While Governor Jerry Brown is in China touting the state’s rebound and recovery, many Californians are busy packing their bags for a move to Texas, Nevada or Arizona. Why? Because it appears that the once-Golden State may finally be overpriced, underperforming and ungovernable.
Is it possible that one state has managed to top every 50-state category on the following shameful list?
Highest taxes (gasoline, sales and top bracket of income taxes)
Lowest bond rating
Highest poverty rate (at 23.5%, the home of 1/3 of those in poverty in U.S.)
Highest unemployment rate (tied with Mississippi and Nevada at 9.6%)
Highest energy costs
Worst state to do business (as judged by Chief Executive magazine 8 years running)
Most cities going bankrupt
Prison system so poorly run it has been taken over by a federal judge
And California has managed to do this during its rebound, its good years, according to Jerry Brown who, if not Governor Moonbeam in his second coming as the state’s leader, is clearly not in touch with life on Planet California.
Although there is argument about this, there shouldn’t be: people are leaving the state. The data shows that there has been a net out-migration from California to other states since 1990, balanced for awhile by immigration from other countries.
But by 2005 that had eroded, too, with birth rates in the state also dropping at an incredible rate. Over the past two decades, a net 3.4 million people have left the state. And this is before the 2013 increase in income tax rates which prompted even liberal TV talker Bill Maher to complain that “it’s outrageous what we (millionaires) are paying” in taxes, “over 50%,” warning “liberals, you could actually lose me.”
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
