Is the Progressive Experiment in California Coming to an End?

The Golden State might have just economically and culturally bottomed out, yet signs point to a shakeup that could move California more to the political center.

Doesn’t look very “progressive” to me…

Legendarily, the Golden State was a place where dreams were made possible, a destination for anyone who wanted a better life, and a clarion call for those of us growing up in the staid Northeast to “go West, young man.”

I have spent the majority of my life here in Southern California. My family came here from New York to latch upon the unique opportunities for a better living. It was all here – jobs, sunshine, entertainment, education, leisure, health, open minds – the perfect storm of human prosperity.

I don’t need to remind anyone of how far California has fallen over the past few decades. Far from being the paradise portrayed for years by Hollywood and California politicians, we have the nation’s highest unemployment and poverty rates while being home to the most billionaires. It is truly the land of the “haves” and the “have-nots.”

Our governance is pathetic. California was recently ranked dead last among the fifty states on delivering return on investment of taxpayer dollars.

Only 40 percent of California residents approve of the activities of state legislators. From the California High Speed Rail boondoggle, to the offering of free health care for illegal immigrants, to the insane soft-on-crime policies, to the completely avoidable lack of affordable housing, California also ranks toward the bottom in attracting new citizens.

This is what accountability looks like

For the first time in history, California experienced a net loss of population and has even lost a Congressional seat as a result. In the last 20 years, L.A. County alone lost nearly 750,000 future tax paying residents under the age of 25.

There are many reasons for this exodus, but near the top of the list is California’s hostility to business. Policymakers here have smothered many of the state’s job-creating industries, particularly those in oil, gas, and manufacturing. Blue-collar jobs, a traditional foundation of upward economic mobility, have been largely crushed by the imposition of unworkable climate regulations and labor laws that discourage the hiring of employees.

California has already lost the North American headquarters of nearly all of its aerospace companies, as well as large employers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Nestle. The state has fallen into what former Governor Jerry Brown once called a “one note” economy, relying on tech-generated capital gains. But even the tech sector is showing weakness in California, with many companies preferring to relocate their operations to Texas, Georgia, and other more affordable states.

After having moved the Tesla headquarters to Texas, Elon Musk recently announced that he will move both SpaceX and X (formally Twitter) headquarters to Texas as well, citing California Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing of a law preventing school districts from informing parents of their children’s gender identification changes. If enough Californians come to a similar conclusion, the out-migration of families could be financially devastating.

Who will be left to pay for everything?

In ten years, the state’s budget nearly tripled from $96.3 billion in 2013  to around $226 billion by 2023. And since the wealthiest 10 percent of California households pay 80 percent of the state’s income taxes, the loss of only a handful of those households has a huge impact on the revenue needed to plug a $73 billion deficit. Wealth and exit taxes are now under consideration.

The Progressive dominance here over the past thirty years has almost eliminated the historical oscillation between Progressive and Conservative governance. The population movement out of California since 2000 has created the ideal conditions for one-party rule. That said, we should be reminded of the warning of the late economist Herbert Stein who said “if something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

The times, they are a-changin’…slowly.

Given all of this economic and societal chaos, California has true potential for realignment as the population has grown tired of radical policymaking and the resulting financial and human disasters. We’ve already seen the recall of George Soros-backed San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin and several other far-left school board members. Both Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. district attorney George Gascon narrowly survived recall efforts. And support for rolling back soft-on-crime Proposition 47 has grown, which will reinstate felony status to a host of crimes that were reduced to misdemeanors and has led to an explosion of crime in city centers.

But this is California, and change will come. Slowly.

It will come in the form of pushback from its ethnic communities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, who collectively form a majority of state residents and are around 40 percent of likely voters. These are family-centric, hard working people who view cost of living and crime as motivating factors, with relatively few identifying social justice or climate change – a foundation of the Democrat Party platform – as priority issues.

Will continued Progressive mismanagement of the state be enough to move the state’s political gravitational pull toward the center? The potential is better now than it has been at any time in decades.

Or maybe I’m just California Dreamin’.