Beautiful California has gone from red to deep blue and from rich to poor. In fact, it’s the poorest state in the union. The state is now the poverty capital of America.

The economy isn’t doing so badly, so why?

The California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and other “public welfare” according to Census Bureau.

In an op-ed by Kerry Jackson for the LA Times, the author reports that California, with 12% of the nation’s population, California also has a disproportionate one in three welfare recipients. The generous spending meant to reduce poverty appears to have increased it, she observes.

For one thing, the cash welfare disbursements mostly have no work requirements. It encourages dependency which has affected the legal and illegal immigrants with 55% of immigrant families in the state getting some kind of means-tested benefits, compared with just 30% of natives.

Another problem is an incentivized welfare bureaucracy that exists for its own existence. There are 883,000 full-time-equivalent state and local employees in 2014 and many work in welfare programs. It serves their purpose to keep the welfare programs going and growing.

California in its wisdom raised the minimum wage but many will now lose their jobs and it doesn’t help the 60% it doesn’t affect.

High-priced housing is another reason.

More than four in 10 households spent more than 30% of their income on housing in 2015, according to a report by the LA Times and there’s not enough available housing.

The intrusions on property rights with excessive regulations are problematic. “Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” explains analyst Wendell Cox. “Middle-income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.”

They are out of touch according to the author: “The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to ‘resist’ Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established California as a ‘sanctuary state’ for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to ‘California values’.”

It’s a one-party socialist state and the only direction it’s going is down.

Regulations, far-left ideology and a lot of welfare recipients, many who are foreigners, promise to continue the downfall of a state rich in resources and potential labor. It could well become a Venezuela – it’s on the path.

🇺🇸This may look like a third-world country ❗️but it's actually Democrat-run California.😳 pic.twitter.com/7xGTLSdm0J — Tom Alex ❤️ ✝️🇺🇸 (@rejialex7) January 14, 2018