Joel Kotkin writes for Real Clear Investigations about the Golden State’s loss of luster.
Ironically, the state’s corruption and decline have been expressed through policies long touted as symbols of progressive enlightenment and virtue – the odd marriage of oligarchal wealth and woke political consciousness some describe as “San Francisco gentry liberalism.”
Under this regime, epitomized by Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris, progressivism has lost its historic embrace of upward mobility and replaced it with an ideology obsessed with race, gender, and climate. It has produced a political leadership class that, for the most part, is largely made up of long-time government or union operatives. In the legislature, the vast majority of Democrats have little to no experience in the private sector. The failure may have been accelerated by the secular decline of the once-powerful Republican Party over the past two decades. This decline removed the incentives for Democrats to concern themselves with moderate voters of either party.
This development represents a distinct break even with California’s pro-growth progressive past, which helped make the Golden State a symbol of American opportunity, innovation, and prosperity. The late historian and one-time state librarian Kevin Starr observed that, under the governorship of Democrat Pat Brown in the late fifties and early sixties, California enjoyed “a golden age of consensus and achievement, a founding era in which California fashioned and celebrated itself as an emergent nation-state.” In 1971, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith described the state government as run by “a proud, competent civil service,” enjoying some of “the best school systems in the country.”
This may seem something like ancient mythology to most Californians today. If the builder Pat Brown was an exemplar of “Resonsible Liberalism,” California’s government today has been ranked by Wallet Hub as the least efficient in delivering services relative to the tax burden.
