Despite Its Woes, California's Dream Still Lives

[question everything]

TIME cover story

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1931582,00.html

California, you may have heard, is an apocalyptic mess of raging wildfires, soaring unemployment, mass foreclosures and political paralysis. It's dysfunctional. It's ungovernable. Its bond rating is barely above junk. It's so broke, it had to hand out IOUs while its leaders debated how many prisoners to release and parks to close. Nevada aired ads mocking California's business climate to lure its entrepreneurs. The media portray California as a noir fantasyland of overcrowded schools, perpetual droughts, celebrity breakdowns, illegal immigration, hellish congestion and general malaise, captured in headlines like "Meltdown on the Ocean" and "California's Wipeout Economy" and "Will California Become America's First Failed State?"

Actually, it won't.

Ignore the California whinery. It's still a dream state. In fact, the pioneering megastate that gave us microchips, freeways, blue jeans, tax revolts, extreme sports, energy efficiency, health clubs, Google searches, Craigslist, iPhones and the Hollywood vision of success is still the cutting edge of the American future — economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally and maybe politically. It's the greenest and most diverse state, the most globalized in general and most Asia-oriented in particular at a time when the world is heading in all those directions. It's also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech. In 2008, California's wipeout economy attracted more venture capital than the rest of the nation combined. Somehow its supposedly hostile business climate has nurtured Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, Twitter, Disney, Cisco, Intel, eBay, YouTube, MySpace, the Gap and countless other companies that drive the way we live.

More at the link.

[Tikki]

1. It's Home, baby....Sweet Home...

And our horrible schools graduate some of the most innovative minds around.


The Tikkis

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

9. I have been everywhere in the world with a runway and a few places without

And there is still nowhere I would rather live than the hedonistic wasteland of Orange County,

[question everything]

15. Some day we hope to return to Irvine (nt)

[Hepburn]

38. Wooooooooot....

....SoCal rocks! :hi:

[OffWithTheirHeads]

2. California! Home of Rimjob and Free Republic

Tell me were note innovative!

[Cleita]

4. California is a really big and diverse state and unfortunately that person

and his following are a part of it. Also where he lives is part of the State you wouldn't choose to live in if you had a choice. Really you wouldn't choose to live there if you didn't have to. I know I am going to get a lot of shit about this from residents of the same area but it's true.

[Duke Newcombe]

8. And yet, you said it anyways.

Nice geographical snobbery, there, fellow Progressive. Do you use the term, "flyover country" or "Jesusland" as well?

Sigh.

[Cleita]

18. Facts become snobbery?

There is being PC, but there is also being truthful. As to flyover country, I think this will be the first time I will have used it and frankly Jesusland was a big joke here on DU during the USA Dark Age of 2001 to 2009, when we used a sort of gallows humor to describe the huge hurt and betrayal we were feeling as Americans while we watched helplessly as the Bush administration raped and pillaged America and a few other countries in the name of God.

[SalviaBlue]

26. What part of your statement was fact?

"Also where he lives is part of the State you wouldn't choose to live in if you had a choice. Really you wouldn't choose to live there if you didn't have to."

[Cleita]

29. I don't live there by choice, but have visited many times. You can't

avoid it when you are going somewhere else. Also, the main interstates run right up through the middle of right wing California and that city where you don't dare show your liberalism openly while you are there.

[SalviaBlue]

34. So this is your opinion.

I live in Fresno. By choice. There are alot of right wingers here; however, Fresno County voted for Obama, so not everyone is a Freeper. Stereotyping the area is not helpful.

I don't know what city you are referring to, since the interstate does not come close to Fresno but showing your liberalism here is not a problem.

I'm sure that you have a much higher OPINION of wherever it is that you live, but I do love my home and that's a FACT.

Peace :)

[Cleita]

35. I know Fresno people get really annoyed when I say stuff like this but

I have to be truthful about it. I say the same about Bakersfield. The whole central valley sucks politically as far as I'm concerned and it's too hot. I'm not really that fond of where I live either but I have to live here and it's a lot cooler because it's on the coast and very liberal along the beach. However, a few miles into the ranch and agricultural country, it becomes very red too. I had my car keyed because of my Dennis Kucinich bumper sticker and when I was stumping for John Kerry I was accosted by a couple of good ole boy's in a very large pickup truck who derided Kerry for his war duty and yelled at me about General Tommy Francks doing the right thing for our present wars. Shit I wasn't even talking to them, only other Democrats. I'm happy Fresno is becoming more liberal. Maybe you could do everyone a favor and let Rimjob know that he's an asshole. Oh by the way I was talking about the 99 that goes through Fresno. I guess it's an intrastate. My DH preferred it to the 5.

[LeftyMom]

51. That's just silly. A friend of mine has a house in the Tower in Fresno, and it's quite nice.

Fresno's not that bad, other than the amount of time you have to drive to get anywhere. Yeah, the suburbs suck, but suburbs suck pretty much everywhere. :shrug:

[Cleita]

3. So many rich people are still here who pay very little for what it costs the

State to maintain them. I hope that the next governor we get knows how to make them pay for the privilege of living here so that those who work to make those people's lives comfortable can also enjoy a basic lifestyle too.

[wtmusic]

5. +1. nt

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

6. Pay very little?

Pray tell, which state makes the rich pay more than California? This is one of the few states that actually taxes its rich population at a reasonable rate, at least as far as income is concerned.

[truedelphi]

14. Except that often the real wealth is in real estate, and Prop

Thirteen doesn't allow for fair taxation of that form of wealth.

Except for this current down turn, California allowed the wealthiest of its people (And also, it wealthiest corporations) to live in and enjoy the fruits of the large homes and tony addresses while paying litte.

For example, the Disney Corproation pays a smidge (taxation-wise) of what the true value of its RE holdings would be.

[Cleita]

23. Good point about the corporations skipping over their tax burden as well. n/t

[Cleita]

21. Well for one thing a state of modest means like Oklahoma gets

4% for property taxes. In California it's 1%, thanks to prop. 13. This was brought up by Warren Buffett to our goobernator. He then paid 4% property taxes on his home in Oklahoma and 1% in California. Now if you've ever driven through California like I have you will find neighborhood after neighborhood of wealthy mansions, especially along the coast and I'm not talking about McMansions. You actually see many of them used in movies as movie sets. I suppose the only place like it would be in New York or Miami and yet these people who use more of the commons especially water than the rest of us only pay a pittance for that privilege. I would like a 10% property tax levied on out-of-staters and on rich California residents who have secondary single family properties like vacation homes. Warren Buffett said it would take care of our budget problems and I believe him because he knows more about these matters than I do.

[progthinker]

28. Yea

Why shouldn't the rich pay more. They force us to work for them while they sit back and count the money.

[taught_me_patience]

7. You're crazy - taxes are plenty high here

raising taxes further in the middle of this recession is crazy.

[Jeep789]

11. Plenty high for the middle class - not so much for the rich nt

[Cleita]

22. Yes, they are plenty high for the working class who are carrying the

largest part of the tax burden in this state. But the wealthy individuals and businesses who are living high on the hog here aren't paying near enough. Years of Republicans on and off in Sacramento have tipped the tax burden away from those who are prosperous and they laugh about it Leona Helmsley style. (Remember about only the little people paying taxes?) I know because I worked as a bookkeeper for these very wealthy people and I know what they were worth and what they paid out. They even figured out a way of setting up corporations on paper so that they could buy their personal stuff wholesale and not even having to pay sales tax for their lifestyles. I recently heard of a multi-millionaire from Texas who has his own vineyard here. His own brand of wine is made there. Every time he needs to stock up on his wine, he sends his private jet to pick up his wine vintner/sommelier and cases of the wine that is never sold on the market. It's a private reserve. The jet delivers the stock to his various mansions in Texas and in the Bahamas. The only California taxes he pays is property tax on his agricultural land. Nice if you can do it. No?

[truedelphi]

24. A person sure can learn a lot by doing bookkeeping for the rich.

"I have to pay ten thousand bucks on that measly $ 100,000 gain?" They might moan.

Never mind that the average worker pays around 18% to 22% to the Federal government, and if an indie contracter than another 15% for Social Security.

When I read last year that the average hedge fund OWNER or manager only had to pay 15% on their millions of dollars of gains, while a school teacher pays 22% and up, I felt nauseous.

[Greyhound]

40. So few people have any concept of just how rich the rich are, let alone

how little they pay to be rich.

[fujiyama]

12. It really depends on what you mean by "rich" in the state

Incomes are generally higher than most states on average. But the cost of living has become so astronomical, partly due to the artificially inflated housing prices as well as millions of other fees - many of which struck me as incredibly regressive (high sales taxes, vehicle registration, price of gasoline, etc...)for example.

The state's income tax structure may be more progressive than most (I couldn't say myself since I didn't reside there and haven't seen it), but so many things in the state are basically unaffordable.

[Cleita]

20. When I speak of rich I never speak of income, I speak of possessions.

We have so many rich people from other places and other countries who plank themselves down here and pay few taxes because they file for taxes in the places they call home. Yet they disproportionately use our commons like roads, airports, water for their huge lawns on their huge mansions and swimming pools. Let's see how about John and Cindy McCain for starters who own prime beach property on Coronado Island? How about every oil rich sheik from the Middle East who practically have a ghetto in Beverly Hills, yet the money they spend is a drop in the bucket compared to the measly property taxes of 1% that they pay. And that's just individuals. There are so many businesses here, who make their money here, don't pay a whole lot of taxes and send our money back to their headquarters out of state and even out of country. Wal-Mart of course comes to mind and a new phenomena called Robobank from the Netherlands that suddenly cropped up overnight throughout the state. Yes our state income tax is about the only non-regressive tax we have. Other than that the working class carries the major burden of the tax in this state. Because of high employment thanks to globalization, this is why Arnold can't balance the budget, because all those good paying jobs in Silicone Valley etc. that paid good taxes are mostly gone overseas.

[truedelphi]

41. I lived in Marin County among very wealthy peopole

And the thing is - very few of those people consider themselves well off. No matter how rich a person is - in America you can call yourself "middle class" unless you are Bill Gates.

People who own a million dollar home and rent out two other homes that are each worth half a million - they gripe that they pay $ 7,500 a year in property taxes. (In any other state they would pay at least four times that amount.) They fib about improvements they make to their homes to avoid the assessment on improvements. They cheat here there and the other place - meanwhile the lower classes have to cough up 7 percent every time they buy something at a thrift shop.

And there is a lot of truth in your comment that Silicon Valley is now suffering in part to globalization. When my interest in pollution and pesticides peaked, I subscribed to American Chemical Society publications and was amazed at the high rate of unemployment that researchers - often people holding two high level degrees - were continually facing.

[XemaSab]

47. I also lived in Marin

and it's a fuzzy line there.

I know families where a parent is a university professor or a nurse or runs a film lab or works for the symphony, but they bought in 1980 so they didn't pay a million for the house. It's worth a million now, but that's not what they paid.

[truedelphi]

52. I have no problem with that. I don't consider people

In California who are working and struggling (One of the two paychecks in my family came from a very decent job, but we still struggled.) And of course, in California, owning and living in a million dollar home is a hard thing to avoid - if you own a home in almost any major metropolitatn area.

What I am talking about is people who are RICH! beyond my dreams, and yet who claim they are poor.

The people who inherited more money than you or I would make in ten years. They rent out real estate. They always have time (And money) for a three week vacation.

Yet come tax time they bemoan their status.

I don't mind that some people are rich. What I cannot stand are those who are very well off and yet will not admit it.

[fujiyama]

10. I love CA.

I drove almost the entire coast of the state, and of course, Oregon's was amazing too, but driving down Hwy 1 was truly one of the most incredible experiences. It's got absolutely everything. Coasts, mountains, forests. I could go on. Its definitely the most diverse place on earth (at least the Bay Area was).

My cousin emigrated there like millions of others and him and his wife have done well for themselves. Every time I go there I feel oddly refreshed. I miss the state...and feels like it should be home. I know I'll be back there again some day.

But then I read this article and I have to admit, as much as I love the state, I just don't understand it. Check the article out. It addresses a lot of what's wrong with not only CA, but the entire "new economy", where output increases, but high paying jobs don't - while lower paying jobs do. It's not a sustainable future economically.
.................................................

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/end-state
End State
Is California finished?


* October 26, 2009 | 12:00 am
"California is a mess, but I love it all the same--especially the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years. I went to Berkeley in 1962--a refugee from Amherst College, which at that time was dominated by frat boys with high SAT scores. I didn't go to Berkeley to go to school, but to be a bus ride away from North Beach and the Jazz Workshop. In a broader sense, I went to California for the same reason that other émigrés had been going since the 1840s. I was knocking on the Golden Door.

Immigrants from Europe had come to America seeking happiness and a break with their unhappy pasts. But many Americans--from the '49ers of the Gold Rush to Mark Twain to a young Ronald Reagan--had gone to California to find renewal. California was part of the American frontier, but, as Carey McWilliams points out in California: The Great Exception, it developed outside the framework of the American frontier. It was not an extension of the East or Midwest, but became a state in 1850 before other Western states. It was an island in the sun without Pilgrim winters or windswept prairies. It nourished its own dream of wealth and well-being. It was the American dream all over again, but dreamt within America.

California has fulfilled many of those dreams. It has extended and enhanced the promise of America--from the discovery of gold to the introduction of the movies and television, the aerospace industry, Silicon Valley, and the Central Valley's giant farms that supply a quarter of America's food. It has also been a political and cultural vanguard--from John C. Fremont, the first presidential candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, to Progressive Governor Hiram Johnson, Socialist Upton Sinclair, old-age-pension agitator Francis Townsend, and down to Richard Nixon, Earl Warren, and Reagan. The New Left staged its first mass protests in Berkeley. Gay rights came out of Los Angeles and San Francisco. And the New Right was spurred by California's tax revolt and by the backlash against illegal immigration.

I was drawn to California by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but, by the time I arrived, the era of the beatniks was over. The Caffé Trieste had become a tourist hangout. Still, within a few years, I was trekking to the Fillmore to hear the Grateful Dead, living in sin, smoking pot, and marching against racial discrimination and the Vietnam war. That heady period, marked by the Free Speech Movement and Haight-Ashbury, faded by the early 1970s, but it helped inspire the rise of Apple, the personal computer, the movement for open-source software, and, later, the virtual community of the Internet and the dot-coms. (This is not some oddball observation of mine: It's documented in Steven Levy's book Hackers and in John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer.)

But could California's days as a politico-cultural vanguard and economic bellwether be coming to an end? The state has endured swings and has come back better than ever. Writing in 1949, with unemployment at 14 percent, McWilliams questioned whether California exceptionalism had finally come to an end, but, with the onset of the cold war, Southern California benefited from an aerospace boom. Again, in the early 1990s, California seemed to be falling into a black hole: Cutbacks in military spending decimated the state's defense industries, and, by the end of 1992, unemployment was 9.9 percent, 2.5 points higher than the national rate; that year, Kemper Securities rated California's economy fifty-first in investment prospects among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But the growth of dot-coms, a global entertainment industry, and biotech led its rebound."

[Jeep789]

13. +1

[Bill McBlueState]

16. this article

seems to be more about California as a playground for entrepreneurs and capitalists. Not much in it about conditions for the average schmoe.

[asdjrocky]

17. It really is simple.

California is a Kingdom of its own. It has everything, beaches and deserts, mountains and valleys. The diversity here is like no other place on earth.

Sure we have our problems, but it's my state and I love it.

[Generator]

25. So does Oregon

Oh GOD, I'm native and married a Californian. His stupid ass relatvies live there and PAY big for it. You could have five acres and a mansion in Portland area for what they pay for 2000 sq feet. But fine-must have sunshine every day. The Sunshine tax. Pay for it.


YES, California is the only kingdom on earth. Sorry you asked for it. Bullshit on that.

[asdjrocky]

42. Maybe if you got some sunshine you wouldn't be so negative?

Dude, you're really bumming me out.:D

[taught_me_patience]

44. I'd rather live in a condo along a socal beach

than have a "mcmansion" with five acres in Portland. Seriously... who needs that kind of space? You learn to get around the expenses by downsizing. Edited to add that I wake up every morning with a view overlooking the ocean, marina, and harbor and feel like I'm on vacation. It is awesome.

[Hepburn]

39. Yeppers!

Me, too....I absolutely adore California! :hi:

I grew up in the mid-West and SoCal to me is like taking a permanent vacation.

[varelse]

50. This California native will never live anywhere else

the diversity is one among many reasons that my native home will be my permanent home.

:)

[taught_me_patience]

19. Man I love california

It is the land of dreams and opportunities. I spent my entire life savings to get to Los Angeles to make a new life for myself. It was worth every penny and then some. It is exciting to live in a place where almost everybody has a dream or idea. It is a place where my in laws can move from korea, and not really even speak english, and create a wonderful life for themselves. It's a place where I've seen 27 yo friends start a company and sell it for millions

It's also nice to be surrounded by other liberals.

[krabigirl]

31. Unless you live in Fresno or Orange County :(

[Cleita]

36. Watch out when you criticize Fresno.

The Orange County people know it sucks politically.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

45. Orange County elects Republicans because we run canidates here that SUCK

Take Tyron D. Rohrabacher - the weakest elected Republican anywhere in the COUNTRY, he is a joke within the Republican party and has been written off time and time again and is often starved of campaign resources.

After an exhaustive search in 2008 the Democrats found a worse candidate than Tyron. Bored soccer mom, "environmentalist", "lawyer" and Huntington Beach "mayor" Debbie Cook who is just a flake. I put those in quotes because even though she theoretically held those positions, she never actually did anything while in those positions.

Her campaign commercials were basically clips from old Atari games.

That fat fuck was in bed with Abramoff for decades and she was running commercials about weird shit Tyron said while on the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee.

Ugh!

[XemaSab]

48. Or anywhere north of Sac

:P

[progthinker]

27. 73

and sunny. That's why.

[krabigirl]

30. And if they legalize marijuana, here comes another boom...

[Cleita]

37. Family joking about moving to Humboldt county and growing it if

it's legalized. It will be a really good cash crop for those who get in on the bottom.

[closeupready]

32. And yet it lost population last year.

No thanks. Not for me.

(Though I have friends and family there who do like living there. And to be honest, it's a gorgeous state. But they've just got too many problems.)

[marmar]

33. I love California......Northern California, anyway.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the most perfect metropolitan area in America.

[Cleita]

43. Yep, and the Sierras too. Even though much of it is RW. The scenic beauty

makes up for it.

[bridgit]

46. Well, some say it's an acquired taste others a life style; but either way it's a life

The two para's in the OP pretty much set the terrain but I gotta tell'ya, that pic of Arnold at the coast standing beside a cliff really posed some interesting alternatives ;) Innovation? Yeah some here some there. A friend of ours is down in SD attending http://www-chem.ucsd.edu/seminars/calendar.cfm?year=2009&month=10 The UC system remains engaged, they're looking at stuff. And a network of creative design and engineering concerns

We drive through the grid-locked malaise past closed store front after closed store front, foreclosure, re-po, then through running street fights throwing rocks and broken glass cross-traffic with the people just sitting there but then into open country for 1,000's of miles *then* back onto a bridge that snaps it's cable oh yeah, there's a way to make some sense of California's "apocalyptic mess of raging wildfires, soaring unemployment, mass foreclosures and political paralysis"

And I do think it involves perseverance and handing out not just hope; but a sense of forward motion

[David Zephyr]

49. The Golden State. Home Sweet Home.

K&R.