Some California apologists make the absurd claim that anguish in policy is therapeutic, that massive tax hikes and regulations make things wonderful. I call it the “Slavery approach to human betterment”. You know, like John C. Calhoun’s absurdity of slavery being good for the slave.
They’ve even massaged numbers to conform to the oxymoron. It’s deliciously delirious. It’s Disraeli’s dictum all over again: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
For example, citing numbers that show the state’s per capita income growing at a rate faster than Texas or Kansas, when comparing 2010 to 2015. Yep, this fiddled tune is true … to a point. It would be true for almost any state in a hole as huge as California’s in the recent recession.
China’s growth rates after Mao were also great, but I don’t think pummeling a society with tyranny, the Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, and millions of deaths qualifies as a recommendation. What saved China was the death of the goon.
The reality for California is not so pleasant as the tune scratched out by the fiddlers. Going back further to 2000 reverses the rankings. Whatever benefit may have accrued to the state was garnered by Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It certainly didn’t wash over the Coastal Range.
Thus the observation of the state as Germany (rich)/Greece (poor) rings true. It’s Germany on the coast; it’s Greece in the interior. The progressive fiddlers are having a hard time mastering that tune.
Meanwhile, Rome burns.
RogerG