How to Create Affordable Abundance in California

california-flag

California has one of the highest costs of living in the United States. California also is one of the most inhospitable places to run a business in the United States. And despite being blessed with abundant energy and an innovative tradition that ought to render the supply of all basic resources abundant and cheap, California has artificially created shortages of energy, land and water, and a crumbling, inadequate transportation and public utility infrastructure.

The reason for these policy failures is because the people who run California are the public sector unions who control the machinery of government, the career aspirations of government bureaucrats, the electoral fate of politicians, and the regulatory environment of the business community. To make it work, these unions have exempted government workers, along with compliant corporations and those who are wealthy enough to be indifferent, from the hardships their policies have created for everyone else.

Here’s just a taste of what California’s middle class, too rich to qualify for government handouts and too poor to be indifferent, has to endure compared to the rest of the United States:

CALIFORNIA’S PREMIUM, 2014  –  HIGH PRICES FOR THE BASICS

CA Policy Center premiums

It’s not hard to estimate how these premiums, 13% for gasoline, 42% for electricity, and 72% for homes, translate into the necessity to work and earn tens of thousands of dollars more each year in order to live in California instead of almost anywhere else in America. As for the tax and regulatory environment, respected tax fighter Richard Rider maintains a well-researched list of tax and business statistics entitled “Unaffordable California,” updated here quarterly. The substance of that report is this: Californians pay higher taxes and endure more restrictions on business than anywhere else in America. Read the details. It is as mesmerizing as it is disgraceful.
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Thanks for sharing!