One big problem is expensive housing, caused by lack of supply. This increases commute times, stress in employees, more wear and tear on roads, and of course increases staff costs (for those staff with valuable skills). Yet cities don't build houses, everyone seems to want them magically to be built in someone else's city.
Another big contributor is ridiculous property taxes where two adjacent identical homes might pay 4x different rates because of when they bought the house. Making it harder for cities to have predictable taxes and requires higher property taxes (but only for those that have bought recently), which makes home owners less mobile and the real estate market less efficient. Just seems insane that when house prices spike (see problem #1) that cities are often on the verge of bankruptcy.
It seems like no small coincidence that all the restrictive construction/environmental policies date to the 1960s and 1970s. This is in the state that once passed a State Constitution amendment to undo a fair housing act:
I grew up in a suburb of Detroit during a period when "businesses were fleeing Michigan." The conservative press talked about "bad government" of course, but the bottom line was transparently wages and taxes. The states trying to attract those businesses were engaged in a race to the bottom that to a large extent continues to the present.
Today, I'm of two minds about it. Maybe my state would benefit from an influx of jobs. And we've got plenty of land that isn't being used for anything but farming, which is becoming an increasingly extractive and polluting industry.
On the other hand, whatever we've got to offer right now is apparently not enough, so I would wonder what further concessions my state would offer. We already have lower wages, non-competes, crumbling roads, and a gutted education system. Why isn't that enough?
I think we'd all be better off if we could reduce the ability of state governments to pit the common people against one another.
My state has been doing those things, and has just been digging itself deeper onto the hole. It's hard to imagine them trying any harder.
Most importantly, we've been waiving environmental regulations, either overtly or through lack of enforcement. Our courts have already forbidden the government from implementing statewide public health policy during the COVID crisis. Our state motto is "Open for Business." Bars and restaurants are in full swing throughout a large portion of the state.
If our drinking water becomes toxic, we're kind of screwed.
The two biggies are wages and taxes because those things affect the bottom line in an immediate and measurable way. Everything else is a smoke screen.
Agree with everything but with a different conclusion. Yes.
Regulations need to concentrate on basics that keep you safe and the infrastructure running, however most of local (and central) government these days is to micro-manage everything and produce statistics for how good they are doing.
Maybe that's a matter of geographic variation. It's certainly a cause celebre for the conservative press, but I'm not sure that it's materialized in my locale, a mid sized city in the US Midwest. I run a small business, and have literally never had to interact with the city or county government. Here in the US, local governments are responsible for managing their own schools, police, and so forth. So they face a larger attack surface for suspicions of micro-management and bureaucracy.
The prosperity of any smaller city in the US Midwest depends to a large extent on what industries it's lucky enough to attract, most importantly hospitals and universities. Mine also happens to be the seat of state government.
The government of the county that I live in has been exemplary in managing the public health response to the COVID in the face of a total leadership vacuum at both the state and federal level.
We're one of the most prosperous counties in the state, yet we are believed to be the county that is suffering the most under activist government.
It is notable that businesses have been "fleeing" the rus belt and california (by US standards high regulatory environments) for lower tax and lower (ie worse labour protection) laws in the old southern states for a decade or two now.
As Britain leaves the EU tonight it's worth reflecting on the differential between the states in the US and whether / how the feds would enforce a level
playing field...
> As Britain leaves the EU tonight it's worth reflecting on the differential between the states in the US and whether / how the feds would enforce a level playing field...
Do you not see why that fed strategy would backfire given that Britain LEFT THE EU? One of the major goals of the EU was to iron out county favoring quirks in the law and it's become such a meddlesome entity that one of it's major participants is leaving.
This is a pretty factual situation with a lot of hard numbers and economic theory. We're not picking favorite ice creams, we're talking about how we're organizing our governmental strategy. We have a lot of historical and statistical evidence on that.
> The UK has already left the EU and absolutely none of the doomsday scenarios warned by the remainders has come true
I'm not sure what those exact doomsday scenarios that you're referring to are, but for practical purposes my understanding nothing has actually changed yet, and those changes that will happen are still a few hours away. It really is too early to tell what kind of consequences there will be for the UK. It might eventually end up as a little English rump state, for instance.
First, over the course of the pandemic so far, California total deaths per capita are around 40th lowest among the states.
Second, if we just look at recent deaths rather than over the whole pandemic, they are also not anywhere near the top per capita.
They do have the worst or second worst new cases currently, which looks like it is peaking. That peak looks like it is going to be quite a bit lower than several other states had, though. California's third wave is higher than theirs now because they had their peaks 30-60 days ago.
The record holder in the US for new cases 1 week average per capita remains North Dakota, followed by South Dakota, Wyoming, Iowa, Tennessee, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and then California.
Customizable graphs to explore this stuff here [1], along with downloads of the underlying data.
Bad government or single party rule? I’m astonished the media does not write more about California’s near-absolute, Democrat party control over its government. I don’t care which state you live in, or party you support, single party rule is never a good thing.
> Bad government or single party rule? I’m astonished the media does not write more about California’s near-absolute, Democrat party control over its government. I don’t care which state you live in, or party you support, single party rule is never a good thing.
If that's such a problem, why has the California Republican party chosen to remain so uncompetitive there?
In America, you only have single party rule if the other party either chooses not to compete or competes incompetently (e.g. runs candidates who are out of step with the electorate they need to appeal to, or doesn't run candidates at all).
I get this is an opinion piece, but this article is fairly careless in how much it dismisses other ideas. Opposing Amazon in NYC, was "senseless"? California's privacy laws offer no benefits to consumers?
This is too simplistic. In my state, government policies do not reflect voting patterns, because of nearly totalitarian gerrymandering. Policy changes would require an overwhelming supermajority of voters, that is just not a realistic possibility.
So corporations are mad because of high taxes and regulation and move to state where there is less of all the above, what else is new?
Hell, we are at the point where corporations just throw out they are going to move somewhere and states throw tax breaks at them for the promise of X number of jobs - which never ends up happening.
Another big contributor is ridiculous property taxes where two adjacent identical homes might pay 4x different rates because of when they bought the house. Making it harder for cities to have predictable taxes and requires higher property taxes (but only for those that have bought recently), which makes home owners less mobile and the real estate market less efficient. Just seems insane that when house prices spike (see problem #1) that cities are often on the verge of bankruptcy.