The Decline and Fall of California

It’s an old story. It’s such an old story that one is tempted to ignore it. After all, if the citizens of California continue to render their state uninhabitable, why should any of the rest of us care a whit?

And yet, the story still intrigues. After all, California is the laboratory for all radical leftist economic policies. Such policies have produced a calamity. No one cares. No one wants to change course. They are oblivious to evidence.

Besides, their political leaders are consumed by their hatred of Donald Trump. Rather than help fix their state, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff have launched an attack on the rule of law, the validity of elections and half of the American people.

You wouldn’t want to think that leftist Democrats are candy-assed weaklings, would you?

This time Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog explains that California is becoming so unaffordable that large numbers of its people want to pick up and leave the state. Snyder quotes a Los Angeles Times story:

Just over half of California’s registered voters have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll.

Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. But a different group, conservatives, also frequently suggested they wanted to leave — and for a very different reason: They feel alienated from the state’s political culture.

A useful qualification, especially if you fear that that California’s dispossessed leftists are about to turn your red state blue.

In fact, it was recently reported that it now takes approximately $350,000 a year to live a middle class lifestyle in the city of San Francisco.  If you have a ton of money, it can partially insulate you from the problems that are increasingly ravaging the state, but unless you never go out in public nothing is going to insulate you completely.  

And, of course, major cities are now rat-infested, crime-ridden open air toilets:

Cities all over the state are degenerating into drug-infested, crime-ridden hellholes that are literally being overrun by millions of rats.  

And, of course, the state has managed to attract illegal immigrants and other destitute rent seekers:

California has some of the worst traffic in the entire world, unchecked illegal immigration is causing a whole host of social problems, and gang activity has become a massive problem.... 

On the other hand, California’s reputation for handing out free goodies has been a magnet for another class of people.  Today, almost half of all homeless people in the entire nation live in the state of California, and this has become such a huge crisis that it literally makes headlines all over the globe.

Snyder concludes:

It is such a shame what has happened to the state.  California should be one of the most beautiful, prosperous and enjoyable places to live in the entire world.  Unfortunately, Californians have been making exceedingly poor choices for decades, and the consequences of those decisions will be extremely bitter indeed.