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This Op-Ed is picking and choosing facts and associating them together as if there is causation. Instead of "CA didn't adopt welfare reform ==> higher poverty

This Op-Ed is picking and choosing facts and associating them together as if there is causation. Instead of "CA didn't adopt welfare reform ==> higher poverty rates", it could be there are more poor immigrants who move here from Mexico and Central America (along with a myriad of other factors). Further: >"Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on 'remaking the world.'" The article then goes on to list policies that are more about ideology than making real impacts, including: >"The political class wants to build a costly and needless high-speed rail system." Public transportation is obviously valuable and furthers the public interest. Has it been done poorly in California, yes, but if we had trains like Europe it would dramatically increase quality of life for our citizens. >"enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime" This isn't about "remaking the world" or winning political points. Climate change is real and having real impacts on people's lives. >"Established California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants" Again, this has very real impacts for a significant percentage of our residents. Not just an ideological fluff policy. >"Banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers involved in their manufacture" Plastic is destroying our oceans and causing significant, irreparable farm to our ecosystems. In the cost-benefit analysis, the externality costs outweigh the value of those jobs. When Florida just got an exemption to prevent offshore drilling off their coasts, conservatives reacted positively, recognizing the trade-offs between one economic activity (drilling) and another (coastal tourism) when externalities are involved. It's so infuriating how conservatives, who used to be a group that understood economics, now willfully ignore sound economic theory when it doesn't fit their talking points.

asabjorn 9y ago
I agree that it is a shame everything has to be so politicized, both of the left and right, even when a good point is made. We clearly have a problem in California, but it is unlikely that this is because of a welfare system that support people in need. As pointed out elsewhere a more likely culprit is exclusionary zoning that has increased living costs to unsustainable levels even for high paid employees. A lot of problems solve themselves when having a roof over your head doesn't costs $3600 for a very low-standard one-bedroom.
mschuster91 9y ago
> It's so infuriating how conservatives, who used to be a group that understood economics, now willfully ignore sound economic theory when it doesn't fit their talking points. No, their ignorance is based on whoever lines their pockets. This is, of course, something that plagues politicians of all colors (and countries), but corruption or its legal forms are particularly prevalent at self-labeled "conservatives" (not only USA, but also e.g. Germany, where the equivalents of the US Republicans (CDU) and Tea Party (CSU) got the by far biggest chunk: http://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/bundestagswahl/id_81788196/parteispenden-cdu-und-fdp-bekamen-das-meiste-geld.html http://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/bundestagswah...). And of course, when viewed through that lens, some political decisions come across very clearly, for example: - drilling vs nature: as long as Greenpeace does not have billions of dollars to lobby or a president favored to the environment, drilling will win. No matter how big the externalities are, because the politician never has to foot the bill and when he does, e.g. because the beach villa gets flooded due to sea level rise, the politician packs up stuff and moves somewhere else while the poor people have to look how they survive - marijuana vs alcohol/legalization: marijuana has four different and both powerful lobby groups against it: first pharma, which was scared for a long time about the medical effects (but now, at least to some degree, appreciates marijuana), second the religious evangelical nutjobs who'll definitely always find an excuse why one should not smoke a plant that God had created, third the alcohol lobby (which has hit particularly bad press in the last year due to a rise of alcoholism and people recognizing alcohol related violence as a problem, but still it's not at the same level of bad press that tobacco gets) and fourth the racists (which targeted marijuana in order to discriminate against PoC). It took massive amounts of direct democracy to cut the crap in that area, and the work isn't finished (and if Sessions has his way, it is very well possible that the progress may be entirely reverted in a matter of days!) - tax codes: these are sometimes literally written in a way that requires people to buy professional tax software and/or hire accountants, but not to serve the citizens' needs, and of course the big players have had their part in the creation of the "loopholes" allowing most modern tax evasion schemes - healthcare: the US system is one of the most expensive in the world, yet inarguably the most rotten-to-the-core of civilized societies - it's no difficult to try to guess where all that money went. That anything resembling "socialism" is a red herring for the "conservatives" and social darwinists is only furthering the line towards inevitable collapse.

asabjorn 9y ago

I agree that it is a shame everything has to be so politicized, both of the left and right, even when a good point is made. We clearly have a problem in California, but it is unlikely that this is because of a welfare system that support people in need. As pointed out elsewhere a more likely culprit is exclusionary zoning that has increased living costs to unsustainable levels even for high paid employees. A lot of problems solve themselves when having a roof over your head doesn't costs $3600 for a very low-standard one-bedroom.

mschuster91 9y ago

> It's so infuriating how conservatives, who used to be a group that understood economics, now willfully ignore sound economic theory when it doesn't fit their talking points. No, their ignorance is based on whoever lines their pockets. This is, of course, something that plagues politicians of all colors (and countries), but corruption or its legal forms are particularly prevalent at self-labeled "conservatives" (not only USA, but also e.g. Germany, where the equivalents of the US Republicans (CDU) and Tea Party (CSU) got the by far biggest chunk: http://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/bundestagswahl/id_81788196/parteispenden-cdu-und-fdp-bekamen-das-meiste-geld.html http://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/bundestagswah...). And of course, when viewed through that lens, some political decisions come across very clearly, for example: - drilling vs nature: as long as Greenpeace does not have billions of dollars to lobby or a president favored to the environment, drilling will win. No matter how big the externalities are, because the politician never has to foot the bill and when he does, e.g. because the beach villa gets flooded due to sea level rise, the politician packs up stuff and moves somewhere else while the poor people have to look how they survive - marijuana vs alcohol/legalization: marijuana has four different and both powerful lobby groups against it: first pharma, which was scared for a long time about the medical effects (but now, at least to some degree, appreciates marijuana), second the religious evangelical nutjobs who'll definitely always find an excuse why one should not smoke a plant that God had created, third the alcohol lobby (which has hit particularly bad press in the last year due to a rise of alcoholism and people recognizing alcohol related violence as a problem, but still it's not at the same level of bad press that tobacco gets) and fourth the racists (which targeted marijuana in order to discriminate against PoC). It took massive amounts of direct democracy to cut the crap in that area, and the work isn't finished (and if Sessions has his way, it is very well possible that the progress may be entirely reverted in a matter of days!) - tax codes: these are sometimes literally written in a way that requires people to buy professional tax software and/or hire accountants, but not to serve the citizens' needs, and of course the big players have had their part in the creation of the "loopholes" allowing most modern tax evasion schemes - healthcare: the US system is one of the most expensive in the world, yet inarguably the most rotten-to-the-core of civilized societies - it's no difficult to try to guess where all that money went. That anything resembling "socialism" is a red herring for the "conservatives" and social darwinists is only furthering the line towards inevitable collapse.