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Under Ronald Reagan, it offered a model of conservative governance that would go on to transform American politics. Hollywood has made California a crucial part of America's cultural identity, and Silicon Valley has put it at the heart of our vision of the future. For many decades now, Americans have seen California as a harbinger of promising things to come.
Today, however, California has become a warning sign... [snip] The State:
...is simply broke: issuing IOUs, begging the federal government to back state debt, and watching its credit rating plummet...
... the highest sales and personal income-tax rates in the country...
...short-term financial difficulties pale in comparison to its long-term obligations, with 300 billion owed to taxpayer-guaranteed state workers...
... percentage of adults without at least a high-school education is the second-highest in the nation (72% of those 'immigrants')...
... has the highest rate of criminal recidivism in the country...
...the most congested roads in the nation, which costs the state's employers billions in lost productivity each year...
...seriously discussing mandatory water rationing...
...experiencing severe disruptions of its electricity supply...
...unemployment is over 12%...
...CEOs rank California the worst state in the country in which to do business...
...is losing native-born citizens faster than any other state... [snip]
To put the effects of these trends in perspective, from 2004 to 2007 more people left California for Texas and Oklahoma than came west from those states to escape the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.
California is in the midst of a man-made disaster.
How could things get so bad? The story of California's decline is a tragedy of political dysfunction, misguided ideology, interest-group politics, and willful blindness...
[Long but very enlightening in its specificity - and you have and you will pay for it all - MUST READ > ]
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