You're gettin' old Ocho,,, "Elder would have at least tried to right the ship." Implication being he didn't get the chance.
Trying to right the ship in California must be some kind of a joke. California is a powerhouse that more than carries its weight in America. Nowhere is perfect but comparatively it is absolutely one of the best states to live in America. If you’re an American that doesn’t live in California, you’re better off for California’s contributions to America. Not every state can say that.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing for dems? Clearly, newsom structured his entire campaign strategy around the "look at trump-not me" game. Not sure that works in the swing states. California can watch all of its major cities turn into dumpsters and keep on electing dems just by reminding them that they don't want to be trump republicans. The swing states are more demanding. If Trumpism were clearly dead and not on the front burner, then Newsom would have had to address the many real issues. He still would have won because it is a one-party state but he would have had to work harder. Even at that he had to spend 80million and bring in the President and the Vice President to help keep the issues away from California. The dems love that stuff. But swing states are not all dems by def. Only Newsom could get heady and uppity about surviving a recall effort and only trance-state dems could be convinced that it was always only just about Trump. He has an enormous population of disaffected democrats who had no place to turn other than go with a republican. That will not work out well for him in 2024 primary. He will find that they have other dems to turn to. Big stain on his record. People can articulate why they did not want Larry or Trump but not why they wanted Newsom other than the fact that he was not Larry or Trump. Newsom looks good on paper and should be liked in theory. Refer to how Kamala Harris made out in the primary for more on how that goes in a primary once you get outside CA.
"The poor could go anywhere... but they choose, California!" How much homelessness is the result of migration to a warm climate? Have any of you BEEN to West Virginia? Mississippi? Arkansas? Even their poor would move to Cali if you gave them train tickets.
While I respect your schooling. I don't care if you are Austan Goolsbee. I would not completely agree with him, if he made your statements either. The curves represent far more than you claimed. Yes, in some places they show what you say. But there are other locations on the curve to examine. Just go to the ends of the curves and think about it. 100 percent tax of nothing is less revenue than 90 percent of some profit/income. on the other side 10% of something will be more than 0 percent. b. Laffer did not create the concepts in any way shape or form. The concepts are basic to economic theory. As I said the question is, where we are on the curve. Not, that the curves exist. c. For instance... Keynes himself taught the concept... "When, on the contrary, I show, a little elaborately, as in the ensuing chapter, that to create wealth will increase the national income and that a large proportion of any increase in the national income will accrue to an Exchequer, amongst whose largest outgoings is the payment of incomes to those who are unemployed and whose receipts are a proportion of the incomes of those who are occupied... Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget. For to take the opposite view today is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires him to raise the price still more--and who, when at last his account is balanced with nought on both sides, is still found righteously declaring that it would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price when you were already making a loss."
What I am criticizing is the belief that Elder would be able to come in and just magically change an entire system...