Unsurprisingly, I disagreed with Nikolas Kristof’s latest column at the New York Times in which he proposes that the reason that West Coast progressives have made such a hash of their states is that ideological purity has become more important to them that outcomes. Here are some examples of the mess that he cites:
The two states with the highest rates of unsheltered homelessness are California and Oregon. The three states with the lowest rates of unsheltered homelessness are all blue ones in the Northeast: Vermont, New York and Maine. Liberal Massachusetts has some of the finest public schools in the country, while liberal Washington and Oregon have below-average high school graduation rates.
Oregon ranks dead last for youth mental health services, according to Mental Health America, while Washington, D.C., and Delaware rank best.
Drug overdoses appear to have risen last year in every Democratic state on the West Coast, while they dropped last year in each Democratic state in the Northeast. The homicide rate in Portland last year was more than double that of New York City.
Why does Democratic Party governance seem less effective on the West Coast than on the East Coast?
and here’s his conclusion:
So my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.
I think he’s not connecting the dots. The demographics of California, Oregon, and Washington are drastically different than those of Vermont or Maine. Or New York for that matter. With respect to homelessness the ratios of different races and ethnicities who are homeless don’t vary that much from state to state but the demographics of the states do vary. Asians and people of primarily European ancestry tend to have a lower proportion of the homeless; people of sub-Saharan ancestry and Hispanics higher proportions. Furthermore, there is a strong correlation between substance abuse and homelessness and West Coast states have tended to be more lenient in their treatment of recreational drug use than other states. Combine lax treatment of recreational drug use and more benign climates and you have a perfect formula for homelessness.
Similarly, with on time high school graduation rates. The on time high school graduation rates by race and ethnicity don’t vary that much from state to state but the states’ demographics do.
Communities like Los Angeles that have a majority of students from non-English speaking homes will have additional costs to educate that either can be addressed at significant financial expense or ignored at the expense of education quality. There are large Hispanic populations in parts of the Northeast, but the percentage speaking Spanish at home is far less than those on the Mexican border.
Meh. Every state has pluses and minuses. Those states he complains about have much higher GDPs and have been the focus of lot of US growth. Still, they do some stupid stuff.
However, on homelessness, the states with most unhoused homeless are CA, Oregon, Hawaii, Arizona and Nevada. The first 3 are clearly blue states, the second 2 are red. The state with the least are New York, Vermont, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Maine, also largely blue. Maybe there is something which ought to be more obvious than the political parties involved that is a major factor.
Steve
Some observations.
On homelessness; no matter what cities on the West Coast do or won’t do, it will always be a more difficult problem then other parts of the country due to climate — one avoids the harsh weather of the Northeast or Midwest, and the sweltering summers of the South / interior Southwest.
The other part is the West Coast (the states of Washington, Oregon, California) aren’t really monolithic. I tend to think its really 4 cultural regions. There’s the interior (east of the coastal mountain ranges) that’s rural, very conservative, has kinship to the interior West like Idaho and very much opposed to what coalition in power in those states are doing. The second is the rural areas west of the coastal mountain ranges, north of San Francisco, in many ways similar or influenced by New England, many of the first settlers in Seattle were from New England. Another similarity, this and rural New England are two of the only “White” rural areas to be Democratic strongholds. Demographically very similar to Vermont, New Hampshire. Kristof grew up in this area. The third is the big cities of Seattle, Portland, San Francisco; big melting pots with cultural affinity to New York and Boston. And finally, the heavily Hispanic / Mexican influenced region south of San Francisco (Las Angeles and San Diego).
Something that needs a deep dive into the various financial disclosure, forms, government consultant fees, constraints in legislative time and all the other incentives and disincentives to rule.
My WAG is that new and trendy (and subsidies for) attracts more warm fuzzies than a hearing on sewer maintenance. Also, we tend to have incumbents who prefer reigning rather than ruling
One further note on homelessness through; the weather is a constant, but homeslessness has gotten significantly worse in the past 10 years for West Coast cities.
And the drug overdose problem has gotten worse. So has violent crime. Its the trend that’s troubling, its deteriorated much faster then demographics would imply.
If I had to put it down to a sentence, the big cities were run by people who weren’t interested in the nitty gritty details of local governance and instead were trying to create utopia’s.