Haze Over the Golden State
The lead story in this morning’s Los Angeles Times warned of the long-term effects of California’s budget crisis: “Corporate leaders and Wall Street investors, watching the daily festival of seeming incompetence, political partisanship and governmental dysfunction, could be persuaded to limit or eliminate their investments here.”
Economist Steven Levy commented, “We lose competitive advantage by being the state that can’t solve its problems.”
California’s increasingly dysfunctional state government is especially disheartening to anyone with a long memory. I moved to California in the ’70s to attend graduate school. I had majored in political science at the University of Illinois, where I learned how well California state government functioned. Sacramento was home to a ‘model legislature,’ providing responsive and effective leadership. In the previous decade or two California’s infrastructure, including freeways, aqueducts, and the university system, was put into place to encourage growth and prosperity. The state legislature and several thoughtful governors ensured that California was building for the future.
Was that ever a long time ago. That future is now long past.
The Times noted following last Tuesday’s election that California voters – who tend to blame politicians for not doing their jobs and solving these problems – have been complicit in California’s dysfunction. Stretching back decades, Californians – through the initiative process – have made it extremely difficult for the state to raise taxes; they have imposed term-limits, which reduce both legislative competency and the long-term horizon required to solve intractable problems; and have tied the legislature’s hands with spending mandates. Last Tuesday, voters continued this pattern, rejecting higher taxes in voting down Proposition 1A, and declining to loosen mandatory spending (for public schools, preschool and mental health) by voting down Propositions 1C, 1D, and 1E respectively.
The Times reports on the business page today that California high school and college graduates, competing with the recently-unemployed as well as with each other for fewer jobs, are facing the worst job market in decades. An increasing number of graduates are looking toward the nonprofit sector. Applications for Teach for America are up 42% and Peace Corps applications are up 16%.
That might pass for a silver lining – except, of course, most nonprofits (with shrinking resources and rising demands for services) are hardly in a position to snap up promising new graduates.
