California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) was exultant this week, proclaiming that his state had surpassed Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy — behind only Germany, China, and the United States itself.
“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world—we’re setting the pace. Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation,” he said in a statement.
Newsom celebrated even as tens of thousands of California residents remain displaced by wildfires; as the state’s homeless population continues to climb; and as poverty — the worst in the nation — is on the rise.
The State of California can barely make ends meet. It recently faced a $68 billion budget deficit, and had to borrow more than $6 billion to keep its Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, from collapsing (thanks in part to “free” health care provided to illegal aliens).
Moreover, California can barely manage to build anything. The high-speed rail project that voters approved in 2008 will never connect San Francisco and Los Angeles, as promised. It is also many years late and billions of dollars over budget.
Newsom has banned the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035, but consumers aren’t buying enough electric vehicles yet.
The list goes on and on.
California’s big, Democrat-run cities are hardly doing any better. San Francisco and Los Angeles are both struggling with billion-dollar deficits.
San Francisco is empty, thanks to overzealous coronavirus restrictions, plus crime, drugs, and homelessness. Los Angeles is falling apart, with crumbling roads and roving homeless encampments. Public schools in these cities are generally terrible; public spaces have become frightening.
So on paper, California is richer than Japan. In practice, no reasonable person could argue that Californians enjoy a higher quality of life than the Japanese.
Japan has public safety; high-tech public infrastructure; and excellent public education and services. True, it has an aging population, and has stagnated economically for a generation. But, crucially, it is also competent at handling natural disasters — unlike the AWOL Newsom.
Newsom’s celebration is actually an indictment of his own administration. There is no excuse for a state with so much money, and so much talent, to be run so poorly. California is rich in wealth, and poor in leadership. It has become a state that is run by and for the super-rich, who buy the votes of the indigent at the expense of a middle class population — homeowners and small business owners — who are increasingly disenfranchised.
Political analysts see 2026 as a possible year for Republican advances in California, given that the majority of residents, and likely voters, believe that the state is on the wrong track. And there are some good candidates, including political commentator Steve Hilton, who is a font of ideas.
But no Republican has won statewide office in nearly two decades, after Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt at reform ended in humiliating failure.
California’s economy continues to grow despite its government, not because of it. That is because the state continues to draw talented people from all over the world to seek their fortunes in Silicon Valley and in Hollywood.
The astonishing natural beauty of the state, and its excellent weather, make California hard to leave even for those residents who know they are paying more in taxes than they will ever receive in services.
But the California model is unsustainable.
In Los Angeles, the city spends more money on services for the homeless ($961 million), who pay almost no taxes, than it does on firefighting ($837 million).
Lack of money meant that firefighters were not pre-deployed ahead of the Palisades Fire, which arguably meant that the blaze destroyed thousands more homes than it might otherwise have done.
Some critics said that Los Angeles residents deserved to suffer, given that they continue to elect Democrats. Actually, the residents of the Palisades voted overwhelmingly for developer Rick Caruso, who lost to now-Mayor Karen Bass in 2022. What we can, perhaps, be accused of doing is neglecting our own safety. We had trusted state and local authorities to do their jobs. That turned out to be a terrible mistake. (Never again.)
Our dysfunction is a product of our history. California was founded, and is sustained, by adventurers with an appetite for risk. But its prosperity has come during periods of public investment in the institutions and the infrastructure that made private-sector growth possible. The dams and aqueducts made farming possible in rich but arid Central Valley soils; the Second World War jumpstarted the defense and aerospace industries.
California’s sunshine and wealth drew millions west, to a place that seemed endlessly new. The state attracted free spirits of all kinds — hippies trying to save the world, libertarians looking for an escape from conformity. The “manifest destiny” that California had once represented in geographic terms, as the ultimate goal of the American pioneer movement, became a moral mission, a belief that California could build a utopian future.
But utopia was expensive. In 1978, voters rallied to pass Proposition 13, which limited the growth of property taxes. That landmark ballot initiative heralded the coming Reagan Revolution nationwide, and has survived many efforts by left-wing Democrats to undo it. A few other boundaries have lasted: Proposition 209 of 1996, for example, which prohibits “affirmative action,” survived a counter-referendum in Proposition 16 of 2020.
Not so Proposition 187 of 1994, which barred illegal aliens from many public services; and Proposition 8 of 2008, which enshrined traditional marriage. Both were overturned in the courts, which became increasingly left-wing, as did the legislature, where Democrats have enjoyed a supermajority for the last several years. The state has become an incubator of utopian schemes, on everything from climate change to transgender policy.
In 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Newsom signed a law creating the nation’s first commission to study reparations for slavery — despite the fact that California had entered the Union as a free state in 1850. The legislature ultimately issued an apology for slavery and racial discrimination last year — though activists grumbled that the state’s leaders had balked at actually paying cash reparations to anyone.
Newsom knew that reparations were a bad idea. He knows, too, that California needs to “sober up” about the limits of green energy; and that regulatory bodies like the Coastal Commission create pointless bureaucracy.
But he never does much to change anything. And why should he, as long the economy keeps growing? He can indulge utopia, and neglect the basics of governance, knowing that he will hit his two-term limit in 2026, and run for president in 2028. By then, California will be someone else’s burden.
But ask my neighbors in the Palisades whether being the fourth-biggest economy is worth more than a functioning set of fire hydrants.
Eventually, something has to give.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
