California prides itself on being the resistance. Resist Trump, fight climate change, be progressive, it's all a bunch of nonsense. There's no way the left's ideas can really work. California has become a dangerous liberal experiment.
It's too expensive to live here, crime is up, and we pay the highest taxes in the nation. But our leaders are isolated from the harsh realities because they can afford to live in their unicorn utopia.
Joel Kotkin's new piece called 'California's Descent into Socialism' looks at the disturbing shift happening in the state:
"California is widely celebrated as the fount of technical, cultural and political innovation. Now we seem primed to outdo even ourselves, creating a new kind of socialism that, in the end, more resembles feudalism than social democracy.
The new consensus is being pushed by, among others, hedge-fund-billionaire-turned-green-patriarch Tom Steyer. The financier now insists that, to reverse our worsening inequality, we must double down on environmental and land-use regulation, and make up for it by boosting subsidies for the struggling poor and middle class. This new progressive synthesis promises not upward mobility and independence, but rather the prospect of turning most Californians into either tax slaves or dependent serfs..."
Continue reading Joel Kotkin's full piece at the L.A. Daily News.
Joel also wrote a piece on "Road Diets" last year for the OC Register called, "A 'diet' to give California drivers indigestion:"
"In the past, it was other people’s governments that would seek to make your life more difficult. But increasingly in California, the most effective war being waged is one the state has aimed at ourselves.
The Jerry Brown administration’s obsession with becoming a global model for reducing greenhouse gases is leading to an unprecedented drive to completely reshape how Californians live..."
It's another important read. Click here to continue reading Joel's "Road Diet" piece at the OC Register.