People used to say, Californian leftists are like locusts. They move from one state to another and keep voting leftist politicians. Once the state is destroyed they will move to another state. Rinse and repeat.
Well if creating more jobs, wealth, and GDP than any other state (and GDP per capital only behind those other states claimed to be anti-business in this thread, NY, MA, CT, and DE) is "destroying" a place then we need more "destruction". Turns out the places your "locust" moved to....also now leading in economic indicators. And how are things working out economically again in those mecca's of conservatism like Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama where they've so bravely resisted the evil "locust"? Rookie tip, if you're going to push a narrative of California as some kind of economic failure you're always going to have to address the fact that it's the worlds 5th largest economy before anything else. And maybe the fact that a huge part of that economy comes from the best and brightest human capital from the rest of the country voluntarily moving there. As you pound out your screed on an entire tech ecosystem mostly conceived, developed, financed, and built in CA, in the ultimate irony!
Was it this article https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/05/nj-could-see-533m-surprise-boost-in-tax-revenues.html Oh, sorry, doesn't support the narrative. Maybe it was this chart of NY total tax revenues (note 2019 isn't finished yet!): or this one of CT total tax revenues And I'll admit the monotonic increase I alluded to isn't entirely correct, looks like everyone had a slight decrease in 2017. However this is most certainly not a " steady downward trajectory" by any stretch of the imagination, is it? I'm guessing the article you're remembering is actually a Washington Times opinion piece (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/18/how-new-york-lost-its-population-to-increasing-tax/) While I regularly read the Washington Times (and remember reading this as well) because in the bizarre world we find ourselves it is now one of the few right wing news sources that isn't completely batshit crazy, opinion pieces in any paper are going to be pushing a narrative. They're right up front and honest about it really by calling it an opinion piece. And like any opinion piece it cherry picked some data that was negative for NY (ironically considering last week they cherry picked VA as one of the "good" states, might have to rewrite that one!) and while the article talks about "undermining the New York tax base" it never actually provides data to support that. It's a common thing, left or right, that folks do, present a bunch of data showing X is bad, then throw in some assertions about other things where they claim X=bad that they don't have data to support in the hopes that between the halo effect from the data they just showed, hazy memory, and confirmation bias you'll be spouting off six months later about proof you saw in an article when it actually was never there. Don't fall for it, you're smarter than that!
Admittedly there is some anecdotal bias in my opinion. But what I am seeing on the ground does not bode well for the future of states like NY whose fiscal policy is at its core dictated by the criminal organizations called Public Sector Unions. These are boom times for government employees - gold plated health care benefits and ever growing six figure pensions while the private sector gets leaner and leaner with companies leaving. Here's an article talking about NYC's pension debt bomb, and the same scenario is reflected across every county in the state: https://reason.org/commentary/new-york-citys-pension-debt-is-driving-it-to-bankruptcy/ This has the direct effect of driving up taxes which drives up the cost of living and as a result private sector salary requirements. That's why companies relocate thousands of professional jobs out of NY every year. And this is a growing trend. JP Morgan is moving thousands of NY jobs to Plano TX: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ifting-thousands-of-jobs-out-of-new-york-area In the town where I live, I have witnessed two major employers reduce or eliminate their NY presence over the recent past. Alliance Bernstein for example shifted its headquarters and high level jobs to Nashville last year. And this year Bunge announced it is completely moving its North America headquarters from NY to a suburb of St. Louis MO. And I am sure there are dozens of stories like this all across the state every year. What's going to be left for such states 10 years from now? Jobs which cannot be relocated such as the service industry, health care jobs and of course jobs in the robust and growing public sector.
I think the pension issue is one worth thinking through. If you have a mature economy and you are and have been providing a significant chunk of the country's GDP for over a hundred years you're going to have a full pension tail. No matter if it's gold plated or lead, it's just necessarily going to be big because it reflects at least 50 years of a large economy. A state like FL or TX doesn't have that pension tail simply because their economies were far smaller 30-50 years ago. While hundreds of thousands of teachers were starting in NY 50 years ago, not nearly as many were in FL, and now NY is paying for those teacher's pensions while FL is not. In 30 years FL and TX will start paying pensions on those teachers needed to support today's economy and will be in a similar situation to NY (and the rest of the midwest and NE). This whole situation is exacerbated by the fact that large numbers of folks getting those pensions move their spending to a place like FL in retirement, while still getting their pension, so it's a double whammy of also taking the money out of the state. I think it's naive to have any discussion about pension cost differentials between states like NY and states like FL without acknowledging this massive structural difference that has absolutely nothing to do with which party is currently in power or really how generous pensions are. Certainly generous pensions impact things at the margins, but I'd really like to see data on what NY's pension obligations would be even if they cut their benefits to exactly match FL's? And really places like FL and TX ignore this at their peril as they are right now building up a pension tail that in 50 years will look like NY's and they seem to believe that they're somehow avoiding it now simply by virtue of their politics.
To them he was a foreign invader who brought the path for Spanish troops to come and slaughter the natives in the name of God!
Companies moving out of cities to suburbs just makes economic sense. You can get a large building for way less on lease or build, your employees have better quality of life not having to spend 1.5 hours each way on a train commute, cost of living is less, etc. It has nothing to do with liberal or conservative mayors or Governors, it is just basic economic shift. Transportation, logistics and communications have improved to the point you don't need to be in a city, you can be literally anywhere and still be connected and travel. I deal with some large publicly traded companies and people I deal with are either based at home or in remote areas compared to cities. Technology has made this possible.
You’ve mixed up economic failure with political, bureaucratic and social one. I didn’t move out of California because of bad economy. Though California could be even better off economically without high taxes and governmental waste. While economically - my family is renting houses in LA to people who move in family of 10 into a house meant for 4, even secretly occupying garages. And they’re often each working couple jobs to support themselves. Some figure out how to live off of the system, though mostly rich people because my rich cousins underreport their income and pay less taxes, then ask for government subsidies for their kids - because it’s easy. So they contribute to the economy business-wise, but then pay less taxes and suck more social services for themselves than their own employees would. Hard-working people, say one of my friends, works at two hospitals in LA to support his family, 80 hours/week, though complains that most of his co-workers are lazy bums who don’t want to work and suck the money off of the system (and hospital patients), some also “working” two jobs but not always actually working - basically the money flows to people who figure out how to cheat the system, but not necessarily the ones who need it - though that may be another story. The main issue though is that the rich California locust feels more intelligent than everyone else (and many are) and this makes them feel entitled to tell everyone else how they must live their lives. They literally say that uneducated people do this wrong or that wrong, and they need this or need that, or need to be prohibited from doing one thing or another. It’s like a huge home association run by jerks who feel all too powerful, but of course will treat each other well and spend money on themselves while pretending to help others. And really, California and the US are examples of economic wealth created not by leftists. And we may never see how much better off it could be, just like Europeans don’t see how much better they could do - until they look at America and all the innovation that happens there, not in countries fully run by leftists. Once America turns all left, there will be no reference point.
Btw, I think that England was also doing great economically at the time when the US was formed, separating itself from the British who were sucking money and freedom out of America. The US would not exist if not for people fighting for freedom and having enough of economically-great bs. Now California is taking the place of the old British. That’s why people are rising and fighting again. American freedom is being eroded. This has nothing to do with California economy and you can’t buy people’s freedom with money.