At Medium Peter Leyden says that there is only room in the United States for one political party, that party is the Democratic Party, and calls for bipartisanship are at the best misguided and more frequently malicious. He has seen the future and it is California:
California is the future. That’s the best way to understand the way forward for America, and ultimately the world. California is roughly 15 years ahead of the rest of America in confronting the very different realities of the 21st century. A world of transformative new technologies with capabilities that we are only just beginning to fully comprehend and harness. A polyglot world of diverse mixes of races and ethnicities that are both super-creative and periodically combustible. A world that increasingly is shaped by climate change and the immense challenges it poses for all of us.
California not only has faced up to the 21st-century challenges, but it’s begun to seriously adapt to them. Californians saw waves of new technologies early, then got a jump on leveraging and accommodating them, and occasionally constraining them. They began integrating a massive influx of Latino and Asian immigrants, coping with diversity in schools and work, and coming to terms with whites being the minority. Californians took a beating in climate-related catastrophes like the recent drought, and have aggressively moved forward with some of the most ambitious clean energy and sustainability measures in the world.
California is the future of American politics as well. The once Red and now deep Blue state has largely figured out a new political way forward for itself and by extension for America — as well as for other democracies — that’s up to the new realities and immense challenges of the 21st century. This is the most important insight for this historical juncture, this time of despair. It’s also the most difficult point for Americans on the east coast and the heartland to accept. But there is a compelling case to be made, based on data and an understanding of history, that what’s happening right now in California is going to come to the rest of America much sooner than almost anyone thinks.
I’m not sure how to respond to that. Maybe one way would be to point out that of the states in the worst fiscal shape, four of the five worst (Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Illinois—the absolute worst) are Blue states while four of the five best (Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida, and Oklahoma) are Red states. Or to point out that California’s circumstances are unique or nearly so. Its benign climate and other amenities draws well-heeled foreigners to the state and absent that its model would have collapsed long ago. Of the five biggest municipal bankruptcies, three have been in California.
But I think he may well be right and I take no solace from that. California has a very large degree of income inequality—the state with the biggest gap is New York; California is #4. The states with the lowest income inequality are New Hampshire, Wyoming, Utah, and Alaska.
Also, the same factors he points to in California have been the case in Illinois as well and Illinois is rapidly beginning to circle the drain. The main difference that I can see between the two states is that Illinois’s population is decreasing in absolute terms.
“I’m not sure how to respond to that.â€
That’s because his analysis is simple minded. Not simplistic. Simple minded.
BTW. It’s not just IL and NEastern state residents fleeing to TX and FL. We are seeing Californians. Just think about the raw logistics of that.
The guy is wacky. California is a goo model for California. It works well but not going to work for the rest of us well. But….
Residents in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York have some of the highest tax bills in the nation. They also pay thousands more in federal taxes than their state receives back in federal funding.
In total, 10 states are so-called donor states, meaning they pay more in taxes to the federal government than they receive back in funding for, say, Medicaid or public education. North Dakota, Illinois, New Hampshire, Washington state, Nebraska and Colorado round out the list.
Among the top four, the negative balance ranges from $1,792 per capita in New York to a whopping $4,000 in Connecticut, according to a new report by the Rockefeller Institute of Government. Put another way, residents in Connecticut receive just 74 cents back for every $1 they pay in federal taxes.
Steve
I’m not sure of what the point is behind your comment on ROI by state. Do you support a graduated income tax or not? If you support a graduated income tax, New York and Connecticut (southern Connecticut is essentially a bedroom community for New York City) will pay more in taxes. As to spending, blame that on the political parties and the Congress. WalletHub’s analysis (from which most of the estimates derive) is facile. Without a federal backstop New York City’s economy would have collapsed in 2008. That doesn’t figure in their calculations.
The ROI is irrelevant to state fiscal health. The federal government doesn’t sneak up and steal the money out of state treasuries. The states make their fiscal plans in full knowledge of federal policy. If your point is that there’s a limit to how much New Yorkers will pay in taxes, doesn’t that mean that the state should spend less?
Peter Leyden is a blithering idiot who apparently likes shitholes (I am assuming as long as they are somebody’s shithole). The one-party state that is California is rapidly being run into the ground by the fiscal fools running it. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major cities are being overrun by the homeless and illegal aliens who for all practical purposes have more rights than law-abiding tax-paying citizens. Google is building a campus for its workers to live in because a significant number of them can’t find affordable housing because of rent control and land use restrictions and are living in cars or even outdoors and because of the crime and disgusting refuse they have to deal with outside of work. Gavin Newsom actually went to Central America to drum up support for more illegal aliens. Meanwhile nothing has been done to improve the infrastructure, especially in regards to dams for water retention for droughts. They’d rather virtue-signal and let the snowmelt floods sweep the endangered delta smelt into the ocean than save any for the farmers and townsmen of the north or the central valley. I’m all for saving endangered species, but obviously what they’re doing with the smelt isn’t working, and jacking up the price of water for millions of people and imposing permanent drought restrictions on them which the pretty people flout with aplomb is stupid. And this is a state in which there is still a possibility the minority may regain some party. Has Mr. Leyden looked at real one party countries and how well they are run?