Posted on 09/30/2012 6:51:58 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
After World War II, California was where Americans went in search of a better life—the state with more jobs, more space, more sunlight, and more opportunity. But since 1990, Californians have gone elsewhere for opportunity, with the state losing a net of more than 3.7 million people to other states.
n the national recovery or slow slog since the economy bottomed out roughly three years ago, even California has regained some ground. As of this August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it has added more than a half million jobs since its payroll totals hit bottom around the end of 2009.
It seems natural these days to assume that the Golden State is the sick man of the U.S.—so if even California is coming back, however weakly, perhaps the recovery is real.
As recently as the 1980s, California still had the aura of an unstoppable growth machine, and such a view would have been unthinkable. Now, Texas is the object of economic envy and California is the object lesson, the toxic state.
It's a partisan narrative to be sure, with Republican-run Texas as a low-tax, right-to-work mecca for business. But propaganda aside, though, there is statistical reality to the idea that Texas is rising and California is falling back. In 2000, California’s jobless rate was 4.9%, while the Texas rate was 4.4%. Ten years later, that half-percentage-point gap had widened to more than four points: 12.4% to 8.2%. Texas is also adding more jobs than California, which has 50% more people.
These figures help explain the findings of a new study I conducted along with demographer Robert Scardamalia for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership, The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look. During the first decade of the 2000s, according to IRS data on the movement of income-tax filers, California saw a net loss of 635,000 people and aggregate income of $14.7 billion to just three states—Texas, Arizona and Nevada. Texas was the leading destination, with about 225,000 Californians relocating there.
At the beginning of the decade, when California and Texas were fairly close in job production, movement between the states was close to even. About 35,000 Texans moved to California between the 2000 and 2001 tax years, and slightly fewer than 42,000 Californians moved to Texas. Five years later, Texas had gained a lopsided advantage, gaining about 72,400 Californians while losing about 31,200 Texans to the Golden State. At the decade’s end, the recession had dampened migration in all directions—people are less prone to move when fewer jobs are available to attract them. But Texas remained the far more popular draw, attracting 48,900 Californians while losing just 33,900.
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In a novel that takes place in 2020, an earthquake hits California but the US cannot afford to bail them out.
No —Texas is bad for CA health. Proven.
CA voters sadly bring their failed leftist politics with them.
LOL! All my kids and grandkids happened between then and now.
Someone is pinin for the fjords.
/johnny
In 20 years, Texas will be a basket case as it becomes California.
By that time California will be empty, and we'll start all over.
I hope your wrong, because there is no route to a Republican presidential victory that doesn’t go through Texas.
If Texas falls to the Democrats... it’s over.
You might want to bring a lunch.... I 'spect that might not be so easy as you would think.
/johnny
Not with the millions of ILLEGALS coming in for all the freebies. It'll look like Tijuana in 5 years.
It is toxic in every way and contagious beyond contemplation.
There is no cure.
There is no God to intervene and staunch the spread.
You the reader are doomed. It is coming for you.
CA has gone past the point of no return (tipping point). You are right, there is no cure. Just a matter of watching it on its freefall to imlplosion. When it lands, it will be a 3rd world pit.
I doubt Texas will go as bad as quick as California did. Texas isn’t too far behind in the immigration-driven demographic transformation going on in California, but balancing that is the fact that whites in Texas are (as of now at least) a conservative group and they vote that way. Republicans routinely win over 70% of the white vote in Texas, and that is the reason why the GOP dominates Texas.
The problem of course is that on immigration the GOP has proven itself to be the stupid party; not for their alleged ‘harsh’ rhetoric or ‘anti-immigrant’ positions (afterall the GOP in Texas isn’t even all that conservative on immigration yet they still can’t win the latino vote there) that alienate Hispanics, but rather for allowing a policy of mass immigration that was always going to and always will favor the Democrats. Thanks to this stupidity, there will soon come a time in Texas where winning a vast majority of the white vote isn’t enough to carry the state.
When that happens Texas becomes a battleground state. I just don’t see a Calif-style collapse for the GOP in Texas anytime soon, but Texas becoming purple will be plenty enough a disaster for Republicans, and the country.
But again, what did we expect? A largely accidental, and mostly unwanted policy of unending mass immigration from non-white nations was always going to favor the Democrats.
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