

California Should Be The Economic Model For America - elfinlike
http://www.professorhollybell.com/2012/12/17/california-should-be-the-economic-model-for-america/

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jbooth
All of these horrible impediments to business are why California has such a
horrible economy and complete lack of entrepreneurialism compared to more
conservatively run states like Alabama and Arkansas.

EDIT: Oh, and the cited professor is from Alaska, the only state in the US
that actually practices literal redistribution (you get a check from the oil
companies just for living there). I'm sure she doesn't see it that way,
though.

~~~
alook
> California has such a horrible economy and complete lack of
> entrepreneurialism

Can you elaborate on what kind of policies towards entrepreneurship are better
in Alabama and Arkansas? Seems to me that SF Bay Area and Los Angeles are both
flourishing entrepreneurial havens [1]. I'd argue that the culture of
innovation in California outweighs any economic policies that may be adverse
to entrepreneurs.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/20/startup-genome-ranks-the-
wo...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/20/startup-genome-ranks-the-worlds-top-
startup-ecosystems-silicon-valley-tel-aviv-l-a-lead-the-way/)

~~~
dr_doom
He was being sarcastic, but you are right.

California has always been the place to "make it big". From tech to movies to
the gold rush, the recent economic policies (last 30 years or so) have little
to do with it.

~~~
jbooth
The proof's in the pudding. Look at CA, NY, MA, then look at Alabama. Every
state that runs things the way the professor says they should is an economic
shitshow with the exception of Texas, where there's oil and big liberal
cities.

~~~
tupuli
Are you arguing that Alabama would be better off imitating California's
policies? Has it occurred to you that California has some natural advantages,
none of which are attributable to its governance, that don't generalize to
other states?

~~~
jbooth
I'm arguing that if those policies were as awful as economic conservatives
continually say, the West Coast and Northeast wouldn't be the best economies
in the world.

There's clearly something positive to be gotten from investments in
infrastructure and education.

~~~
pdeuchler
You do realize that the economies in all of those places pre-date the policies
they have now by a large margin, right?

California has, and always will be the gold rush state... taxes aren't going
to change that.

~~~
jbooth
Those policies have been in place since at least the New Deal, longer
depending on how you want to quantify them.

If empiricism can't convince you, nothing can. Why even read my posts?

~~~
pdeuchler
And the gold rush started in the 1840's, the NYSE was founded in the late
1700's.

What was that about empiricism?

~~~
jbooth
Empiricism is believing the data.

The west coast and northeast have had a hundred years to fall apart because of
their terrible liberal policies. They're doing great. The south and mountain
west are much less economically impressive, despite their 'business friendly'
policies.

So you've explained away 2 with anecdotes superior to data. 48 to go. Get
started.

Also, by crediting the gold rush 150 years ago as being more relevant to
California's current-day economy than it's horrible liberal policies, you're
essentially saying that the actual policies don't matter.

------
mmagin
"California is making great progress toward income equality by eliminating the
ability of the middle and upper classes to build wealth, and thereby
eradicating greed."

Besides the dubious idea that it's good to eliminate the ability for the
middle class to build wealth, I can't say I've seen much evidence that there's
more income equality in California than the US in general. And if she thinks
tax policy can "eradicate greed", she doesn't even understand human
psychology.

(Oh, hey, I think I've been trolled.)

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Scramblejams
To the commenters preceding me: The piece is sarcastic. Read it again.

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alook
I agree that California has some great policies that other states should
follow - but it's somewhat troubling that this article highlights some of the
more negative aspects of CA:

> Implementing these taxes nation-wide would ensure the U.S. has the same air
> quality as Los Angeles.

California still has among the worst Air Quality ratings in the US [1]. Isn't
it worth calling out that California needs to improve in this area? For
instance, better public transit?

> California has the highest paid teachers in the U.S. and by focusing on
> teacher pay rather than student achievement (students rank 48th in math and
> 49th in reading), they have the best teachers in the country.

This hardly seems like a reason for California to pat itself on the back. If
we are ranked so low in math & reading, what is the metric we're using to
evaluate our teachers and determine that they're the "best in the country"?

[1] [http://www.stateoftheair.org/2012/states/california/los-
ange...](http://www.stateoftheair.org/2012/states/california/los-
angeles-06037.html)

~~~
joshrice
Because it's satire. She's making an example out of California.

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cjreyes
What about Calfornia's $300bn+ debt?

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/california-debt-
higher-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/us/california-debt-higher-than-
earlier-estimates.html)

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sigzero
Holly should be doing something other than economics.

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jgmatpdx
And if everyone imitated California's approach to primary education, perhaps
CA wouldn't rank almost-last any more!

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Mz
I don't know how anyone missed that this was sarcasm. However, I happen to
currently be in California and lived here previously. I am fond of the state,
while myself sometimes wondering why I am so fond of it, given the high cost
of living and other problems. It fails to meet a lot of criteria I _think_ I
value. Yet, I came back and I am glad I did.

What comes to mind with reading the article is a Simcity game I played once. I
typically go for super clean environmental measures and lots of other people-
friendly characteristics. A consistent problem I run into is that I wind up
getting complaints that property values are too high, it is too expensive for
new industry. One day, to entertain my son, I let him set some goals and
parameters. For shits and giggles, he wanted to see how quickly we could
create an acid cloud disaster. I zoned lots of heavy industry and piled in the
most polluting business deals, destroying the environment and dropping
property values to never before seen lows. We quickly got our acid cloud. We
also got the most humongous factories I had ever seen in the game.

I don't know which aspects of California are "features, not bugs". I do know
that it has long broken new ground for environmental laws and policies. No
doubt it did so in part because of pollution being "the smell of money", so to
speak -- in other words existing business success. Some of our federal
environmental laws were modeled on California precedents. The pollution here
goes back a long way. So does significant progress on getting it under
control. So I cannot take the criticisms of the article that seriously.
Criticising the environmental policies here and implying they are broken
because L.A. is very polluted really is idiotic. L.A. has substantially better
air quality now than it had in the 1970's.

Furthermore, the spread out city layout so responsible for making L.A. all
about "the cult of the car" preceded automobiles as the standard form of
transportation. It was spread out like that when public transit was the norm.
The reason: It is a desert and water gets imported from hundreds of miles
away. It did not make financial sense to grow "organically". It only made
financial sense to develop large tracts of land at once. That was the only
means to justify or cover the high cost of necessary infrastructure.

Again, I also find myself baffled by what exactly is so great about
California. It can be difficult to see past its many bigassed hairy warts to
find the appeal. Yet I love it here and I increasingly wonder which "warts"
are really bugs and which are evidence of important features which are just
poorly understood.

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recoiledsnake
I was willing to play along for a little while until I came across this:

> the small business failure rate is the highest in America at 69%

I then dismissed the entire article as a waste of time. More startups = more
failures and that's actually a good thing. If you write something so
fundamentally misinformed as if the policies are causing the higher failure
rate, then your entire article is most probably bunk and full of similar non-
sequitirs.

~~~
elfinlike
Regarding "more startups = more failures", not on a percentage basis.

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ryankey721
I think you're looking at it from a volume vs percentage aspect, in which you
are correct, whereas what the commenter really meant is that startups are far
more volatile and likely to fail.

