I posted on Facebook about the CA Dems achieving a supermajority in both the Assembly and the Senate. One of my favorite liberal friends posed the following response/questions:

California got a Democratic majority AND reclaimed the title of the sixth largest economy in the world.

You move back to California to share in that prosperity and whine about the one sane State in America moving towards ascendancy. Look towards Kansas to see what your preferred insanity brings. Why do you believe that Haiti and Somalia are the ideal? I will never understand folk who cling to being fact resistant.

Since I knew my response would be longer than a Facebook comment would permit, I’m replying here.

First, I moved back to California not to “share in that prosperity” but to help my father after a disabling stroke. I wouldn’t have chosen to have my living expenses double without any increase in income. But anyway…

In 2016 California “reclaimed the title of the sixth largest economy in the world.”

A lot of good that does 60,000-plus middle class people who leave the state every year because the increase in housing costs, taxes, and healthcare left them unable to provide for their families here. A lot of good that does the recent college or medical school graduates who have to find jobs in other states because they can’t afford to pay off student loans and live here.

For a group so concerned with income inequality, California progressives sure have created a feudal utopia here. According to a study by the California Budget and Policy Center:

In 1989, the middle class accounted for 56 percent of all households in Silicon Valley, but by 2013, that share had slipped to 45.7 percent.

The same study found that lower-income residents went from 30.3 percent of households in 1989 to 34.8 percent in 2013, while residents of upper-income households jumped from 13.7 percent of the total in 1989 to 19.5 percent in 2013.

Folk clinging to eco-religious public policy have created this new California, R.C. Hobbs writes:

Rather than a land of opportunity, our “new” California increasingly resembles a class-bound medieval society. The proportion of aggregate income taken by the top 1 percent is greatest in a couple of Californian metros, San Francisco and San Jose, as well as New York. California is the most unequal state when it comes to well-being, according to the report by Measure of America, which is a project of the Social Science Research Council. This inequality is being justified – and made worse – by attempts to turn California into a mecca for the most extreme measures to reduce greenhouse gases. Like a good medievalist, Brown blames this one phenomenon for virtually everything, from wildfires to the drought and mass migrations. Like a medieval cleric railing against sin, Brown seems somewhat unconcerned that his beloved “coercive power of the state” is also largely responsible for California’s high electricity prices, regulation-driven spikes in home values and the highest oil prices in the continental United States.

Kansas? Actually, my “preferred insanity” would be more along the lines of Arizona. Solid economy, big on individual rights – but it’s a little hot and I hate things like snakes and scorpions. Or, though I wouldn’t move there because it’s much too far from the Pacific Ocean and has lots of snow days, I’m fond of Indiana‘s insanity.

Apparently LA Mayor Eric Garcetti and his buddies Kevin de Leon and Anthony Rendon believe Haiti and Somalia are the ideal, since areas of downtown Los Angeles are looking like the streets of Haiti or Somalia, with crime-ridden tent cities springing up.

For the rest of the state, we get to deal with the legislature’s failure to do anything meaningful to address the ongoing drought, including their outright refusal to allow new water storage facilities to be built and erecting massive regulatory barriers to new technology like desalination facilities.

We get to deal with hardened criminals roaming the streets because their sentences were cut short after the state was incapable of properly running a justice and prison system and tried to rectify that with AB 109, and after the voters were hoodwinked into passing Prop. 47. Just off the top of my head I can think of two horrific murders committed by people who should have been behind bars, but weren’t because of these bad bills. We’re excited (sarcasm!) to see what Prop. 57 will do to our streets!

Yes, I’ll never understand folk who cling to being fact resistant. Hope you enjoy the ride on the bullet train.