First the Good News: California is now a Red State

Now the Bad News: it’s that Red State, which “Also Was Called The Soviet Union,” Prof. William A. Jacobson writes:

Fast forward to 2010, and Victor Davis Hanson has a chilling account of California which resembles in many ways the Soviet Union of the early 1980s — first world cities of relative wealth sitting on top of an increasingly third world economy, Two Californias:

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Hanson’s description of modern California would be a fitting updated version of my observations of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.  The analogy is not exact, of course, because the political and economic systems, and the root causes, are so different.

But the result is the same.  An increasing inability of the economic system to support the agenda of the first world cities and political elites.

Writes Hanson:

Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California — and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder.

It can’t last another decade.  You are my witnesses.

As with the Soviets in their death throes, our outgoing and incoming Handicapper Generals are certainly doing everything they can to speed this Soviet-style Red State’s demise.