California Breakup

For John, BLUF:  Even in the 1950s, while 3,000 a day were arriving in California, 1,000 a day were leaving.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Mr Ed Driscoll, writing at PJ Media, gives us "The Middle Class Abandons California".

“The Middle Class is Leaving California Because California Has Left the Middle Class,” Troy Senik writes at Ricochet:

That’s the conclusion of my piece in the latest issue of National Review, which you can now peruse online, assuming you’ve got an hour to kill (it’s a testament to the state of play in California that an essay this long left an awful lot of material on the cutting room floor).

Here’s the gist of the argument: complaints about the travails of California’s economy tend to focus on the deleterious effect that big government is having on business, which is, to be sure, a very real development. That meme, however, often obscures the fact that the group leaving California in the largest numbers is the middle class. These are not unrelated phenomena.

It should come as no surprise that the exodus of business and the wealthy has an outsized effect on labor markets, with jobs being increasingly hard to come by in the Golden State. Compounding this problem, however, is the fact that the liberal gentry that governs California has imposed its tastes as a matter of public policy.

I was a resident of California, back when it was California, not headed for a breakup.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff