California 'Hell-Hole' to Run $7 Billion Budget Surplus

[DC Al Fine]

Conservatives label CA a hell hole because of demographics and nothing else. You never hear them complain about quality of life in WV, KY, OK, KS, ect.

No. We call it a hellhole because it's prohibitively expensive in most metropolitan areas due to terrible zoning laws and rent control, which traps the working poor in a situation where they spend a huge percentage of their earnings on rent and gas. Oh, and violent drug addicts wander the streets in the cities. I love my state, but the people in this thread trying to pretend that it's some sort of progressive Xanadu (just because the government collects a lot of revenue from techies) are definitely not well-informed with regards to what it's actually like to live here.

So awesome to see conservatives give a flying f*** about the Working Poor when used solely to dunk on a successful liberal state.

Badger, I have tried to take you seriously on multiple occasions. But your constant insistence on assuming the worst of everyone you argue with makes this impossible. You add nothing to this forum's discourse aside from cheap generalizations.

There's nothing generalized about it. It's a very specific indictment about Republican policies. Sorry if reality intrudes on your cool dunk on California.

The generalization is that conservatives only care about the working poor when they criticize liberal policies. Has it crossed your mind that people might be libertarians or conservatives because they genuinely think those policies will help the poor the most?

It's very hard to take such claims seriously when you hear a sh*& ton of rhetoric against the poor for "terrible individual choices" and for "not pulling themselves up by the bootstraps".

I don't recall anyone ever questioning if just maybe Dems actually think taxing the rich might actually end up being a benefit to them in the long term. Why exactly then should conservatives and libertarians be afforded that luxury then when most of their rhetoric towards the poor is so hateful at face value?

I've heard those phrases an order of magnitude more from Atlas progressives strawmanning than from conservatives.

[DC Al Fine]

And yet we suffer from critical public underinvestment in all infrastructures from transport to electricity to housing, with catastrophic consequences. Muh liberal Dreamland.

One of the odder pathologies of American politics is the need to defend places that vote the right way, even from apolitical criticisms or criticisms from one's own side. As you noted, their are tons of good reasons to criticize California from the left. One doesn't see quite the same knee jerk defense of, say downtown Toronto, Newcastle etc.