California’s Death Wish: Texas Says, Here’s a Knife

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More beating on surfin’ dudesville. Joel Kotkin, who was in Dallas last Friday, is on his Texas kick again and I just love it. In fact, I’ve offered to help him find a house in Texas and just move in. This time he’s talking about the political and social and plain insane suicide Californians dealt themselves in the recent election: Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom. Because California, God love her, is already in a pickle and Kotkin thinks the new sheriffs will only make it worse:

Instead of a role model, California  has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country’s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average.  On Friday Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced yet again to call an emergency session in order to deal with the state’s enormous budget problems.

The proof of the pudding is in economic performance. Since 1998, according to economist John Husing, the California economy has not produced a single new net job. As Kotkin says,  public employment has swelled, but private jobs have declined.  I love this: as Texas grew its middle-income jobs by 16%, one of the highest rates in the nation, California, at 2.1% growth, ranked near the bottom. He says Texas accounted for roughly half of all the new jobs created in the country.

Yeah, we have our problems, and we need to look west to see how NOT to solve them. Do we really need more regulation on HOA’s that will drive up the cost of housing? And we need to totally get our property taxes under control.

I guess California, as much as I love her, might not be the best place for a second home after all… or any home!

STEM: Science,technology, engineering and math jobs.

Candy Evans

Candy Evans