Victor Davis Hanson on California

ItsCasey

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314102/there-no-california-victor-davis-hanson

Very well-written and enlightening article on California. I think this is where America as a whole is currently headed, and I don't believe we are many years away from the federal government beginning to consider bailouts of states like California that have proven again and again why you cannot tax your way out of recession.

Some of the highlights:

To fathom the nearly unbelievable statistics — as California’s population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.

But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the fuel for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil, and pasta.

On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts, and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high-school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Texas is seeing a lot of Californian transplants, which is fine with me, as long as they check their political tendencies at the border. There is a reason our state is a haven for business, and it's because we don't use the ballot box to set up barriers to free enterprise or to forcibly redistrbute the earnings of the producing class to the moocher class.