I spoke yesterday afternoon to the Constitutional Law Quarterly 37th Annual Symposium at Hastings Law School in San Francisco. The title of the event was “Waking from the California Dream: The Past, Present, and Future of California’s Fiscal Constitution,” and the discussion revolved around the state’s fiscal crisis.
Unsurprisingly, I was the only pro-taxpayer speaker, with the other 15 or so speakers ranging from center-left to far-left. So it was a fair fight. Not because I had some special talent, but rather because the evidence is so overwhelming that California has taxed and spent itself into a fiscal cul-de-sac. It is the Greece of America (though Illinois is providing some stiff competition for that dubious honor).
But the facts did not have much impact on the other speakers, who said that the state’s fiscal crisis exists because of Proposition 13, the supermajority tax-increase requirement, the initiative process, or some combination of the above.
I simply noted that California has very high tax rates, a bloated and expensive government bureaucracy, and one of the largest public sectors (as measured by government spending as a share of state economic output) in the country. This excellent report from the Pacific Research Institute has plenty of details.
The students who organized the conference took all the speakers to a nice dinner at the Asian Art Museum, where I did my best to rescue the ones at my table from wasted lives of statism. I suppose only time will tell whether I saved any souls.
I’ll let you know how your efforts turned out after I have my two kids
Thanks again for coming!
California’s natural endowment of superlative geography and climate was mostly squandered by the reckless fallacy of progressive policies. This advantage has not (yet) been completely negated but if a state with less favorable weather and geography (like, say, Texas) were to pursue similar progressive policies it’s economy would go down the toilet in no time. Californians can simply afford to support lousy policies and still come out ok because of their natural advantage of geography and climate. But for how long? I think it was Margaret Thacher who once said that “the problem with liberals is that they eventually run out of other people’s money.” Once you start loosing competitiveness, it is difficult to reverse the trend. Seems like you first have to hit bottom before the majority that produces little and lives of taxing the wealthy realizes that they are headed for disaster too. But it is hard to wean yourself from dependency.