Times<\/em>piece). So I think it is hard to destroy California, given its natural resources and its inheritance from prior more industrious and wiser generations.<\/p>\nIn general, the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0essay has three flaws: One, the good news is a matter of degree, in the sense of things not getting worse rather than becoming good; hence the constant qualifiers such as but and though: (e.g., \u201cIn September, California had its biggest month-to-month drop in unemployment in the 36 years the state has collected statistics, from 10.6 percent to 10.2 percent, though the state still has the third-highest jobless rate in the nation\u201d; \u201cThe housing market, whose collapse in a storm of foreclosures helped worsen the economic decline, has snapped back in many, though not all, parts of the state;\u201d \u201cAnd 38 percent of Californians say the state is heading in the right direction, according to a survey this month by U.S.C. Dornsife\/Los Angeles Times<\/em>. For most places, that figure would seem dismal. But it is double what it was 13 months ago.\u201d; \u201cYet California still faces major problems. The economic recovery is hardly uniform. Central California and the Inland Empire \u2014 the suburban sprawl east of Los Angeles \u2014 continue to stagger under the collapse of the construction market, and some economists wonder if they will ever join the coastal cities on the prosperity train. Cities, most recently San Bernardino, are facing bankruptcy, and public employee pension costs loom as a major threat to the state budget and those of many municipalities, including Los Angeles.\u201d And on and on . . .)<\/p>\nSecond, the article does not talk about why California\u2019s future, despite mal-governance, is not all bleak: natural resources, such as huge new finds of gas and oil (that have yet to be tapped), and the sort of agricultural exports that are perfect for emerging Asian markets in India, China, South Korea, etc. \u2014 along with near insolvency\u2019s forcing state and local governments to either cut back or go broke (unlike the federal government, California can\u2019t print money and we still fear losing residents to nearby no-tax states in a way that Americans cannot so easily flee the country).<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0piece also deliberately ignores the third rail of all California decline stories \u2014 illegal immigration. About 40 percent of all illegal immigrants are believed to be living in California. Probably about a $20 billion share in the much larger figure of annual remittances to Latin America comes from California. And such facts do help explain why once-competitive California public schools now rate 49th in many math\/science\/English national tests, one-third of all US welfare recipients live in California, 8 million out of the last 11 million added to the state\u2019s population went on Medicaid, and why the Central Valley is suffering from record unemployment, depressed housing prices, and mass exoduses of higher-income residents. In this regard, note the following\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0sentence: \u201cCalifornia has the worst poverty in the nation. The river of people coming west in search of the economic dream, traditionally an economic and creative driver, has slowed to a crawl.\u201d In fact, \u201cthe river of people\u201d long ago ceased \u201ccoming west\u201d to California, but rather for 30 years has been coming \u201cnorth\u201d into the state \u2014 a direction that is politically incorrect to note.<\/p>\nThird, there are two Californias: a thin coastal strip where upscale, highly educated elites, in the manner of the DC\/Virginia corridor, profit from managing the vast regulatory technocracy and big-government bureaus, the top universities (e.g., Berkeley, Cal Tech, Stanford, UCLA, USC, etc.) reside and draw in thousands of rich foreigners, Silicon Valley is flush with export cash, and where the climate, ocean, and boutique culture make for the good life \u2014 and the vast north, Sierra, inland south, and Central Valley that bear more directly the burdens of lousy schools, regulations on development of resources, illegal immigration, and flight out of state \u2014 all of which explains why a 1,500 square foot house in Santa Cruz or Menlo Park sells for about $800,000 to $1 million, while its similarly sized counterpart from Stockton to Fresno goes for around $125,000 to $150,000. A Bakersfield, Tulare, or Selma is simply in a different galaxy from a Palo Alto, Carmel, San Luis Obispo, or Santa Barbara.<\/p>\n
In sum, things may not be becoming worse in California, but it is not because of anything that Jerry Brown or the legislature has done, or the expectation that all these new record-high taxes (not yet exacted) have so excited the private sector that we are already anticipating a new recovery. Again, agricultural exports boom despite not because of Sacramento; there is renewed interest from private parties in our vast natural resources, whose prices are at record levels; illegal immigration has slowed; and after four years of recession, there is always a natural American cycle of recovery. But until the state deals with its cumbersome regulations, record taxes, hostility to resource development \u2014 and supports closing the border and promotes ethnically blind assimilation rather than serial amnesties and ethnic chauvinism \u2014 we will continue to have the nation\u2019s worst schools, worst infrastructure, worst business climate, and highest exoduses, as California plods on, coasting on the fumes of what nature and our ancestors so generously bequeathed to us.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner There is a sort of upbeat\u00a0New York Timesarticle\u00a0arguing that California \u2014 in part, thanks to passing the highest sales and income taxes in the nation \u2014 might be coming back, a sort of recovery that can guide the rest of the US to a renewed faith in the Obama\/EU\/blue-state […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[16],"tags":[12,1014,1031],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2H","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/voting-present-on-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":167,"position":0},"title":"Voting Present on Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Immigration activists and Hispanic groups are demanding that President Obama deliver on his promised comprehensive package of immigration reform. Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has derided federal sweeps of illegal aliens as \"un-American.\" And recently the Obama administration stripped the federal authority\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10722,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-the-rhetoric-of-illegal-immigration-and-the-perils-of-ignoring-thucydidess-warning\/","url_meta":{"origin":167,"position":1},"title":"California, the Rhetoric of Illegal Immigration, and the Perils of Ignoring Thucydides\u2019s Warning","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 7, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Eureka Vocabulary changes always reflect the agendas of a political debate. 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As I looked at the congested traffic on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":665,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/legal-illegal-immigration\/","url_meta":{"origin":167,"position":3},"title":"Legal Illegal Immigration","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama recently issued an edict exempting an estimated 800,000 to 1 million illegal aliens from the consequences of federal immigration law. Ostensibly that blanket amnesty applies to those who arrived before the age of 16 and are younger than 30; who are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7856,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-exactly-is-comprehensive-immigration-reform\/","url_meta":{"origin":167,"position":4},"title":"What Exactly Is Comprehensive Immigration Reform?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 15, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Comprehensive immigration reform \u2014 rarely\u00a0has a catchphrase been so widely invoked and yet so little defined. Why? If proponents of so-called reform detailed exactly what they wanted, American voters would never support their self-interested agendas. Most Americans insist that existing federal immigration laws be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mexico"","block_context":{"text":"Mexico","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/mexico\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via PJMedia","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/immigration_reform_9-14-14-2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1322,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/illegal-immigration-is-immoral\/","url_meta":{"origin":167,"position":5},"title":"Illegal Immigration Is Immoral","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Illegal immigration has been in the news daily during the Republican primary campaign, even though a depressed economy here, stronger border enforcement, and vast new finds of petroleum in Latin America may soon radically curtail the number of illegal entrants into the United\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":168,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}