It's more that a lot of California's spending is redistribution "because it can". It's home to several major national (agriculture, defense, finance) and globa

It's more that a lot of California's spending is redistribution "because it can". It's home to several major national (agriculture, defense, finance) and global (tech, entertainment) industries. This funnels a lot of wealth from elsewhere into the world into California, making the people involved in these industries pretty rich. The nearly-socialist politics is a way of maintaining social stability in the face of extreme income inequality introduced by these global industries. The comparison with Venezuela isn't all that off the mark, structurally. Venezuela also spent dramatically on social programs and redistribution because it could, with an extremely lucrative source of foreign cash. When the gravy train dried up, the whole system collapsed, which is probably what'll happen to California when the tech & entertainment industries dry up (and did happen in 2001 in the wake of the dot-com bust). California probably has several decades before there's a reckoning though: networks of human capital like you have in Silicon Valley and Hollywood are difficult to move or replicate elsewhere.