CA is a huge and diverse state. It has a population greater than many EU member states (three times that of Greece and almost equal to Poland) and a GDP greater than all but three.
Nothing you could see in a week or even a year could give you the whole picture. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Nevada City, and Fresno are so different that they might as well be on different continents but they are all stakeholders in a very large and very complex system.
The CA lifestyle runs the gamut from a Beverly Hills paradise to a third-world country, and everything in between. The state as a whole produces most of this country's food and intellectual property, and is a positive net contributor to the federal budget. The legislative compromises, political three-ring circus and nigh-ungovernability of the state is the direct result of that sprawling complexity.
It is not so simple as to say the state is a "shithole" any more than to say that the whole place is an idyllic paradise.
Azelma wrote:
Oh Illinois is terrible with their handouts as well.
As someone working in a small business, I am well aware of which states are the worst for business:
http://chiefexecutive.net/best-worst-st ... r-businessCalifornia and Illinois are both shitholes that tax businesses out the ass to support their entitlement programs.
Funny how the worst ranked states are also some of the wealthiest and strongest positive contributors to the federal budget...and some of the best ranked have the most enduring underclass.
WoW. The dev team is HQ'd in Irvine. The CMs are HQ'd in Austin. Why do you think that is?
Do you think it's because of "entitlement" that CA spent billions building massive water projects to water factory farms? Do you think it's because of "entitlement" that we built the BART system? I'm sure if we turned the clock back these people would be bitching that the public university system (compare UC/CSU to whatever exists in Texas or Georgia or Tennessee) and Golden Gate Bridge were "anti-business" because they were built at public expense.
What this right wing bullshit is really about is, corporate America, like everyone else, wants all the benefits of public spending without any of the sacrifice.
Quote:
Then there is the state’s carbon emission law (AB 32), which the Small Business Roundtable and PRI say will cost half a million in foregone jobs in 2011 and up to 1.3 million jobs by 2020. What’s more, it is by no means certain the law will reduce carbon emissions since it only applies to California.
CA has these laws because the air quality was shit before they were introduced. The same people bitching now about this were the same people bitching when we passed laws banning lead from gasoline and making catalytic converters mandatory. Air quality has gotten much better since those laws were first implemented, enough that people have perceived the difference in living memory.
If the laws did not exist the rich would be the first to move elsewhere.
PS: The most liberal part of CA is the Bay Area. The most overwhelmingly conservative is the Central Valley. Guess which provides the lion's share of the state's productivity...and which has an economy supported entirely by government spending.
