Victor Davis Hanson of National Review highlights some of the Golden State’s unique problems.
To fathom California’s near medieval asymmetry, ask how a state with such high taxes can offer such poor services. The top California income-tax rate is 13.3 percent (the nation’s highest). The state’s average sales tax is (conservatively) about 8.5 percent (ninth in the nation). California’s bewildering combined array of gasoline taxes are about 55 cents per gallon and rising (second-highest in the nation).
In exchange, California public-school test scores rank between 44th and 46th in the nation. Its roads and infrastructure are rated in various surveys between 42nd and 45th. Driving from the state’s interior to the coast on roads mostly unchanged from 45 years ago takes about twice the time as in the past — if carefully planned at particular times and days of the week. …
… Indeed, one of the landmarks of the new California mentality is denial and self-righteousness that assume it is illiberal to notice that a quarter of the nation’s homeless population sleeps on California streets, or that violent crime is 20 percent higher in California than the national median, or that San Francisco ranks No. 1 in per capita property crime rates of all the nation’s largest cities. …
… [I]n the last decade and a half, about 6 million Californians over the age of 25 left the state; in the last 30 years, perhaps 10 million fled. There are no accurate statistics on the political ideologies of the departed or even their actual numbers. But most studies suggest that the reasons for radical outmigration were quality-of-life complaints, soaring home prices and taxes, poor state services, failing infrastructure and schools, and rising crime.
