Every day, fresh madness.
That’s what it feels like right now in California as the political monopoly in charge of America’s largest state hurtles further and faster to the left, with utterly disastrous consequences.
The most visible sign, of course, is the chaos on our streets, as the Golden State becomes as famous for dystopian scenes of public squalor as for our magnificent landscapes.
But the homelessness and crime are just the tip of the ultra-progressive iceberg.
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Upward mobility – the foundation of the California Dream – has collapsed as it becomes almost impossible for most people to get on the housing ladder. Driven by insane bureaucracy, extreme environmentalism and the iron grip of labor unions, building a house costs four or five times as much in California as in neighboring states.
Thanks to astronomical housing costs, the state whose leaders love to brag about being "the fourth-largest economy in the world" now has one of the highest poverty rates in America.
According to a recent report from United Ways of California, over a third of California residents are unable to meet basic living costs.
We have the highest tax rate but the lowest literacy rate.
We are 50th out of 50 for business climate.
We lurch from floods to drought and back again thanks to a catastrophic failure to maintain and improve infrastructure.
Families and businesses are forced to electrify everything just as the state’s energy policies make electricity less reliable and more expensive. Meanwhile, California energy resources are left in the ground while imports of fossil fuels quadruple – up from 12% in 2002 to 50% last year.
On and on it goes, on every issue, a devastating combination of governing incompetence and ideological extremism that hurts the poorest and most vulnerable and makes a normal middle-class life untenable.
No wonder so many people and businesses are voting with their feet and leaving the state. As a result, for the first time in California’s history we lost a congressional district last year.
When I have pointed out all these problems and more, many people in other parts of the country say: "Get out while you can! Why put up with all this?"
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My answer is: We can’t give up on California. It’s too important – not just for the people who live here, but for America too.
The fact is, what happens in California does not stay in California. Many of the worst excesses of "climate" extremism, woke absolutism and anti-enterprise government bloat, overreach and ideological zealotry started here before infecting the rest of the country.
This destructive dynamic will continue unless we advance a positive alternative. Right now, all the pressure on the people in charge, whether at the state or local level, comes from far left activists and government unions (themselves controlled by far left activists). There is no check on the leftward drift.
Homeless people on streets of the Tenderloin district in San Francisco, California, on Oct. 30, 2021. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
This creates a self-fulfilling "doom loop." Policies move left, people move out. As a result, governance in California moves even further to the left, with entirely predictable real world results, making even more people want to leave.
So we end up in a situation where California heads toward being a state for the wealthy (who can afford to escape the consequences of political virtue-signaling) and the poor (who are increasingly made dependent on the government).
This isn’t just bad news for California: It’s terrible for America.
Most obviously because of the damaging political ideas that California now exports.
But long-term, the opportunity cost may be even higher. Think of the transformational impact of California's many decades of innovation and economic dynamism. As that is crushed by anti-enterprise policies, everyone loses out.
Most Californians understand that we can’t go on like this. Even Democrat members of the state legislature will tell you privately that they want to see their party pulled back to the mainstream when it comes to policy.
I’m firmly convinced that California can – and must – be saved.
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I love California. I’ve lived here for more than 11 years, since we moved from England. I’ve been a citizen for just over two. Despite all the problems, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else – and now I’ve decided to play my part in trying to turn things around.
So I’m now going back into the world of policy and ideas as a participant, not just a commentator. Years ago, before moving to America, I worked in 10 Downing Street for Prime Minister David Cameron as a policy and strategy adviser.
Last week, I launched a new organization, Golden Together, that will focus on developing positive, practical policy ideas for California. Everyone can see the problems we have. Now we need some fresh, creative thinking about how to solve them.
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Golden Together is nonpartisan: this is about policy, not politics. We’ll be working on a wide range of issues: affordable homes for everyone; safe communities; boosting manufacturing jobs and trade skills; reliable, affordable energy and water; supporting small business; giving every child the best start in life… the idea is to figure out commonsense solutions that can win support across the political spectrum.
If you live in California – or even if you don’t – I hope you can get engaged in our work. It was once written that "California means to America what America means to the world."
Let’s make it mean something positive again.