CA - a land of political paradoxes?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

California is set up for the rich and poor to rape the middle class, which is like a keg tapped at both ends.  Then they wonder why they have all those population outflows.  They need a fence, like East Germany had.

I've been trying not to get into tone arguments lately, but this post is disgusting.

Also worth noting is that a lot of parts of California that are suffering the outflow are simply running out of space. That and it's simultaneously too difficult and too easy to make any substantive changes to the state's policy on the go because of the atrocious way its constitution is set up. Like the sort of policy changes that one would expect in, for example, a recession, or a state large parts of which have maxed out in terms of how much they can be physically built upon.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

California is set up for the rich and poor to rape the middle class, which is like a keg tapped at both ends.  Then they wonder why they have all those population outflows.  They need a fence, like East Germany had.

I've been trying not to get into tone arguments lately, but this post is disgusting.

Typical ad hominem response from an extreme Leftwinger.

Did I ever claim that middle-class folks aren't leaving California? No. They obviously are and the state's ongoing mismanagement for the past several decades, caused by the extremely erratic nature of how public policy in California is effected and changed, is definitely part of that. For that matter, did I express any notably extreme left-wing ideas? No (although I will later in this post!). Which of us, then, is responding ad hominem?

I claimed that describing the rich and poor as 'raping' the middle class is disgusting, because it is. And then I offered an actual opinion on the reasons for the demographic shifts, which you don't seem to have noticed.

_____

Besides, I think it's a good thing that there are at least some governments that at least try or pretend to give preferential options to the poor. You, obviously, don't agree.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

That Kotkin article is worth reading in full:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577340531861056966.html

Don't miss the part where he calls Calif "a two-and-a-half class society" and compares Calif with Texas.

Thanks for the link. It's an interesting article, albeit obviously tendentious.

There are some genuinely well-run states in the middle of the country, which tend to have parsimonious and technocratic governing cultures (the mountain states, for example, do genuinely tend to be very well-run on a pragmatic level), but some other places, including Texas, are more attractive for the types of growth that he's talking about in part because they have markedly lower standards of living (which does, granted, tend to lead also to lower costs of living for people who can afford basic things like health insurance).

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe so long as the Legislature's in session."

Obviously California needs a government more like Texas'.  Here's how to start:  Prevent the Legislature from meeting more than a few weeks every couple of years, give it almost no power to change anything without voter approval, and pay the members a pittance.

Giving the legislature highly limited power to change certain things, and the voters broad power to change almost everything, has obviously worked so well in California in the past.