Once again, California has the highest poverty rate in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent
report, the Golden State’s Supplemental Poverty Measure averaged 19 percent between 2015 and 2017.
Nationwide, poverty dropped in 2017
from 14.7 percent to 14.1 percent, but California’s rate was
proportionately 35 percent higher than the national average.
In spite of (or perhaps to divert attention from) its
high poverty rate, California’s left-wing political class continues its
unrelenting sermonizing to the rest of us.
Big drivers of California’s poverty are: costly rents (
second-highest in the nation after Hawaii); expensive electricity (
highest in the lower 48 states outside of New England); heavily taxed and high-priced gasoline (
second-highest after Hawaii); and high state taxes, combined with heavy housing and environmental regulations.
Some California politicians justify high taxes by pointing to the state’s generous welfare benefits, including a vigorous
expansion of Medicaid.
However, the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty
Measure, in use since 2009, considers a wider array of government
assistance than does the old Official Poverty Measure, which doesn’t
even look at cost-of-living differences between the states.
For a path out of poverty, a job beats welfare every
time. But in high-cost California, having a job and receiving government
assistance isn’t enough to lift millions of residents out of poverty.
California wasn’t always a high-cost state. But over
time its dominant Malthusian, anti-people philosophy made housing hard
to build, while government officials refused to invest adequately in new
roads or water infrastructure.
Meanwhile, California’s wealthy elites, who largely
live close to the temperate Pacific coast, are pushing energy policies
that threaten even higher costs for electricity and commuting.
The California Legislature passed a bill
signed into law
by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown that lays the groundwork for the state
getting 100 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2045.
In the same legislative session, a Democratic lawmaker proposed a
law that would ban the sales of new gasoline-powered cars by 2040. It didn’t get a
hearing.
In late August,
news
out of San Diego highlighted a 28.5 percent jump in electricity rates –
with one homeowner complaining about a $900 electric bill to cool his
1,379-square-foot house only a mile from the ocean.
Misery loves company and California wants to share its misery nationwide.
Gov. Brown calls the Trump administration’s pro-energy policies “
insane” and bordering “
on criminality.” Brown has urged other states to follow California’s example.
Meanwhile, Tom Steyer, the billionaire California
environmentalist who made his money the old-fashioned way – on coal, oil
and natural gas – now reportedly harbors ambitions of replacing
President Trump in the White House as he spends millions of dollars to
gather meaningless signatures on impeachment petitions.
Steyer’s latest project: resisting Trump’s energy policies in the states through ballot
initiatives or by
convincing unelected regulators to copy California ruinous renewable energy gambit.
If California is America’s
Yin, Texas is its Yang.
Where California has high taxes, including the nation’s
highest marginal income tax rate, Texas has low taxes, with no income
tax at all.
Where California has heavily-regulated electricity
markets with draconian mandates for solar and wind energy, Texas has
free markets with electricity selling at a little more than
half of California’s prices (while producing
five times as much wind power to boot).
And where California’s endless environmental delays
halt the building of homes, roads, and new reservoirs, Texas welcomes
construction.
The divergent policies in America’s two most populous states have consequences.
In 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau
calculated
that, of America’s four major demographic groups – non-Hispanic whites,
blacks, Asian-Americans and Hispanics – the lowest poverty is among the
white and Asian-American categories.
The Census Bureau
estimated
that 52.4 percent of California’s population last year was non-Hispanic
white or Asian-American. In Texas, those two groups comprised 47
percent of the state’s residents. Yet California’s three-year poverty
rate of 19 percent was almost a third higher than Texas’ 14.7 percent.
The Lone Star State has its own challenges. Texas
Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican running for a second term this year,
has frequently warned of the danger of Texas “
being California-ized”
through city level “bag bans, fracking bans, (and) tree cutting bans
(that form) a patchwork quilt of bans and rules and regulations that is
eroding the Texas model.”
Further, property taxes – the domain of ostensibly
non-partisan local government – are soaring in Texas, even as the
heavily Republican state Legislature has modestly cut statewide taxes.
More ominously, the state’s continued rapid growth is
prompting increased pressure from both liberal and conservative
homeowners on their city and county elected officials to put the brakes
on new housing, slowing construction and contributing to a quickening
rise in rents.
For Texas, and America, the lesson should be obvious:
for human thriving, freedom beats government control – don’t be like
California.
