Exodus: California, once a magnet for the enterprising and ambitious, is losing residents. There's not so much a giant sucking sound coming from the Golden State as there is the hiss of a balloon losing its air.
The Census Bureau says that California had a net loss of 100,000 people last year. Many headed for Texas (58,992), while Arizona (49,635), Nevada (40,114), Washington (38,421) and Oregon (34,214) all took in fleeing Californians.
So what's the state's trouble? Here's a partial list.
The Tax Foundation ranks California behind only New York and New Jersey as the worst state in its 2013 Business Tax Climate Index. It is the fourth worst state in which to make a living, according to Money Rates; has the fourth highest income tax burden, says the Tax Foundation; and has the third highest jobless rate.
As if the tax millstone weren't already heavy enough, the voters decided in November to approve Proposition 30, which increases the state sales and income taxes.
Voters haven't crushed California on their own, though. The government in Sacramento has spent other people's money without a hint of discipline. The state's budget deficits sometimes have been bigger than other states' entire budgets. Rather than rein in the decades of free spending, lawmakers preferred increasing their tax intake, a task that Prop 30 was devised to do.
California is also infested with environmental nonsense, the likes of which already restrict property rights and choke business opportunities , and could in the future produce a state carbon tax that would be layered on top of a federal carbon tax.
Wait, as they say on TV, there's more.
Californians, at least those who remain, are liable for a big bill to keep the public employees living in the luxury to which they have become accustomed. Bloomberg reports that among the 12 most populous states, California public workers "make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime."
Despite the state's rich appeals that have drawn tens of millions of eager and enthusiastic entrepreneurs and educated workers over the decades, California has become for many a miserable place to live and work.
The key to reversing the decline is in the same place that created the slide: Sacramento.
Unfortunately, we're not optimistic that there will be change there any time soon.
The voters can't go an election without putting the same strain of tax-and-spend lawmakers into office.
Maybe they'll catch on when they look around in a few years and find there are no longer enough productive citizens left to support everyone else. So far, though, they haven't shown much of a capacity for learning.
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