George Rebane
It gives little pleasure to remind us all that progressives are socio-economically ignorant, incorrigible, and unrepentant. The great escape of companies from the once Golden State continues unabated. From Nevada County we see the next stage departure of our formerly iconic Grass Valley Group as its remnants are merged with Miranda Technologies. It is yet one more piece of evidence that manufacturing things here for consumption elsewhere has become a fool’s errand in these Sierra foothills. We have nothing to offer a manufacturer except great scenery and added delays and distance over which raw materials and finished goods must be transported.
On top of that, we are in a collectivist California that is successfully vying for being the most anti-business state in the Union when we pile on the state’s taxing policies, development fees, unionization, environmental strictures, and anti-growth regulations that generally dun all productive activities that create wealth and promote individual liberties. All of these factors are not in the ken of liberals that range from the local lackeys to Sacramento’s ever leftward lurching and corrupt government.
The latest of the shoes we heard drop is Toyota’s announcement of its escape from soCal to Texas, which includes the moving of thousands of middle-class jobs out of the state that has finally become unendurable to a company that first set up shop here in 1957. The reasons for leaving are more than abundant and understood by other equally iconic California companies that are quietly directing their growth and expansion to the nation's 'fly-over country’. Only the well paid and politically blind workers will remain to enjoy our climate and scenery. Such amenities are no longer affordable to growing businesses and middle class workers.
With California’s 16+% workers in unions (Texas 4.8%, Tennessee 6.1%), creating a business that will employ tens to hundreds of manufacturing and or service workers is more than a scary thing after factoring in a 50+% added tax burden over the states cited. Also, our personal income marginal rate of 13.3% is the nation’s highest. California’s collectivists believe they can spend your money more to your benefit than you yourself can. That, of course, is one of the Big Lies foisted on the state’s nebbishes. Ever greater fraction of the special purpose slated taxes are now directed into the state’s general fund, from there they are used to pay for the unfunded public service pension catastrophe that the state and its lower jurisdictions have yet to address (can everyone spell ‘Chapter 9’?).
We can go on with this litany citing insane environmental regulations, highest energy costs, and an illegal alien population whose true costs to California are in terminal denial by our leftwing leadership. But the bottom line that demonstrates the massive failure of politics is the state’s employment and poverty numbers. At 17.6% LA has the highest poverty rate of any major American city in spite of a ‘barbell’ workforce that grows only in the low paid and highest paid ends, and spreads devastation on the middle class workers. (more here)
While Silicon Valley is an insular exception – no spread of wealth from there to the rest of the state – jobless rates in the Central Valley (13+%) and the large population centers of soCal (8-9%) tell the true story of a land that once was a mecca of productivity and growth, and the envy of the nation. Now we are the butt of California jokes while our ‘what me worry’ governor this week dismissed the “few problems” and “lots of little burdens” driving the great escape of middle class jobs with the snide encouragement that those who remain are the “smart people (who) figure out how to make it.”
And all of these travails were foretold and predicted in a timely manner to ears that still will not hear and eyes that will not see. But the real bottom line is that so many of us, especially in northern California, feel that we have no voice in Sacramento. These feelings are real and bolstered by a daily stream of data that speaks to our disenfranchisement. And these are the stirrings that give rise to today’s motives and initiatives to partition states – recall the proposed state of Jefferson – so as to generate jurisdictions that are ideologically more cohesive. Perhaps this is another area of governance in which California can lead, and thereby find alternatives to the Great Divide.
rebanesruminations.com 
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