On a cost-adjusted basis, California leads the nation in percentage living in poverty. Blame the Progressive oligarchs like Governor Newsom.
Warning to the World
Spiked makes a strong case that a dominant class of oligarchs and woke bureaucrats has bled the Golden State dry. It’s a Warning to the World.
Many still see California as the home of a ‘new progressive era’. It is often viewed as an exemplar of social equity, one that reflects, as a New York Times column put it, ‘the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society’. In truth, far from embodying an egalitarian ethos, it is pioneering a new kind of almost feudal society. A relative handful of oligarchs and a vast bureaucratic ‘clerisy’ lord it over a massive class of what are essentially serfs.
California is not only home to by far the highest number of billionaires in the US. But it also suffers the highest proportion of Americans living in poverty and the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state. It endures among the US’ highest rates of unemployment, as well as massive net outmigration, an exodus that has increased sharply since 2019. It also has 30 per cent of the nation’s homeless population, with some now living in ‘furnished’ caves.
Even without adjusting for costs, no Californian metro area ranks in the US top 10 in terms of well-paying, blue-collar jobs. But four – Ventura, Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego – sit among the bottom 10.
Gavin Newsom, California’s governor and prince of the oligarchic elite, seems determined to double down on his attempt to shape California as the model for the ‘progressive’ future. ‘Unlike the Washington plutocracy’, he proclaims, ‘California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope’.
Such rhetoric crashes against reality. Newsom’s high-tax, regulation-heavy regime is driving enormous poverty. The state’s ethnic-minority communities are suffering most. Ignoring the interests of these people, California legislators and regulators enact proposals for the almost total elimination of fossil fuels.
This, as attorney Jennifer Hernandez explains, has created a kind of ‘green Jim Crow’ that disproportionately hurts working-class, ethnic-minority families. Californians have the highest energy prices in the continental US and energy poverty is particularly rife among the heavily Latino inland areas. Recently, the California Air Resources Board, the primary executor of California’s climate policies, projected that these policies will result in significant income declines for individuals earning less than $100,000 annually, while boosting incomes for those above this threshold.
Rather than address class issues, California’s progressive project focusses on issues like gender, abortion and race. All provide excellent ways to virtue-signal without threatening the ruling cabal of the oligarchical elite, the government bureaucracy and the political class. This has led California to pass such measures as mandates for stores to have gender-neutral toy sections and allowing children to change genders without parental approval.
But it is the race card that California’s feudalists rely on most to appeal to both the guilt-ridden white progressives, as well as the non-white majority. Their regulatory and tax policies may undermine the aspirations of minorities, notably Latinos and African Americans, but they offer support for race-based affirmative-action measures. This is despite the fact that Californian voters have twice rejected such efforts by wide margins.
This hasn’t stopped the state’s nine-member Reparations Task Force. Last month, it recommended state payments of $223,200 to black descendants of slaves living in California. The bill for this could top $569 billion. Equally terrifying, the Racial Justice Act 2020 came into effect in California this year, allowing anyone serving time for a felony to retroactively challenge their conviction and sentencing, on the basis of systemic racial bias. This will essentially allow race to become a major deciding factor in convicting and sentencing criminals in California.
Today, even in face of a record $68 billion deficit and a weak economy, the state’s political establishment seems reluctant to curb its spending or regulatory impulses.
Rather than change course, Newsom and his allies employ budget tricks to deal with the deficit. The governor has even blamed climate change for much of the problem. California’s Democrats are not remotely serious about fixing the budget. Redistribution continues to ace out wealth creation, as epitomised by a pledge to provide undocumented immigrants, hard-working or not, with free healthcare. Meanwhile, middle- and working-class Californians pay ever higher premiums.
These new costs are being imposed even as the high-tech industries keeping California’s economy afloat are beginning to erode.
Dissatisfaction with these and other state policies is becoming more widespread. In one recent survey of California opinion, some 57 per cent said the state was headed in the wrong direction, up from 37 per cent in 2020. Residents of most states hold positive feelings for their state, but not in California, where four in 10 people are considering an exit.
As for the Republicans, the road to resurgence is filled with boulders, many of which are of the party’s own making. The potential is there. Barely 40 per cent of Latinos surveyed recently thought the Democrats were best suited to meeting the state’s challenges.
Such multi-racial coalitions will be critical. California’s future preeminence can only be assured if we return to the kind of common sense, growth-oriented politics that served it so well in the past. The Golden State was once the world’s epicentre of human aspiration. We can’t just surrender it to the neo-feudalists.
The Path to National Ruin
If you live in California and vote for Progressives, you deserve what’s happening. The problem, of course, is the rest of the state does not deserve the madness you impose.
Going one step further, if you are also for slave reparations in a state that never had slaves, then you deserve to lose your house to someone clearly more deserving than you. At a cost of $569 billion, the only way to pay these reparations is for people to be taxed out of their homes.
What’s happening in California is also playing out in Illinois led by Progressive governor J. B. Pritzker.
At the city level look at policies by Chicago by mayor Brandon Johnson, New York City mayor Eric Adams, Boston mayor Michelle Wu, and San Francisco mayor London Breed.
“Wu has argued for charges including shoplifting and disorderly conduct to be beyond the reach of prosecutors along with other serious crimes including the receiving of stolen property and even driving with a suspended license.”
There are too many Progressive idiots to name them all.
February 4, 2024: Cost of Running a McDonalds Jumps $250,000 in CA Due to Minimum Wage Hikes
March 26,2024: California Restaurants Cut Jobs as Fast-Food Wages Set to Rise
March 30, 2024: California’s Deficit Is $222 Billion and the State is $1.6 Trillion in Debt
April 6, 2024: California Bill Would Create a Legal Right to Ignore Boss’s Emails After hours
Congratulations Overdue
Apologies offered. I failed to congratulate California when it passed Washington D.C. to take the highest unemployment rate in the nation.
California Leads the Nation in New Unemployment Claims
Also note the surge in unemployment claims is led by California.
On June 13, 2024 I noted Initial Unemployment Claims Jump the Most Since August 2023
Congratulations to Newsom
Rubio’s went bankrupt in 2020 thanks to Newsom’s covid lockdowns.
Then in 2024, Newsom bankrupted the chain again.
What other governors can make such a claim?
What Happened to the Biden Surge After Trump Was Convicted?
For those who missed it, please see What Happened to the Biden Surge After Trump Was Convicted?
If Biden were to win, promotion of economically insane policies, reparations, and bailouts of states like California and Illinois would be in the cards. That is what’s at stake in the election, but few see it.
If that isn’t the future you would like for the US, then think about how you vote.
Just wanted to say this is a far more thoughtful response than most of the ones here. It’s clear that the commenters aren’t here to discuss anything but would rather believe whatever fits the narrative they want to hate on instead. Thank you for you comment!
California’s problems are many – but the root cause is loose monetary policy which allowed a Ponzi-like scheme in real estate and other questionable profit-destroying businesses to prosper (tech) and the fact that many people still want to live here. There’s a reason there are so many songs about California livin’ and not about, say, living in North Dakota.
Those songs were written in the 60’s thru 80’s
I thought that’s how poverty is defined – the bottom 20% economically. Hence it can never be eliminated.
No, it’s income vs cost of living. Otherwise every state and country in the world would have the same poverty rate.
Sounds like good news if true and you live in California as long as you make over 100,000 a year. I don’t know why that would be the case however since the California state-sponsored clean energy tax credits have been income limited.
$100k/year is barely enough to get by in CA. Laughable.
San Mateo county just set a $30 floor for all its employees. Meanwhile, the standard minimum wage in the county (unless you are a fast food worker) is $17.35.
Ante up taxpayers!
Florida likewise, so after beling long term residents, we left in ’82. He got a good gov. job in Ala. and glad we left. We are still close enough to the beach but inland far enough to avoid direct hurricane hits. Calif. folks need to leave also. People are now leaving Fla. since it is way worse than when we left. Only for the rich.
All the misery by these policies is by design.
81 million votes? that would be the most popular president in u.s. history let’s see what they pump up old joe with for the upcoming debate and how the moderator will cater and coddle him.
california dreamin’
It is crazy here in California. It is fascinating going to the beach. Wealthy tech workers. Old (1950s) money. Rich Europeans. Chinese 18yo in Lamborghini (that went away during Covid for some reason). Grandma in $3.5M home paying $500/month property tax. Motorhome alley and homeless people a few blocks away. NIMBY, yimby.
…and when FedGuvSwamp commits to bail-out CA, IL and other BlueSewers w/ hundreds of billion$ (pure deficit/currency dilution) printed from thin air, will Red States just stand by quietly as their institutions & taxpayers are looted (again)?
No. Red States will (eventually) GTOW.
Immigration & culture replacement.
Farcical energy policy.
Politicized education.
Weaponized law enforcement.
Suicidal foreign policy.
Fraudulent elections.
Dissolution of faith & family.
Financialized food & shelter.
Subsidy of toxic/failed progressive public policy @ civilizational scale.
…keep piling those straws onto the camel’s back… let’s see what happens…
Stop attacking the moderator and stick to the real arguments.
It doesn’t make any difference the die is cast … just wait till the infrastructure collapses …
It is collapsing now, gov. planned it. We are a banana republic and voting is a useless farce. Nothing ever gets fixed. Politicians are puppets of the global elite.
The road to serfdom is being built in California and DC, but few places in between. Newsom and Biden are driving the clown cars.
Wherever the minimum wage is high you find poverty and crime.
Wrong. Crime mostly correlates to a high percentage of blacks – and to a lesser degree Hispanics.
Doesn’t poverty relate to how many people waste their money buying EVs… then pouring more money into maintaining them… then losing a bundle when they sell them into a crashing market?
Let’s ask Jeff Green… he has his finger on that pulse
Crime causes poverty.
poverty causes work
This comment is not opinion. It is a fact, no matter how much most people want to ignore it.
Fortunately mother nature doesn’t discriminate.
Good for you. Uncle Sam will just blow whatever taxes you pay. And good on you for hiding out in plain sight…virtue signal in public, but keep your true feelings hidden so the woke mob doesn’t make you a target. People like you will form the Remnant that will carry this country forward into better days when the collapse happens.
Excellent analysis. Now do the other top 10 states with high poverty, most of which are “red” states. I want to know what the red states are doing wrong.
10. Red– Texas – 14%
9. Blue – New York – 14.3%
8. Red – Oklahoma – 15.7%
7. Red – Alabama – 16.2%
6. Red – Kentucky – 16.5%
5. Red – Arkansas – 16.8%
4. Blue – New Mexico – 17.6%
3. Red – West Virginia – 17.9%
2. Red– Louisiana – 18.6%
1. Red– Mississippi – 19.1%
California is now #1 presumably.
source: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/us-states-with-the-highest-poverty-rates
Most of those “red” states are heavily black. Decades of anti-poverty programs have had little effect. It must be racism.
What does that have anything to do with it? I thought the GOP had policies that created prosperity for everyone? is that not true?
Trump says no one has done more for blacks than Trump so what’s gone wrong? He was president for 4 years so these red states should be poverty free!
I keep reading here that blacks and renters are going to vote for Trump because of his prowess in helping the under served but it doesn’t seem to be working.
Govt anti poverty programs are a scheme to keep the status quo going. On the contrary, the govts interest rate suppression through money printing dollar debasement only further poverty. Just look at the sharply widening wealth disparity during the massive debt expansion and zirp. And all the other examples of how the natl and local govts have been running in effect poverty programs as an effect of their senseless ignorant policies. Good news is those who pile up material wealth in this life by tipping the scales in their own favor will get nothing in the next, while those who honestly labored for society’s necessities enduring theft by inflation will reap the rewards of their faith and decency.
lulz… you missed the point entirely.
CA is – by far – the wealthiest state in the country… yet the poverty rate there is now 20% and rising.
poverty in POOR states (w/ limited economies & resources) is understandable.
but rampant poverty in the WEALTHIEST state is… puzzling, yes?
it surely has nothing to do with decades of one-party, irrational, progressive policy & governance, right?
Because most these folks would rather draw welfare, too lazy to get a job or get trained.
The Democratic Party has hated the middle class for at least 25 years.
“This, as attorney Jennifer Hernandez explains, has created a kind of ‘green Jim Crow’ that disproportionately hurts working-class, ethnic-minority families.”
Kind of an irony there, considering that Democrat politicians are always fond of dog whistling the phrase, “especially minorities,” to virtue signal their proclaimed concern for their well being. California has apparently spent 24 billion on the homeless problem, but there seems to be no accounting for where the money has been spent.
Gav sent the junk food industries to the recycle bin. The homeless, those under the poverty line, new immigrants and the elderly are getting gov support. They employ a large number of social and healthcare workers, the largest in the country, lifting CA GDP. Higher realized gains taxes and overextended RE prices will fill the hole in the budget. The large black market split the labor force between those above and below the min wage.
Yes, California catering to the homeless causes them to congregate there where they can learn panhandling and street-shitting strategies from each other and their various pathologies can be compounded. We in the other 49 states thank you.
Pray tell if that worked then why is the state in a larger hole.
I think you are only looking at the documented economy in Caljfornia. There is a huge underground economy that is cash only and tax free. When I moved here in 2009 for a high paying tech job, the one thing I noticed is how many small services get done in a tax free environment. I would be at least 20% of the state GDP can be added as underground growth. I am half debating changing my address to out of state and having my employer pay me in a state that has no tax where I have relatives. I had done this previously with another pair of states in New England and avoided the state income tax for 9 years. More people here in California have figured out ways around the system. I see more out of state license plates than ever which computes with my theory that people still live and work here but avoid taxes. This also makes sense as the state deficit has ballooned despite an average economy. Some of it is bad policy to be sure but I think many more people who are legally working here are also figuring out ways to not pay taxes.
No doubt!!!
I know of a few schemers that live in Nevada. Have burner phones, alternative license plates and apartments under other people’s name because they all work in California. You are 100% correct about an underground economy.
Despite the supposedly high poverty rate, people were driving expensive SUVs to food banks, that’s very telling in of itself..
The California tax authorities pursue people who left the state years ago.
But do they pursue the ones in California ?
Not that they can CATCH THEM, but those with out-of-state Licenses who do not convert their Vehicles to Cal are breaking the LAW. But the LAW is only as effective as the enforcement can handle.
Cal has its hands full with other REAL problems.
–> “There is a huge underground economy that is cash only and tax free…”
We all agreed that Gavin Newsom and his donors are doing fine and not paying taxes
At this point I don’t blame any working stiff for screwing the government out of as much money as possible
At least 1/3 of the population in CA is on Medicaid (called MediCal)! That is 13+ million people who qualify as low income. Sheese.
I am usually staunchly opposed to anything Nicholas Kristof writes but this is one article where he makes total sense!
We had a neighbor who was on Medical but drove a Porsche and Lamborghini and had multiple businesses in gas stations. Mind you we live in a 900k neighborhood that now goes for 1.5M He effectively had some tax scam where he was reporting minimal income and was married with 4 kids. I keep hearing how tough California is on taxes but then everyday I see more people skating.
The California rules allow someone to have a million $+ house and one car (even if it is a Mercedes) and still qualify for various benefits such as Medi-Cal, Cal-Fresh (Food stamps) and more.
This was done while thinking that they would support the older person who had lived in their house for 40 years and watched it appreciate from a 40k house and need a car to drive around. Of course, many find ways to beat the system, to show no income and assets, especially Asians and Russians.
“We (liberals) accept a yawning gulf between our values and our outcomes.”
Wow. Mr. Kristof is only now waking up to that fact! For fifty years this has been as obvious as can be. Only those who don’t want to see it don’t.
What exactly does that mean Mish? “On a cost adjusted basis”? Does that mean that higher average prices in California puts that higher percentage of people into the poverty level? Is that all gasoline? Or is it everything?
“Today one in five Californians – many working – lives in poverty (using a cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate). The Public Policy Institute of California estimates another fifth live in near-poverty – roughly 15million people in total. With the exception of Asians, the state’s racial minorities do far worse – in education, incomes and homeownership – than they do virtually anywhere else in the country.”
“Even without adjusting for costs, no Californian metro area ranks in the US top 10 in terms of well-paying, blue-collar jobs. But four – Ventura, Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego – sit among the bottom 10.”
This is a link to state by state poverty statistics. You can adjust for various things like cost of housing etc to show what you want.
https://wisevoter.com/state-rankings/poverty-rate-by-state/
From someone in California that is an old progressive I one hundred percent agree with you. I’ve started over twenty small businesses in my lifetime all of which were capital constrained(most startups by nature).
The cannabis industry is a prime example of how California operates. California had a lightly regulated cannabis industry based on a collective model whereby a lot of mom and pop businesses flourished. Then prop 64 came into being with heavy handed and burdensome regulations increasing the cost of entering the industry from 10’s of thousands to pushing 10 million dollars. Now only multimillionaires and criminal cartels are in the business. This was also under the guise of keeping banned pesticides, heavy metals and harmful biologicals out of the products. As noted yesterday in the LA Times the cannabis is just as dirty as before because it’s not a priority of the Newsom administration to monitor the corrupt regulators. The cannabis industry is now a place that if a little person wants to start a legal business it’s been made pretty much impossible by these elitist kleptocrats.
This is also the case across the industries where a little person could profitably operate a niche business. Used cars, small scale mining, being a small landlord, restaurants, anything using young minimum wage labor, and many many others.
I have been voting third party here in California for about the last decade and a half. I think it’s gonna get much much worse before it gets better since many voters are being distracted by the culture war stuff and are oblivious to their rights and opportunities being stripped away by not just the Democrats but the Republicans who do their own version of stealing from the poor and giving to the rich with monetizing overspending and supporting monopolies but just perhaps not quite as bad of late.
I thought raising the minimum wage for fast food workers was the ticket out of poverty. Oops, they closed restaurants and fired workers instead. Great job Gav.
The good things about California – the weather, the geography – are God-given. The bad things were done by people.
I especially like the wildfires and earthquakes. I am hoping to see the big one with the enormous tsunamis sweeping all miles inland before them and not to forget centuries-long droughts that make it impossible to grow even cacti.
And they have mountain lions that sneak into your house at night to eat you. Bears take over your swimming pool and kick you out. Great White man-eating sharks roam the frigid coastal waters looking for something to eat. Sasquatch in the mountains lie in wait for solitary hikers. I am sure that one day seagulls and other birds will band together and attack humans.
We have lots of wild pigs too. I’ve accidentally stalked mountain lions while hunting pigs in fairly heavy cover. They have made it hard to even carry protection in the wild.
I don’t hate California but our politicians are crap. Probably the best states to live in are where there is a good balance of power, eg swing states. Beware because as goes California so goes the rest of the country.
California has roaming pigs that are so mean they chase the pumas from the mountains and into the cities! Snakes! California has venomous snakes! You need pythons too and they will come soon.
All joking aside pumas eat the little punk pigs so via puma selection ours are definitely getting bigger and meaner, been hunting em for over 40 years and recently I’ve seen some big black aggressive males looking like they would top 500lbs. I used to hunt em with a bow but now I’m too old and slow to climb a tree quickly. I use an auto loader .308 with a big clip nowadays. I’ve even seen signs of em in the San Gabriel river bed down in the LA basin when I was doing a little gold panning over there during the pandemic.
Yesterday morning a dead younger male puma was found on the 101 freeway in LA. They are running out of territory for whatever reason and we need to restart a yearly tag hunt to trim the population a bit.
What is a Big Clip?
After more than a quarter century working in tech in CA I am planning my escape. I will miss the mild climate and views along the coast, but nice scenery can only go so far. I will take with me a nice healthy income and pile of retirement cash that CA will never be able to tax. My contributions to the CA income statement and balance sheet will be replaced by an illegal immigrant (or 100) who will be a net minus to both, making CA poorer and needing to raise taxes even more on those who stay and are gainfully employed.
Competing against the illegals never helps wages. Incomes suffer unless someone is a Government worker, or has special licensing to act as a barrier to entry. Disposable income for Californians is not what it used to be.
Newsom’s out at the French Laundry while the peons are locked down. The Pelosis are busy getting hammered, worth$250MM+. Silicon Valley and Hollywood, rulers of the universe. The people? They smell and have foul manners …
Lots of incentives for “poor-ness” in CA. Reduced or free goodies such as: meals, healthcare, dental, transportation, housing, college, water/power, phone/internet service, … with help available in 18 languages:
https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/Language-Resources/Pages/home.aspx
If you can show poor-ness, it’s the best place to live!
Take your pick: العربية | Հայերեն | ខ្មែរ | 繁體中文 | فارسی | हिंदी | Hmoob | 日本語 | 한국어 | ລາວ | Mienh waac | ਪੰਜਾਬੀ | Русский | Español | Tagalog | ภาษาไทย | Українська | Tiếng Việt
I see parallels between progressive and climate cult. The climate cult high priests, who are universally royalties or billionaires, organize their regular get-togethers in high-price, high-maintenance hangouts, and use private jets to get there. Once there, they brainstorm ever more restrictive measures for the plebs, never touching on hot topics that would make them look xenophobic or anything than the men-of-the-world.
It all has an bizarre air of conspiracy against the gullible and the stupid.
If Biden is replaced by Newsom at the last moment, I think there will be enough anti-California sentiment to squash his hopes to be president.
Agreed which is why it would never be him. He’s no more electable than running Hillary again.
If Biden gets replaced it will be with someone who can help in swing states.
Whitmer. She won in Michigan in 2020 by almost 11 points.
Reelection 2022.
It won’t be a woman.
So you’re saying it’ll be Michelle?
you are incorrect! NEwscum has a great head of hair, and a smoothe talker, that’s what’s really important !!
The party machine will work for a Biden win as long as he’s alive. TINA for politics. That said, Biden has nothing to gain from a debate, so, ….
Question: debate in two weeks or some other matter take precedence? Middle-East?
or simply: “I don’t debate felons!”
“I don’t debate losers,” will be the reply.
“Twenty Percent of California Lives in Poverty, What’s Going On?”
Same thing which goes on in Caracas. Just usual totalitarian, 100% arbitrary governance, third world crap.
Caracas may still be 5-10% worse than California. While the least badly affected US state may be 2-5% “better.” Ditto worst to best, for all the other Countries in The West.
There’s nothing special about California, other than a few percent in one direction or another.
This is just the entirely predictable, 100% inevitable outcome of all and any possible “society” where darned near all money, hence purchasing power, has simply been printed up, rather than earned.
The Newsom class is living off of wealth stolen from less incompetent people by way of debasement. 97+% of ALL wealth anyone now “owns” in the US, was obtained exactly that way. Leaving the few remaining competents dead broke. Hence, nothing of value gets done. Only ever greater amounts of the sort of mindless nonsense that only idiots who were handed all their wealth; hence power; without earning any of it, would ever be stupid enough to fall for.
And since we’re talking 97+%, it’s not even remotely a question of “if only the next Man on Teeveeee gets elected…” Instead: It;s over. All and everything that The West has championed/stood for/been told to believe in, since all the way back to at least 1910, is pure, 100% bunk. None of it, has any merit. Any value. None of it, not one single thing, is in any way preferable to what Iranians, North Koreans nor those who lived in the once-was East Bloc are/were similarly told by their; in no way at all less legitimate nor superior nor scientific; Dear Leaders. Noone, and no institution, of The West has ANY legitimacy. They may not all have less legitimacy than Al Queda, but neither do they have any more.
The West is over. A childish experiment which; as such things always do; failed. Nothing more. At all. Anywhere.
Now China will reign supreme or will they fuck it up as they have done many times before?
They’re commies…… Esperanto for eff-ups…
I can’t imagine all that many generations passing, before they, too, become just the latest “superpower” heading off to show off their underlying incompetence, by getting their rears handed to them in Afghanistan. Which has become a bit of a hallmark of man-weren’t-we-great-at-some-point status.
But until then, they sure do tower pretty far above the two once-were superpowers from the Cold War era. Both of whom are stuck with no other venue of remaining significance, than the military one that their respective Cold War stockpiles still affords them.
If your older car isn’t able to transmit mileage data, you’ll have to get a device that does. Don’t worry, nobody will care where you are going. The data is in a lock box, you see. Honest.
“Road charge is an innovative funding mechanism that allows drivers to support road and highway maintenance based on how many miles they drive, instead of how many gallons of gas they use. Just like you pay your gas and electric bills based on how much of these utilities you use, a “user pays” system for transportation funding ensures that drivers all pay their fair share for highway and road maintenance.
Keep up with California’s progress.”
https://caroadcharge.com/about/#calculator
thx for link.
Ah, but now electricity is going to a income based system. This road-tax will too eventually…only the “rich” will pay.
Everyone will pay, but the rich will pay “more”.
Taxation philosophers have long noted that scam. The system will be rigged in some way so that TPTB don’t pay so much.
SanDag (San Diego Association of Governments (appointed not elected) had proposed $.50/Mile County gas tax in ADDITION to the general gasoline taxes. Further they had collected funds for the improvements and widening of freeways but they wanted to keep that and use at their discretion and not improve the freeways. Don’t know how that played out, we exited California.
That should be $.05/Mile… typo.
We also have the highest illiteracy rate! Thanks, teachers!
It is not the teachers fault, but the multi lingual nature of the population.
BS.
it’s low expectations, period.
What about parenting.
what about it?
children from two parent households continue to outperform & achieve (at everything – academics, sports, employment, life) relative to children from non-traditional households. it is the single strongest predictor of success in academics & life.
for decades CA has led the charge in subsidizing (RE: encouraging) non-traditional & single-parent households.
policy matters.
want better parenting? want better schools & academic results? try encouraging & incentivizing whole, traditional family unit formation. doing so in CA would entail REVERSING decades of accumulated progressive public policies across the entire spectrum of public governance.
yeah… let’s talk about parenting. please.
i don’t comprehend…please post pictures and videos instead…
Pretty simple, Newsome and dems are the reason.
Liberalism is a disease
Cure for Liberalism is excising.
Cure for liberalism is to force all Ca politicians children to attend public schools. No private schools for them. Have them pay into and collect Social Security pensions instead of their generous government pensions. Have them use Medicare instead of their private health plans. If it’s good enough for all of the peons why isn’t it good enough for them. i feel like we have all become slaves of the government as well as of the government unions in California. Time to stand up and tell our leaders that we want a redress of our grievances