How's "socialist" California doing?

Pretty well it seems:

California is now the world’s fifth-largest economy, up from eighth a decade ago. If it’s a socialist hellhole, it’s a socialist hellhole that somehow nurtured Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Uber, Netflix, Oracle and Intel, not to mention old-economy stalwarts like Chevron, Disney, Wells Fargo and the Hollywood film industry. California firms still attract more venture capital than the rest of the country combined, while its farms produce more fruits, nuts and wine than the rest of the country combined. During the Great Recession, when the state was mired in a budget crisis so brutal its bond rating approached junk and it gave IOUs to government workers, mainstream media outlets were proclaiming the death of the California dream. But after a decade of steady growth that has consistently outpaced the nation’s, plus a significant tax hike on the wealthy, California is in much sounder fiscal shape; while federal deficits are soaring again, the state has erased its red ink and even stashed $13 billion in a rainy day fund.

Of course, every state is in better economic shape than it was during the Great Recession, but California has enjoyed its renaissance while pursuing policies Republicans associate with economic ruin. It has an $11-an-hour minimum wage, scheduled to rise to $15 by 2023. Its unusually aggressive implementation of Obamacare since 2013 has reduced its uninsured rate from 17 percent to just 7 percent. Its ambitious clean energy and climate policies in many ways inspired the Green New Deal; the state is committed to generating 50 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100 percent by 2045, and its stringent fuel-efficiency standards help explain why it’s home to half the nation’s electric vehicles.

In general, California is flourishing while pursuing the exact opposite of the policies Trump is pursuing in Washington.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/21/trump-california-attacks-economy-225191


Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

WEST COAST REPRESENT

But is "socialist" California really a trope?

Leftist California is -- for the state is home to a lefty elite that has regularly pushed forward the progressive agenda, particularly in areas like gay marriage and asylum cities.

Moreover, these policies are generally not without consequence. Everyone is familiar with the 'Californians are moving away in droves' stories, and they even put it down to tax hikes:

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/19/californians-fed-up-with-housing-costs-and-taxes-are-fleeing-state.html

Moreover, California is always ready to give selective tax breaks to companies:

Businesses in San Francisco’s Mid-Market district skirted nearly $34 million in city payroll taxes last year thanks to a controversial incentive program known as the “Twitter tax break” intended to keep tech firms from fleeing for Silicon Valley.

That sum, published in a report released Monday by the San Francisco Controller’s Office, increased by about $30 million from 2013 and is five times greater than the amount of taxes companies avoided in the two previous years combined.

The increase can be attributed, in part, to the fact that the city includes stock options in its payroll tax calculations, city officials said. Several Mid-Market companies have gone public since the incentive went into effect in 2012, including Twitter in 2013 and Zendesk last year. The 2013 figures didn’t include Twitter’s $25 billion initial public offering nor Zendesk’s $100 million IPO.

The incentive — a temporary exemption on the city’s 1.5 percent payroll tax for companies that moved into buildings in Mid-Market — was meant to attract rapidly developing tech companies and keep them from moving elsewhere.

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Companies-avoid-34M-in-city-taxes-thanks-to-6578396.php

And that'd be just one example -- it's a pattern, and not a pattern that you would necessarily fault California for, but also shows that whoever is saying California is 'Socialist' is not really being accurate.

@philokalia said
But is "socialist" California really a trope?

Leftist California is -- for the state is home to a lefty elite that has regularly pushed forward the progressive agenda, particularly in areas like gay marriage and asylum cities.

Moreover, these policies are generally not without consequence. Everyone is familiar with the 'Californians are moving away in droves' storie ...[text shortened]... a for, but also shows that whoever is saying California is 'Socialist' is not really being accurate.

People are moving away from California in such droves that its population has increased by 3 million or about 8% since 2010.

Of course, California isn't socialist by any reasonable definition but it has adopted policies which right wingers claim are socialist like increased taxes on the wealthy and a more robust safety net than in most of the country. The point being things that conservatives call "socialist" don't preclude a growing and healthy economy (in fact, they might enhance its possibility).

@philokalia said
But is "socialist" California really a trope?

Leftist California is -- for the state is home to a lefty elite that has regularly pushed forward the progressive agenda, particularly in areas like gay marriage and asylum cities.

Moreover, these policies are generally not without consequence. Everyone is familiar with the 'Californians are moving away in droves' storie ...[text shortened]... a for, but also shows that whoever is saying California is 'Socialist' is not really being accurate.

Rich peoples' hipster kids are flooding the housing market* here so idk what you're talking about I WISH they'd go away like you're suggesting but they won't

*I mean they're renting all the housing with their parents' money which I guess is the opposite of flooding the market but whatever it sucks they are causing the homeless problem

@no1marauder said
Pretty well it seems:

California is now the world’s fifth-largest economy, up from eighth a decade ago. If it’s a socialist hellhole, it’s a socialist hellhole that somehow nurtured Apple, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Uber, Netflix, Oracle and Intel, not to mention old-economy stalwarts like Chevron, Disney, Wells Fargo and the Hollywood film industry. [b]California firms ...[text shortened]... ww.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/21/trump-california-attacks-economy-225191


Hmmmmmmmmmmmm

The high speed rail generated about 2 billion in activity, only problem, there's no railroad and there's not likely to be. Just need to keep doing that.

@no1marauder said
People are moving away from California in such droves that its population has increased by 3 million or about 8% since 2010.

Of course, California isn't socialist by any reasonable definition but it has adopted policies which right wingers claim are socialist like increased taxes on the wealthy and a more robust safety net than in most of the country. The point being t ...[text shortened]... cialist" don't preclude a growing and healthy economy (in fact, they might enhance its possibility).

Right, and that increase is driven by immigration both legal and illegal, and legal immigration accounts for the bulk of population growth over the last quarter century.

Based on the numbers in the article from 2012 and California's population in that year, illegals make up something like six percent of California (nearly twice the national average).

https://journal.firsttuesday.us/golden-state-population-trends/9007/

So you're theoretically losing the middle class and gaining illegals and H1B visas who came to earn 35 thousand dollars a year in a job that should pay fifty thousand at Twitter.

And that's why economists and the likes pay attention to this trend and write about it in an alarming way.

@philokalia said
Right, and that increase is driven by immigration both legal and illegal, and legal immigration accounts for the bulk of population growth over the last quarter century.

Based on the numbers in the article from 2012 and California's population in that year, illegals make up something like six percent of California (nearly twice the national average).

https://journal ...[text shortened]... at's why economists and the likes pay attention to this trend and write about it in an alarming way.

Did you read the OP at all? California now has the 5th largest economy in the world, up from 8th a decade ago. If, indeed, illegals make up 6% of the population, and if, indeed, that is twice the national average, then this exposes the right's fear train about the "illegal invasion" ruining the economy as the pure fear BS that it is.

@suzianne said
Did you read the OP at all? California now has the 5th largest economy in the world, up from 8th a decade ago. If, indeed, illegals make up 6% of the population, and if, indeed, that is twice the national average, then this exposes the right's fear train about the "illegal invasion" ruining the economy as the pure fear BS that it is.

yeah its just cushy there...If you are rich...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article218270905.html

@mott-the-hoople said
yeah its just cushy there...If you are rich...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article218270905.html

Nothing wrong with being rich.
I thought the right wing GOP was the party of the rich ?
What happened ?
Now conservatism has become the champion of the working class.
The working class used to be the domain of the Socialists.
Hmm, what happened ?

Let me hazard a guess.
Conservatism is a social and moral ideology driven by principles based on "tradition".
People desire the order to be way that things used to be.
In the good old days.

People who become rich, for all their faults, tend to think outside the box.
They become liberals !!
Liberals are forward thinking.
They reject the static world that the religious right cling to.
Or those who like the country the way it was decades ago.
They also reject Socialism for the most part.
Liberals are centrist !!
But that to you is Socialist, isn't it ?

California is doing fine.
They need to manage their finances a bit better.
But they attract the brightest, most ambitious, driven people who like to think outside the box.
Yes !! Outside the box !!
NOT straight and narrow !!
If you want straight and narrow, go to church in Alabama.
The elites are doing fine in California.
And in New York too. 🙂

@mott-the-hoople said
yeah its just cushy there...If you are rich...

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article218270905.html

That is their utopia. You have the super rich fat cats, like Dims like Gates, and the rest of the homeless losers.

And really this is how all socialist/communist countries wind up. You have a few elite privileged and the rest miserable.

@whodey said
That is their utopia. You have the super rich fat cats, like Dims like Gates, and the rest of the homeless losers.

And really this is how all socialist/communist countries wind up. You have a few elite privileged and the rest miserable.

Maybe Gates is where he is because he's smarter than you.

And the Communists hate people like Gates.
And try to get rid of people like Gates.
That you actually equate people like Gates to Communism (and Socialism) is a testament to your ideological stupidity.
And that you lump Communism and Socialism in the same basket just adds to that testament.
Anything to the left of your extreme conservatism must be Socialism.
How narrow you are !!
And you are so blinded to your views, you don't even recognize that the clown occupying the White House is a snake oil salesman.

Need I slap it into you ?
Liberals are NOT Communists !!
And not even that much Socialist.

They are just more open minded than the straight and narrows.
And btw, dinosaurs did not walk the Earth 4000 years ago. 😏

@mghrn55 said
Maybe Gates is where he is because he's smarter than you.

And the Communists hate people like Gates.
And try to get rid of people like Gates.
That you actually equate people like Gates to Communism (and Socialism) is a testament to your ideological stupidity.
And that you lump Communism and Socialism in the same basket just adds to that testament.
Anything to the lef ...[text shortened]... minded than the straight and narrows.
And btw, dinosaurs did not walk the Earth 4000 years ago. 😏

So let me get this straight, Gates is brilliant and all that but is not an evil rich guy?

I thought billionaires were evil.

What happened?

@whodey said
So let me get this straight, Gates is brilliant and all that but is not an evil rich guy?

I thought billionaires were evil.

What happened?

I don't think billionaires are evil because they are billionaires.
They may be good and evil and anywhere in between based on their character.
El Chapo was probably a billionaire.
Bernie Madoff was a billionaire many times over.
Bill Gates is a billionaire as are Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others.
Even the Buffoon in Chief is a billionaire.
Each are judged on merit depending on how they achieved their success and subsequent wealth and the nature of their contribution to humanity.

I don't lump them into a class, call them elites, and then vilify them in front of a mindless voter base for political capital.

Got that ?

@suzianne said
Did you read the OP at all? California now has the 5th largest economy in the world, up from 8th a decade ago. If, indeed, illegals make up 6% of the population, and if, indeed, that is twice the national average, then this exposes the right's fear train about the "illegal invasion" ruining the economy as the pure fear BS that it is.

But why is California's economy so great?

Silicon Valley and Beverly Hills...

Or the Housekeepers of silicon Valley and the gardeners of Beverly Hills?

The corporate taxes jeeps the system afloat. The tax breaks keep them there.

And the middle class that is a more meaningful part of this is moving away, right.

What do you think of that?