"The Golden State Isn't Worth It"

[Sam_Stone]

So says an editorial in the LA Times:

In America’s federal system, some states, such as California, offer residents a “package deal” that bundles numerous and ambitious public benefits with the high taxes needed to pay for them. Other states, such as Texas, offer packages combining modest benefits and low taxes. These alternatives, of course, define the basic argument between liberals and conservatives over what it means to get the size and scope of government right.

It’s not surprising, then, that there’s an intense debate over which model is more admirable and sustainable. What is surprising is the growing evidence that the low-benefit/low-tax package not only succeeds on its own terms but also according to the criteria used to defend its opposite. In other words, the superior public goods that supposedly justify the high taxes just aren’t being delivered.

That’s a pretty good statement of the divide between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats want to tax more, and in return they promise a high level of service from the government. Republicans want to tax less, but provide fewer services and let you figure out the rest for yourself.

So, how do the two models compare after they’ve been in action for a few decades? The article compares the results of Texas with those of California. California’s per-capita cost of government is 46.8% higher than that of Texas.

Initially, that money led to to improvements in California - more infrastructure, a decent school system, better roads, etc.

But over the decades, the public system has deteriorated, and been increasingly captured by government employees and unions. California now has worse schools than Texas, worse services in general, an infrastructure that’s no longer any better than the Texas Infrastructure. It’s spending less on roads and transportation than is Texas. But the cost of government is much higher.

Where’s it going? To the government itself. California has some of the highest pay rates for government employees in the U.S., and one of the largest public sectors.

All big government bought California was a huge ruling class that helps itself to more than its fair share of the public’s money.

The end result is huge debt and a fleeing population:

Between April 1, 2000, and June 30, 2007, an average of 3,247 more people moved out of California than into it every week, according to the Census Bureau.

In comparison, over the same period Texas had a net weekly population increase of 1,544 from internal migration from other parts of the U.S.

And this isn’t just specific to Texas and California. The same dynamic is playing out all over the place:

During these years, more generally, 16 of the 17 states with the lowest tax levels had positive “net internal migration,” in the Census Bureau’s language, while 14 of the 17 states with the highest taxes had negative net internal migration.

Is this not a serious indictment of the big government model? When allowed to vote with their own feet, people are increasingly choosing to move to where government is smallest.
Given those kind of results, how can you advocate for the same kinds of big government programs on a national level? Isn’t the empirical evidence showing that, at least for the U.S., big government is not working out the way you hoped?

[TWDuke]

Sorry for not addressing the substance of your post, but I think this is worth correcting:

@Sam_Stone

So says an editorial in the LA Times:

Editorials represent the collective opinion of a newspaper’s editorial or the opinion of editorial-page editors. What you have quoted is an Op-Ed piece. Op-Ed pieces represent a variety of opinions and are often written by people not normally affiliated with the newspaper.

[Knorf]

I’d still rather live in California than in Texas.

[appleciders]

At the risk of stating the obvious, you’ve proved correlation, not causation. People move for reasons other than the size of government.

[Lantern]

First of all California isn’t a good example of the tax-and-spend model. It is probably better described as a don’t-tax and spend system attempted at the national level by George W Bush and before him Ronald Reagan and pioneered in California through Proposition 13. This articlesketches out the basic story:

What has brought California to such a perilous state? How did its government become so wildly dysfunctional? One obvious cause is the deep recession, which has caused tax revenues to plunge for all states. But California’s woes have a set of deeper reasons: direct democracy run amok, timid governors, partisan gridlock and a flawed constitution have all contributed to budget chaos and people in pain. And at the root of California’s misery lies Proposition 13, the antitax measure that ignited the Reagan Revolution and the conservative era. In Washington, the Reagan-Bush era is over. But in California, the conservative legacy lives on. (Read TIME’s report: “Can the U.S. Afford to Let California Fail?”)

Before Prop 13, in the 1950s and '60s, California was a liberal showcase. Governors Earl Warren and Pat Brown responded to the population growth of the postwar boom with a massive program of public infrastructure — the nation’s finest public college system, the freeway system and the state aqueduct that carries water from the well-watered north to the parched south. When Ronald Reagan was governor, he actually raised taxes. Then Proposition 13 shot the tires out of Pat Brown’s liberal state.

And Texas is a paragon only if you cherrypick the statistics. For example ithas a significantly higher proportion of poor and uninsured people compared to the rest of the United States. Secondly its comparatively decent economy and budget situation today probably has more to do with the rising energy prices this decade rather than any inherent merit in its economic model.

[The_Second_Stone]

I rather enjoy living in California, which is the best state in the Union. Yes, we have financial difficulties, but only because we send all our taxes to poorer states that have their hands out and always vote Republican. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/22685.html If we were to receive our excess back, then we wouldn’t have a deficit even in these times. But because the Republicans like to steal and mock their victims, we are made fun of for our current deficits.

I say it is high time that Red States started getting off welfare and being responsible and non-socialist like they claim and give the money back.

[Sam_Stone]

Regardless of the specific details, don’t you think it’s telling that California has a net outflux of people, while Texas has a net influx? And that the same pattern holds almost perfectly for 35 other states at the highest and lowest levels of government size, with only three exceptions?

People are voting with their feet, and all the movement is away from the states with the biggest governments.

@appleciders

At the risk of stating the obvious, you’ve proved correlation, not causation. People move for reasons other than the size of government.

But a pretty damned strong correlation, don’t you think? And it holds across numerous states, in all areas of the country. This isn’t one or two samples.

[Mosier]

@Sam_Stone

Regardless of the specific details, don’t you think it’s telling that California has a net outflux of people, while Texas has a net influx? And that the same pattern holds almost perfectly for 35 other states at the highest and lowest levels of government size, with only three exceptions?

People are voting with their feet, and all the movement is away from the states with the biggest governments.

But a pretty damned strong correlation, don’t you think? And it holds across numerous states, in all areas of the country. This isn’t one or two samples.

People are moving away from the places hit hardest by the recession. With a few exceptions, those places had bigger economies than the small government places. People can’t afford to live in the nice places anymore, so they move to Texas and Alaska.

If you want to correlate quality of life with the size of the government, get a bigger sample size. There’s a whole world out there, with plenty of Western socialist or populist governments to compare to. If you insist on analyzing only American states. you can just look at poverty statistics and see just how much better Texas is than California.

[Starving_Artist]

@Lantern

First of all California isn’t a good example of the tax-and-spend model. It is probably better described as a don’t-tax and spend system attempted at the national level by George W Bush and before him Ronald Reagan and pioneered in California through Proposition 13.

And let’s not forget the reasons for Proposition 13 in the first place, reasons that were routinely forcing people – often elderly people – to sell their homes in order to pay the taxes on them. The following is from the Wikipedia article on Prop 13:

[ul]A** large contributor to Proposition 13 was the sentiment that older Californians should not be priced out of their homes through high taxes**.[3] The proposition has been called the “third rail” (meaning “untouchable subject”) of California politics and it is not politically popular for Sacramento lawmakers to attempt to change it.[3]"[/ul]

[ul]Although the revenues supported the costs of growth, such as new schools, roads, and the extension of other municipal services, older Californians on fixed incomes were especially hard hit by rising property values. Due to inflation, reassessments on residential property drove property taxes so high that some retired people could no longer afford to remain in homes they had purchased long before."[/ul]

[ul]In the early 1960s, several scandals erupted through California involving county assessors. These assessors, who had traditionally enjoyed great latitude in setting the taxable value of properties, were found rewarding friends and allies with artificially low assessments, with tax bills to match. These scandals led in 1966 to the passage of AB 80, which imposed standards to hold assessments to market value. However, assessors, who are elected officials, had traditionally used their flexibility to aid elderly homeowners on fixed incomes, and more broadly to systematically undervalue vote-rich residential properties and compensate by inflating commercial assessments. The return to market value in the wake of AB 80 could easily represent a mid-double-digit percentage increase in assessment for many homeowners.[/ul]
[bolding mine]

Link

[RickJay]

@Knorf

I’d still rather live in California than in Texas.

This is one of those statements that doesn’t really mean anything, because you’re describing two places or enormous size and diversity where “living in” can mean one of 10,000 different arrangements. There are a lot of places in California that suck pretty bad and a lot of places in Texas that are lovely places to live and (gasp) even quite liberal, and vice-versa.

As has been pointed out, one of the main reasons people are leaving California is they can’t afford it. I mean, you can say you’d rather live there, but would you rather live there at the cost of bankruptcy and financial ruin? Probably not. My best bud lives in Los Gatos and it’d be a cool place to live, but I’d much rather be able to afford something other than a house with no furniture in it.

[Yllaria]

@Sam_Stone

… People are voting with their feet, and all the movement is away from the states with the biggest governments. . .

I’d be interested to know how many of the folks moving are retirees. I live in California and have several relatives who got their pension and health care package and then moved somewhere less expensive. The expense wasn’t the only motivation, though. They also wanted somewhere less crowded. They had grown up in a less crowded California and wanted to return to that.

[Mr.Moto]

@Yllaria

They also wanted somewhere less crowded. They had grown up in a less crowded California and wanted to return to that.

So they’re going to crowd up Arizona and the Carolinas as a result?

[DanBlather]

CA receives .79 in Federal spending for each dollar it pays in Federal taxes. TX gets .94.

[Mr.Moto]

@DanBlather

CA receives .79 in Federal spending for each dollar it pays in Federal taxes. TX gets .94.

Yes, and Oregon gets 93 cents out of every buck it sends - and it sure ain’t much like Texas, is it. Looking at the same table you did shows other things as well - like New Mexico getting $2.03 back for every buck it sends (yeah - that red state) and West Virginia getting back $1.76. That’s a state that might go for Republicans at the presidential level, but elects Democrats to most other offices.

How do these compare with each other? I don’t think this metric provides enough to judge, frankly.

[LonesomePolecat]

@TWDuke

Sorry for not addressing the substance of your post, but I think this is worth correcting:Editorials represent the collective opinion of a newspaper’s editorial or the opinion of editorial-page editors. What you have quoted is an Op-Ed piece. Op-Ed pieces represent a variety of opinions and are often written by people not normally affiliated with the newspaper.

And your point?

[LonesomePolecat]

@appleciders

At the risk of stating the obvious, you’ve proved correlation, not causation. People move for reasons other than the size of government.

But before you can prove causation, you must first prove correlation. And if you’re going to take the position that bloated government is not the reason that people are leaving California, you need to make a case for that.

[Morgenstern]

California has yet another golden idea. Raise state withholding by 10%. Note that I said withholding, not taxes. This means they are actually borrowing taxpayer money for up to a year and then returning it without interest. Of course, this would be incomplete without a mention of the IOU’s the state issued instead of refunds last year. sigh

[John_Mace]

@Mr.Moto

Yes, and Oregon gets 93 cents out of every buck it sends - and it sure ain’t much like Texas, is it. Looking at the same table you did shows other things as well - like New Mexico getting $2.03 back for every buck it sends (yeah - that red state) and West Virginia getting back $1.76. That’s a state that might go for Republicans at the presidential level, but elects Democrats to most other offices.

I’m not sure either way, but I was assume a state like NM, which has vast tracts of federal lands, is not a good comparison to a state like WV. And if we’re counting money going to military bases and the like, then that makes that number rather meaningless. I’d want to see the details of what that money is for before drawing any conclusions one way or anther.

[mswas]

@John_Mace

I’m not sure either way, but I was assume a state like NM, which has vast tracts of federal lands, is not a good comparison to a state like WV. And if we’re counting money going to military bases and the like, then that makes that number rather meaningless. I’d want to see the details of what that money is for before drawing any conclusions one way or anther.

Heh, and New Mexico is pretty solidly blue. The Governor, both Senators, and all three of the Congresscritters are Democrats now. You make a very good point about how that money is spent. New Mexico has a number of rather large military bases, and a couple of top level Federal labs one in Los Alamos and one in Albuquerque (Sandia Labs). I imagine a large proportion (per capita) of Federal dollars being spent on science is being spent in New Mexico.

[ElvisL1ves]

@LonesomePolecat

And if you’re going to take the position that bloated government is not the reason that people are leaving California, you need to make a case for that.

Works the other way too, ya know.