by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.<\/p>\n
Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s deficit is still about $16 billion. It’s estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet California wants to raise taxes even higher; its business climate already ranks near the bottom of most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid on average in the nation, but its public school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.<\/p>\n
The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes \u2014 at over 49 cents per gallon \u2014 are among the highest in the nation, but its once unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.<\/p>\n
The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran \u2014 a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European high-speed rail \u2014 as long as noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.<\/p>\n
As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shores and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources \u2014 largely wind and solar, which presently provide about 11 percent of its electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.<\/p>\n
How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? There is no California, which is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, each equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly, together a disaster.<\/p>\n
A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley, where the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming pre-modern.<\/p>\n
On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshmen in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.<\/p>\n
In postmodern Palo Alto or Santa Monica, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in pre-modern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.<\/p>\n
In the interior, unemployment in many areas peaks at over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class flee the interior for the coast or nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the state’s nearly unbelievable statistics \u2014 as the state population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million during that period; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California \u2014 visit the state’s hinterlands.<\/p>\n
But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about the state’s trivia \u2014 as their legislators seek to outlaw\u00a0foie gras<\/em>, shut down irrigation projects to save the 3-inch delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.<\/p>\n But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the gas for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil and pasta.<\/p>\n On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see firsthand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts and healthcare when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high school diploma \u2014 and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.<\/p>\n The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.<\/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":[16,194],"tags":[1014,1023,1057,1031,213,1020,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-8f","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-california-mordida\/","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":0},"title":"The California Mordida","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services California now works on the principle of the\u00a0mordida, or \"bite.\" Its government assumes that it can take something extra from residents for the privilege of living in their special state. 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It currently runs 12.6\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":8742,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-california-be-saved\/","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":2},"title":"Can California Be Saved?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Crime is back up in California. Los Angeles reported a 20.6 percent increase in violent crimes over the first half of 2015 and nearly an 11 percent increase in property crimes. Last year, cash-strapped California taxpayers voted for Proposition 47, which so far\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":"www.femtalks.com","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/bay-area-traffic-move-over-law.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-myth-of-a-california-renaissance\/","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":3},"title":"The Myth of a California Renaissance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Sacramento's strategy for recovery is more taxes, more regulation, and more government. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Are the recent raves about a new California renaissance true? Rolling Stone\u00a0magazine just gushed that California governor Jerry Brown has brought the state back from the brink of \u201cdouble-digit unemployment, a\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":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/SF_From_Marin_Highlands3-300x211.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":890,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-tuition-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":511,"position":4},"title":"California Tuition Blues","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In so-called March in March protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs. 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