We did a double take at the report this week that Joe Biden, once inaugurated as president, would treat California as the administration’s “de facto think tank,” placing it “center stage again in Washington’s policy arena.”
Surely, only Biden’s enemies would spread such a vicious rumor about the new chief executive. But the sources for the extraordinary story are supporters of Biden and his Californian running mate Kamala Harris.
The wonder is not that Biden would try to imitate California on policy — he’s always been ready to try anything harebrained — but rather that his allies would admit they planned to do something so obviously foolhardy.
If you haven’t noticed, California is circling the drain. The Los Angeles Times tries to absolve the state and its extremist government of responsibility, whining that the Trump administration “worked overtime to bait, punish, and marginalize California and everything it represents.”
But this does not begin to explain the mass exodus of taxpaying citizens and businesses from a state in which the gorgeous weather and natural beauty are unrivaled in the union. There has been such a massive outflow of population in recent years that the Golden State — the nickname now seems ironic — is about to lose a congressional seat for the first time in its 170-year history.
Let us count the reasons why people are leaving. First of all, there are the rolling electricity blackouts, made worse by unrealistic environmental goals for switching to renewable energy. The state with the highest income inequality in the nation now resembles the Third World in more ways than just one.
State taxes are among the worst in the nation and fall hardest on those who are not well-to-do. It’s true that million-dollar earners pay an astonishing marginal income tax rate of 13.3%. What’s truly shocking, though, is that people making as little as $60,000 in California pay up to 9.3%, which is higher than the rate millionaires pay in 46 states and the District of Columbia.
California’s minimum state sales tax of 7.25% is also the nation’s highest, with most city and county governments taking an extra point or two on top of that. In Los Angeles County, expect to pay north of 10% in combined sales tax on any applicable purchases.
With the toxic bill known as AB 5, the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to destroy California’s entire freelance and gig economy last year. The measure, which purported to confer full employment benefits on most contract workers, merely (and predictably) drove thousands of contract jobs out of the state, including those of many freelance journalists at outlets that had written gushing articles supporting it.
The effect was so terrible that legislators had to carve out exceptions, and voters overwhelmingly repealed it for all app-based gig workers in a November ballot measure. That didn’t stop tens of thousands of people from leaving the state in the meantime. For many people, in the coronavirus era and amid especially draconian lockdown orders like California’s, the gig economy has been a godsend. If your ability to participate in it is threatened, you might long for the salt flats of Utah, the high desert of Idaho, or the scorching heat of Texas.
Meanwhile, California is also suffering an artificial housing crisis due to the infamous “not-in-my-backyard” policies of its environmental activists and the super-wealthy. Newsom and other extreme left-liberals in the state Legislature have proven unwilling to free the housing market so that supply can reasonably meet demand. Meanwhile, they and the state’s largest municipalities are throwing billions of dollars ineffectively at a homeless crisis that only continues to worsen and to blight its cities.
California, the home of private-sector innovation, is driving out the entrepreneurs who made it great. Tesla is gone to Texas. California was once best known for exporting its electronic products. Its most important export now is its middle class.
If Biden really does plan to follow California’s lead, it would be a national disaster, even for Californians, who would lose their ability to flee elsewhere.
