ferry fares for electric vehicles (2018-)
Maximum 50% of the total amount on toll roads (2019)
Free municipal parking (1999- 2017)
Parking fee for EVs was introduced locally with an upper limit of a maximum 50% of the full price (2018-)
Access to bus lanes (2005-).
New rules allow local authorities to limit the access to only include EVs that carry one or more passengers (2016)
50 % reduced company car tax (2000-2018).
Company car tax reduction reduced to 40% (2018-)
Exemption from 25% VAT on leasing (2015)
Fiscal compensation for the scrapping of fossil vans when converting to a zero-emission van (2018)
Allowing holders of driver licence class B to drive electric vans class C1 (light lorries) up to 4250 kg (2019)
So , a lot then
one mention: most of our homeless are on fentanyl supplied by China through the leaky border of Mexico. Many or most are mentally ill, from drugs, from living the conditions they do. We have ballot harvesting and other practices that used to be considered illegal. So it’s very difficult, if not impossible to have a fair election. It all started going down hill in the 90’s. Liberals aren’t liberals anymore in the US they have sold out. It’s no use for the US to pay for college, give free healthcare when students fill classes and majors of Women’s Studies, Black studies…no jobs for most of what college teaches. California legislature voted for government healthcare but the found out it would cost double the amount of the whole California budget $400b added on to the $200b budget.
The rich want cheap unskilled labor. The rich send their kids to private schools. These are some of the reasons they turn the other cheek to illegal migration. The liberals say we should open our doors but they lock theirs.
We legally accept a million immigrants a year with another 2 million standing in line playing by the rules.
The left has the loudest voices. We used to say, the protestors are all the Left leaning Liberals because the Right leaning Conservatives are working. Another problem is California’s education system has become a indoctrination rather then teaching how to critically think for yourself and learn skills that lead to a job.
you guys are having a really useful discussion-please keep them up !
“diversity”? Diversity of what? Class diversity – many wealthy, many poor, fewer middle. Racial – 50% Hispanic. Political – 85% Democrat. Age – Many youth, many seniors fewer middle aged. Bifurcated diversity isn’t diversity.
… when the MSS clusters en masse in a state you know that intellectual property of value exists and is being developed … and the door remains wide open.
Nope. I don’t even see tourists wanting to go to CA anymore, because of what they see globally in social media. The increasingly accepted remote working culture means people will be able to avoid the expensive clustering enforced by Big Tech (e.g. Salesforce).
We’ll see.
I would say the danger is where the rich isolate themselves. The Duke of Wellington said the aristocracy should never isolate themselves as it would lead to their demise. The tradition of the landowners son boxing with the blacksmiths and playing cricket together and fighting together meant classes were not isolated. In France they were and it led to the Revolution. If one looks at village memorials from WW1, landowner and labourer died together.
Money does not turn cowardice into courage or venality into honesty.
The California Democratic Party defined itself as the pro-illegal immigration party to appeal to the children of illegal migrants who had voting rights. California used to be (pre-2000) split about evenly between the Democrats and Republicans, but is now a one party state based on the Latino vote. That is the problem. People don’t want to discuss the drawbacks to low-skilled immigration, but they are plain to see.
California has been swamped by low-skill immigration, legal and illegal. First of all, the state is wildly over-populated given the fragility of the existing ecology. Second, while there are some talented immigrants, most of them are very low-skilled. This has created a pool of labor to drive down wages for low-skill jobs (how many white people in California don’t have a cleaner?), but also created mass poverty and sky-high housing costs. Third, the state education system is completely dysfunctional because children don’t speak English and their parents don’t value education.
Yep, uncontrolled immigration has dragged down the employment chances and wages from the bottom of the scale and distorted the elections, the demographic and the labour market. The nail in the coffin after shipping all the manufacturing jobs to China et al. What was interesting in the 2020 election was listening to the proportion of black and Asian Americans, who recognised this attack on their communities had to end, turn away from the Dems and become Trump Patriots #blexit #lexit etc
But how come Trump didn’t win the any of the 2 presidential election in California?
Hispanics (and they’re not Cuban-Americans) now make up about 40% of California’s population. The proportion of white people has fallen by 50% in a generation. Trump was never within miles of winning in California.
All true, but what are you gonna do…
Jeremy, we get your point, now relax and enjoy reading opinions from the folks
Reading the posts from the UK its fascinating how similar the issues are! It is about immigration ( not immigrants) and their presence does drive down wages and disempowers the existing poor. Increasing inequality in the UK – and Europe and probably China and India. Too many people in the world with too efficient communication all with enhanced expectations equals problems.
Except in the USA, the immigrants are given a “holy innocent” status not found anywhere else. Here no one is allowed to question in the slightest whether the immigrants are criminals or whether we should have so many. Trump won because of his stand on immigrants, and the Dems are setting themselves up for another round of “immigrant policy losses”.
Hispanics in California will vote for immigration controls because it is in their self interest.
That’s right., blame the immigrants and the poor. In all these discussions irrespective of where they are centred it is always the immigrants and the poor who are to blame. The poor get poorer because of an influx of cheap labour driving down wage levels. Housing costs go up because of the imbalance between supply and demand. The list is endless. But what is never discussed is the role of the rich, both indigent and incomer in benefitting from this process. In the current situation the poor are getting poorer but the rich are getting richer. The two phenomena are never tied together. It being much more satifying to decry the former and laud the latter. Immigration is a problem but its exploitation to bolster the wealth and well being of those who exploit it is equally problematic. Not least for those who are being exploited.
I fully agree.
I didn’t criticize “immigrants”. I criticized “immigration”.
Now, if only Progressives’s reading-skills matched their self-important sense of morality.
Illegals drive down wages, drive up poverty, destroy schools, destroy neighborhoods. There are too many. Trump was right. Deport deport deport deport deport. You say “Housing costs go up because of an imbalance between supply and demand”. Yes, moron, very true – the illegals drive up the cost because there is an infinite number of them.
People need housing once they are ‘here’. Whether they should be where they are and how they got there is another topic. Those requiring housing do not drive up the cost. Those that provide the housing do. Simple economics. Illegals, as you term them also provide services to the sorts of people who support Trump, as much as Biden, and they most certainly do not destroy the schools, neighborhoods,wages, or drive down the wealth of those who those who live off the backs of immigrants, both legal and illegal. Deporting them might marginally help the poor but there are other reasons that people remain poor in the richest country in the world, and those get little consideration when immigrants remain so easy a target.
Whether they should be where they are and how they got there is another topic.
That IS the topic. Immigration is meant to benefit the host country, not the immigrant. “Illegals” is what they are; shifting to undocumented or some other euphemism does not change the underlying reality. Those services, by the way, were provided before they arrived. The US did not magically discover hotel housekeeping and residential grounds maintenance only when the influx of illegals began.
they most certainly do not destroy the schools, neighborhoods,wages,
Of course, they do. Destroy may be harsh but they certainly impact these things, especially wages.
When a teacher spends huge amounts of time on non-English speakers, the other students suffer. CA schools went from the USA’s best to 49 under the unrelenting pressure of millions of illegal kids.
I’d first blame the teachers unions.
In Canada, the 3 largest cities are also the destination point for foreign migrants, The population growth and housing costs have skyrocketed, the local group whose generations built it are now a minority and most can not even think of owning their own home where they were born and raised.
The current Liberal govt is making dramatic increases in foreign immigration in the next two years.
To even question or make valid criticism of these immigration policies brings the left progressive cancel cult accusations and persecution .
First, we need to restore , uphold and protect the human right of free speech from those who have suppressed and violated it for so long.
The fact that the rich are getting richer does not mean the poor have to get poorer. In fact, in a economically growing society with no barriers to movement (but restricted borders) then most of the population will get richer. On a world scale that applies also, and has done so over the last 40 years as the growth of enterprise has greatly reduced poverty – not eliminated it, but greatly reduced it.
The problem now though is that governments do not do what they should do to allow this process to continue, by breaking down barriers to the poor to move up, especially in education which in most of the West has become a disgrace. It does not help of course that monopolies seem to be encouraged – just look at the success of a certain on-line retailer and the enormous damage it has done to so many small stores which used to create much middle class wealth, and a way from working class lives up the income ladder. Ditto the vast food supermarkets
Barriers to education, spot on. In California today, school boards are focused on renaming closed schools with offensive names like George Washington. Meanwhile other states are opening schools, some have been open since last fall. California students not in private schools will, of course, be even more behind. But that choice was made by Californians.
The poor get poorer because of an influx of cheap labour driving down wage levels.
Weren’t you saying that the illegal immigrant is blameless? Yes, of course, cheap labor drives down wage levels. Employers can pay what they like because who will the illegal complain to?
But what is never discussed is the role of the rich, both indigent and incomer in benefitting from this process.
Plenty of people are willing to discuss it, but the gatekeepers of such discussions – elected officials, media, business – tend to stifle that discussion because it makes them look bad.
The rich are not displaced by illegal immigrants. Only the poor are.
Its telling that domestic state to state migration can be criticized without comment but mass culture changing foreign migration brings forth immigrant bashing accusation.
It mirrors the left liberal Democrats taking down of borders fences and obstacles on the southern border and putting up fences and soldiers in the capital to keep out those “other “demonised Americans hyped but unrealized” domestic terrorist” threat.
Hopefully , at least here,we can openly discuss the public issues that profoundly affect our lives and world without the tiresome self appointed intolerant woke censor trolls policing and parsing the discussion .
California school boards do not value education either.
Because – brace yourself – the “other” party is crazy.
And, life in California is pretty good. There are serious problems but when people move (and they do) they move to other liberal “areas” like Austin (TX) or Colorado. They don’t move to Alabama.
… and they certainly don’t move to rural West Virginia – nor share any wealth to help the poor folk existing there …
…what are you gonna do…?
if they did move to Alabama, they would find a city with more per-capita engineers than any other city, or close to it. They would find housing that is far more affordable without the homeless population, the idiocy of cosmetic names changes of schools, and all the rest. Those rednecks you seem to hate don’t have to deal with rolling blackouts during summer months, either, in a state that is known for heat and humidity. But, sure; one party Dem rule for decades is the ‘other’ party’s fault.
He has a problem with Alabama.
I really don’t. It is easier to write Alabama than Mississippi.
That is all.
He has a problem with all places that he perceives to be inhabited by people ‘who vote the wrong way’ . For the UK his go to examples are Clacton, Blackpool and Skegness.
You are mistaken, I don’t have a problem as I don’t care at all about Blackpool. The painful reality (that you pretend that it doesn’t exit) is that those places are left behind because no one really wants to live there. The people that live there don’t want to live there – but they are stuck.
……what are you gonna do…….?
Housing is affordable because no one wants to live there….
And 1 state party rule (Dems) NY/CA is richer than 1 party rule (Reps) in Alabama or Mississippi.
ALl the good stuff (music, food, art, culture, science, innovation) all happens in liberal places…not the backwoods of ‘bama!
Does the photo attached to the article look like life is good? I mean, if you’re very rich and you can seal yourself off from this, sure. But most people aren’t very rich, even in California.
The only way out if for the Hispanic communities of California to move to the right and vote in populist republicans to oust the Democratic apparatus. This is possible. Florida is a model.
FLorida is not a model – Cuban Americans are very different from the rest of LatAm immigrants. Texas would be a better example.
You mean they’re smarter?
Cubans in FL (not all) are better educated than the Mexicans ones for example (Or Central America)
The ones that arrvied in the 60s were affluent and highly educated (the upper classes of Cuba)
The new arrivals are still better educated that Mexicans .
The middle class Mexican migrants moved to Texas not California.
Not all immigrants in Florida are Cuban. What new Cuban arrivals? The ones that arrive by raft?
Florida (geography) generally attracts rich/middle classes of Latin America. You can not “cross the border” on foot like in CA or AZ.
I don’t know the stats about the new Cuban arrivals but Cuba in general has a better education system than Central America.
Even more reason for California not to let in masses of illegal immigrants don’t you think?
Good point. Immigrants do better outside of California than inside though as the author says. Isn’t it just easier for them to move? Florida is a great example.
The reason why for generations the most deprived areas (I am from one) of the UK kept voting Labour notwithstanding the fact that doing so never improved their lot. Certainly the people the labour party and their acolytes did well enough. If you were a cynical you might conclude that keeping the population poor kept them voting labour.
*Facepalm*
Apparently so is knowing your Shakespeare from your Faulkner.
One would think that Alan Greenspan’s wife might have read Shakespeare.
At least we now know what an English Literature degree from the University of Pennsylvania is worth.
Perhaps I’m being nitpicky here, but I’m puzzled by the use of ‘feudalism’ to describe California. Feudalism was a system of mutual responsibilities in a rigid hierarchy of social class.Those at the top had to protect those lower down; those lower down had clearly defined obligations to serve in certain situations and at certain times of the year. But California as you describe it is divided between haves and have-nots with no oblesse oblige.
“Feudalism” sounds fancy to all the people in California with rotten educations?
Suspect you’re right!
Yes, just like Shakespeare sounds like Faulkner to poorly educated “journalists”.
You’re quite right of course but probably the writer means feudal in the colloquial sense of ‘all the power and most of the money concentrated into the barons’ hands, the king in his position only with their consent’. That’s an incomplete description of feudalism but a reasonably accurate one of, well, California.
I’ve heard accounting firms, law firms, the acting business and some sports such as cricket described as feudal. It’s usually shorthand for ‘a small number of people making pots of money thanks to serf underlings making next to nothing’.
Yes, I’m sure that’s what’s meant, Jon. I was being nitpicky!
Working, in the UK, for a Palo Alto based company, I once told my Sonoma-resident boss that I was planning to blow the leaves off my lawn at the weekend. “Don’t you have Mexicans?”, he inquired with a smile.
They say Americans don’t understand the word irony. Ironic really.
California is living proof that the “progressive” left have no answers. Their policy of not control burring created the perfect conditions for wild fires. There police of not improving (and reducing) water collection causes lack of water in cities. This is not climate change, as they like to claim, but bad management.
Sure, but why don’t conservatives win state wide elections?
Reagan did.
pointless.
win now!
Anyone who ran for office in California on a platform of keeping the electricity on, keeping the excrement off the streets, preventing the homeless from setting up tent cities wherever they want to, reforming pension liabilities, stopping illegal immigration and being a bit more business friendly would immediately lose.
Sounds like Rome post 350 AD.
It’s a third world country.
Life in California wasn’t bad back then.
He wasn’t massively conservative, but Arnie was republican (unless I’m going mad, or, being a Brit, have missed something).
Exactly – he wasn’t massively conservative. He was a Rockefeller Republican if you can use the term.
Because people in California like living with their problems.
Because the left wing scare the electorate by lying to them about the Conservative agenda – think “privatise the NHS” and “XX days/hours to save the NHS” as a case study in how the left lie!
It’s just an experiment in combining globalization with the welfare state. And it can’t work for the obvious reasons that politicians in California can’t or won’t admit. But then they are sealed off from the people they think don’t matter.
The majority of the tech jobs are given to visa workers. There are millions of H-1Bs, L-1, OPT, J-1, E-2, and other classes. Some of these get US FEDERAL TAX BREAKS – in other words, the US Federal government gives you a tax break to not hire a USA citizen. The digital serfs are paid under the prevailing wage. Although some qualify for Green cards (first step to citizenship), country limits mean that the wait is now 20 years (this is due to a per country limit, and 80% of the serfs are Indian).
This essay doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of Cali’s problems. The typhus outbreaks, the human faeces and urine, the trash and rats, the tent cities everywhere (the Venice boardwalk has never seen so many homeless), the non-obvious homeless living in cars but discounted from the statistics, the used needles all over SF, LAX as a homeless shelter, the riots, the massive corruption by government employees bleeding the taxpayer dry, the indicted city councillors, the pre-2020 traffic, the Calexit is real – not just the high profile names like Musk and Rogan but what’s left of the middle-class.
I forgot about the typhus. Truly third world.
“This “woke” agenda was taken to a new extreme this week when the San Francisco School Board decided to rename 44 schools because they were named after people connected to racism or slavery.”
Funny how the folk promoting this renaming and distancing symbolism never turn their attention to the symbols and teachings of a certain Middle-Eastern religion – you know, the one which was invented by the warlord (“the perfect man” to his adherents) who kept slaves, advocated slavery, and more…
Renaming closed school is much more important than opening the schools, you see.
80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage
Given the definition of median I don’t see how that is possible.
Its not possible if its the state’s own median wage but is if its the national median wage, in their haste the writer probably didn’t check their own syllogy.
My Californian cousins have joined the “Texodus”. The parents are delighted but their teenage daughters loathe it.
Teenagers are not known to like moving. It’s part of being a teenager. Losing your friends is paramount. I have some sympathy for them. But their parents probably know they are far better off out of California.
I have a son in law from LA but thankfully he knows not to go back. They’re happy in Colorado.
Yes, but nowhere in this article does the author point out the obvious, that California is run by the Democrats.
I assume that the fact these idiots keep voting for the “Democrats” means the like living in a failed state, I totally understand why Texas wants to leave the “United States” as they don’t want these idiots turning the lone star state into another left wing failure
http://www.readmypoems.co.u…
My short poem on the subject, made out of a quote by Roger Scruton.
… Roger must have known only late hippies … the originals were far from envenomed … especially in Summer on the slopes of Mt Tamalpais …
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
Edward Abbey (1927-89)
Laissez-les manger du gâteau
80% of jobs earning less than the median wage is impossible. By definition that’s always 50%.
mass immigration did this to CA, and if its not stopped now will do this to the rest of America
As has been pointed out, CA is failing. It is failing because “progressives” cannot learn. They are committed to social policy regardless of whether it works or achieves any of the goals set out. The problem with progressive policies is that they are based on a lie. They are based on human behavior that doesn’t exist. Systemic Racism…There is still a dearth of examples. For example, cash bail is often pointed out to an example of systemic racism. It is empirically not. They point out that is impacts Black Americans more than any other race. That may point out to a greater instance of criminal behavior in a community but that still is not systemic racism. If you poor, no matter what color…white, green, yellow, brown are of zero consequence if you cannot put up anything of value nor have the 10% cash you need for bail. Cash bail is a problem for systemic poverty not the amount of melanin in ones skin. Black poverty rate is 22%, the avg. in America is 11%. For married Black Americans it is 7%…..Gee that statistic should point to the problem but progressives will fail to see facts. Systemic poverty is the problem, not skin color.
You can go to the beach (be LA or San Fran) and hit the slopes. Only Northern Italy and Provence can give you that!
But you’re not actually going to do either because you’ll be sitting in traffic for hours (actually, probably days) on end to get from the beach to the ski slopes.
True, but when I did it (from Newport Beach) we left for the slopes (San Gabriel range) at 5.00AM.
It was pretty easy.
The traffic jams started at 5:30-35years ago…
Did the drive in mid Jan 2009. Very little traffic
LA doesn’t even nearly give you the beauty of Italy and Provence. Bleak – there is no ‘there’ in there.
Absolutely true but it is the closest thing…Florida is a swamp and the East Coast in general is crappy.
Yes, indeed.
Where would you find the likes of Nimes, Arles, Senanque or Silvacane in the wastelands of California?
Cyprus and the Lebanon also. You should get out more Jeremy.
Southeastern Spain, too.
Yes indeed, another destination for young Jeremy when he is posted to Luxembourg, lucky chap!
Haven’t been to those places but I would not put Lebanon in the same level as Provence.
Can you really ski in Cyprus? I know you can in Lebanon
Well, the modern Lebanon was built by the French as you probably know. So if it’s not the bombing season it is/was very pleasant. Skiing by floodlight is novel, if not terribly taxing.
Inland off course you have Baalbek and Anjar to admire, plus excellent vino from the Beqaa Valley.
Cyprus skiing on Mt Olympus, 6000′ high, put in place by the British during the halcyon days of Empire. Again not terrible exhilarating but the drive up, through the Troodos Mts makes it all worth it.
Lebanon would be a very nice place if it was all Christian.
Well if ‘we’ hadn’t stupidly lost the Crusades it might well have remained Christian, but ‘we’ were no match for Baybars and Qalawun sadly!
There was the potential for cleaning up Lebanon at the end of WW1 but French were unwilling to do it.
You recall what their Viceroy said on his arrival in Damascus?
That’s racist. You will now be reported to Twitter.
Parts of it from East Beirut through Jounieh up to Byblos and Batroun, if you never left that area you’d never guess it wasn’t fully Christian. The boozing is legendary. And there are some great places to see along that way. I hope they can recover from this miserable last 18 months, it’s a brilliant place.
As goes California so goes the USA, as goes the USA so goes the rest of the west (at least the Anglosphere) ……..it’s coming to a town near you (if it isn’t there already)
The VAPA decision surely marks a high-water level in Woke stupidity.
Bright but dim, and noisy with it, is my view of those responsible.
“Over the past decade, 80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage” Very interesting article and sorry to be pedantic, but isn’t the median wage the point where 50% earn less and 50% earn more?
As a Brit visiting California last year I was really surprised to see the very ordinary 2 bed flat that our friend’s son was renting, living there with his wife and three children. In his late 30s, he has an MBA from a top school and a job in investment management. His wife worked full time in PR until her third pregnancy. They are struggling to buy a house (or even an apartment). Compared to a comparable family in London he was living to a much lower standard. So much for the Californian dream.
When I was kid in the 1950’s-60’s, growing up in the South, a tv sitcom came along about a hillbilly family leaving their shabby Appalachian homestead and trucking out to southern Cal with grandma on a rocker on the back of the truck. The theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies featured this advice:
“They said California is the place ye oughter be, so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. . . Hills, that is . . . swimmin’ pools, movie stars. . . ” blah blah blah
Then a little while later Scott Mckenzie came along with his huge hit song: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. . .” which generated some serious interest and migration among my boomer generation.
Meanwhile there were a few significant omens along the way, Otis Redding sittin’ on a dock of the bay, watchin’ the tide roll away. . . left my home in Georgia headed for the Frisco bay . . .” with a note regret in his tone.
By ‘n by, after the Shockley transistors and after Jobs and Wozniak, after Larry and Sergei and Yahoo and Facebook and venture capitalists and the demise of Hotel California, not to mention Hollywood and downtown Burbank . . .
Now it seems California is the place folks don’t necessarily wanna be any more and so Jed and all his kin are picking up states and moving back Easterly.
That’s America for ye! We always were a pioneering people, seeking out the places where the grass is greener on the other side of the Great Divide. Turn off the lights on your way out, folks.
When I was kid in the 1950’s-60’s, growing up in the South, a tv sitcom came along about a hillbilly family leaving their shabby Appalachian homestead and trucking out to southern Cal with grandma on a rocker on the back of the truck. The theme song from the Beverly Hillbillies featured this advice:
“They said California is the place ye oughter be, so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly. . . Hills, that is . . . swimmin’ pools, movie stars. . . ” blah blah blah
Then a little while later Scott Mckenzie came along with his huge hit song: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. . .” which generated some serious interest and migration among my boomer generation.
Meanwhile there were a few significant omens along the way, Otis Redding sittin’ on a dock of the bay, watchin’ the tide roll away. . . left my home in Georgia headed for the Frisco bay . . .” with a note regret in his tone.
By ‘n by, after the Shockley transistors and after Jobs and Wozniak, after Larry and Sergei and Yahoo and Facebook and venture capitalists and the demise of Hotel California, not to mention Hollywood and downtown Burbank . . .
Now it seems California is the place folks don’t necessarily wanna be any more and so Jed and all his kin are picking up states and moving back Easterly.
That’s America for ye! We always were a pioneering people, seeking out the places where the grass is greener on the other side of the Great Divide. Turn off the lights on your way out, folks.
… for me, a final, pivotal fact was the discovery that the pious, once respected Sierra Club had ” in return for a huge, accepted donation ” been bribed to forever remain silent in the environmental cost and damage caused by the soaring influx of illegal incomers … silence bought.
Ojai and Sea Ranch ” farewell from me.
80% of the state’s jobs have paid under the median wage
I think perhaps you do not know what a median is.
Very interesting. Why did so many Calis vote for Buydung ? can we expect the next republican Pres to come from Cali.. a sort of son of Trump on a surfboard ?
The same reason they vote for people like Pelosi and Gavin Newsom.
I am wondering about one thing in particular in the article: how can 80% of jobs pay below the median wage? I’m fairly certain that no more than half can. Good comments, BTW, from many of the folks here on the site.
The confusion of activity with achievement.
The Tech Nerds are often lumped together in contexts like this, but it’s worth pointing out that there are huge rifts in that world too.
The ‘libs’ ie the progressives/SJWs form allegiances of the oppressed, who aim to cleanse corporations of its Cis White Maleness. Look out for pronouns and lots of emojis in their bios, diversity training and antiracism classes.
Then there’s the anti-woke, the self-described rationalists who want tech to return to its greasy masculine origins -they consume a lot of Jordan Peterson videos and feel that the previously ‘apolitical’ world of tech is being ruined by ‘Politics’. They hold equal parts resentment that nobody appreciates their immensely high IQ, and growing uneasiness about losing promotions to equally talented female programmers who are not completely socially inept and unpleasant to be around, which they put entirely down to positive discrimination.
It may seem overwhelmingly progressive on the surface but I think there’s a lot of growing resentment there beneath the surface.
What, in the end, has technology brought us? Fairly obvious now – the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That’s not just a Californian problem – the globe either suffers from it now, or will suffer from it shortly, and not just in banana republics, like Zimbabwe.
And our Liberal elites are mostly on the right side of this divide. When they’ve finished telling us how to think, they will find they’ve been preaching to a vast mass of people who are not listening, but who do have votes.
Is there a genuinely working-class political party left in the world? One that represents the feelings of its members/class, I mean, rather than one which dictates the agenda of the rich and/or powerful.
I don’t think what is happening in California , or other globalist dominated economies, can be properly described as feudalism
Feudal systems involved the formation and retention of long term hierarchies,,often across many generations, which were tied to landholding. Of course the people in the upper tiers received far more benefits , both economic and social, than those in the lower tiers, but there were still basic obligations from the lord to his vassals, particularly of protection from predators both human and animal. Vassalage between an armed man and his lord could be cancelled by the latters failure to come to his aid if requested.
This sense of long term commitment to both place and person seems entirely lacking in the new ‘elite’ : indeed, that is one of its most troubling and exploitative characteristics.
I wonder how all those Texans without power feel right now. Not too long ago a poster was boasting about how much of their power Texans get from wind. Well, the wind turbines apparently froze leaving much of the state with rolling blackouts. It used to be that rolling blackouts were a California thing but there are now so many Californians infecting Texas with their kooky ideas that I guess it’s spread. Enjoy your California lifestyle Texas!
“Progressives”? What an abuse of language. There is nothing “progressive” about socialism as it always ends in disaster. People who call themselves “progressive” are like those countries which name themselves “democratic”