

California v Texas: America's future - newacc
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13990207&source=hptextfeature

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SamAtt
So the opposite of "Brainy and Sexy" is a Conservative Christian? I find that
a bit offensive and I'm a Californian and an Agnostic.

The article itself is an undeserved defense of California. I love California
and I do believe we have some of the most inventive people in the world but
when you add the projected shortfall over the next couple years to our current
debt you get a number that's getting close to Google's total market cap.

I don't know how you invent yourself out of a mess like that

~~~
jdfreefly
(take this with a grain of salt...I'm one of the "earners")

You can't invent yourself out of a system of entitlements that has long since
divorced itself from reality.

You have a (comparatively) small group of people making a large portion of the
income with a much larger group of people making little to no income and
demanding more and more help from the earners to support their philanthropic
causes.

What makes it hard to swallow is that we see loads of money being thrown at
things like education and helping the homeless but we see no improvement.

I'm all for helping educate people, and lending a hand to the less fortunate,
but I expect a return on my investment. When you take this much from me and my
return is children who can't read turning into violent criminals and the
wonderful view of a homeless man crapping in a doorway on the way to work...I
want a refund.

~~~
lutorm
"loads of money being thrown at things like education"?

State funding for the University of California has decreased from 7% of the
state of California's general fund in 1970 to 3.2% in 2008. Between 1990 and
2008, inflation-adjusted state support per UC student fell by 40%. As a
result, the total inflation-adjusted education expenditure per UC student
(including student fees and contributions from UC General Funds) decreased by
19%, while student costs rose by 138%.

That doesn't sound like money's being thrown at education, at least not higher
ed.

(text lifted from this letter: [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/08/MN6218KIRQ.DTL))

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nostrademons
Wasn't it just a couple years ago that people here were saying California
provided the model for the rest of the country, and that more people should
adopt the Silicon Valley startup system?

I think the real issue is differing cultural attitudes toward risk.
Californians embrace it, which probably results from the selection bias of
having a state where the largest population centers are all _centered on an
active fault-line_. Texans do their best to avoid it.

When times are good, people who take risks flourish, because most risks turn
out well. But when times are bad, they get hurt much worse than people who
play it safe. That's almost by definition: "good times" are those when most
risks pan out, while "bad times" are those when most risks fail miserably.
It's not surprising that California is doing worse than Texas now - they took
on far more risk during the boom years.

People have short memories. I remember that at the first Startup School, one
venture capitalist summed up the history of business in four words: "Boom.
Bust. Boom. Bust." I think that was probably the truest thing said at the
whole event.

~~~
tumult
You're overthinking it. Silicon Valley provides good models for building
businesses. The state and local governments are masters of burning money and
getting nothing from it.

As a taxpayer in California, I cannot track where most of my money goes. I
can't ask my representative or either senator where it goes and get a straight
answer. (Disclaimer: I still like Boxer.)

It's a little unfair to compare states, though. Texas, for instance, has lots
of natural gas resources, oil production and refinement (especially along the
gulf coast) among other things.

Take a look at these:

[http://img.skitch.com/20090710-x3sceq4i2pq4hwaemawtd5afrd.re...](http://img.skitch.com/20090710-x3sceq4i2pq4hwaemawtd5afrd.render.png)

[http://img.skitch.com/20090710-nsuaeu7ch7ayhci6fp5yemeb5x.re...](http://img.skitch.com/20090710-nsuaeu7ch7ayhci6fp5yemeb5x.render.png)

A lot of California land is reserved by the federal government. I think it's
somewhere around 45%. In Texas, very little is reserved.

~~~
jpcx01
California has tons of oil offshore. We just decided as a state we dont want
to drill it for environmental reasons.

~~~
tumult
You're right, I should have said that Texas chose to drill their oil.

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defen
The article concludes by saying California should adopt Texas's "more
welcoming attitude toward Mexico", even while admitting that there is "a “lost
generation” of mostly Hispanic Texans with insufficient skills for the demands
of the knowledge economy" and "Latinos [in Texas] may justly demand a bigger,
more “Californian” state to educate them and provide them with decent health
care." I really don't understand why right-libertarians turn their brains off
when it comes to race and culture.

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timdoug
"California and Texas, the nation’s two biggest states, ..."

Alaska? _cough_

The two most populous states, sure, but who uses that adjective to describe
population instead of area?

~~~
access_denied
The default for "big" is population, not area, when one talks about countrys.
That's the convention.

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DanielBMarkham
_Chief Executive magazine, to take just one example, has ranked California the
very worst state to do business in for each of the past four years._

Not the rosy picture of California and the Bay Area that is usually talked
about on this board.

~~~
fatdog789
Until you factor in education level of the populace, better-maintained roads,
better electrical grid, better communications grid, and the population density
(which makes deliveries cheaper by reducing fuel costs and delivery times).
Also...Chief Executive magazine believed that Carly Fiona was a good
executive. It supported the guys at Enron. It lauded the bank executives that
played a large role in causing the current global mess. Take anything that mag
says with a large ton of salt.

~~~
lutorm
Ok, I love the Bay Area, but better electrical grid? Seriously?

I hope you have it better on the peninsula than we do in Santa Cruz, because
here it's roughly equivalent to a 3rd world developing country. In Sweden, I
ran my computer for years and never lost anything to a power glitch. Here, I
won't even _plug in_ a computer without a ups because MTBF due to power issues
is about a week.

~~~
evgen
Yep. Texas actually has a better grid within the state, but it has a very
"it's all mine and I am not going to share" attitude when it comes to
commecting to the regional/national grids; it does the bare minimum it can get
away with according to federal statute and is effectively it's own little
island for the purposes of power. This worked just great for them when a
certain groups of assholes in Houston were raping California by rigging the
power markets and for as long as their generation capacity exceeded demand,
but now that the intra-state supply is falling short of demand this is not
looking as good as it once appeared...

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cmars232
Texas is full. Please don't move here.

~~~
randallsquared
This carries more weight than the article. In the same direction. ;)

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sown
As a minor aside, I wonder how long it will be before certain counties in Cali
start to talk about leaving the state.

~~~
dirtae
Some counties in California have been talking about leaving the state for a
long time: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Jefferson>

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aresant
Has the author ever spent time in both states? Why California?

A) Proximity to the beach / ocean / in-and-out. B) If you've ever spent a long
weekend in texas you are probably qualified to be a Entomologist. I picked up
a car in Dallas two years ago and discovered that June Bugs and Praying
Mantises were not just illustrations in national geographic! C) California
girls.

Most of the so-called "worst places to do business" polls are built on
financial models, how the !%!@% does that translate!

