Many of your typical right-wing gang has been making much of the principle of voting with your feet. That is to say that the rich and big corporations will leave the state based upon taxation. Despite the fact that it’s been pretty thoroughly debunked, there is always another opportunity to find a scapegoat. (Like say Michael Savage condemning immigrants for messing up the White Man’s Paradise.)
But, when you also have Chuck DeVore saying that, essentially, poor people should leave the state, is the real risk of losing the California Middle Class? What if the middle class actually takes DeVore up on it?
I bring this up because we are now not only attacking the lower class, which has few options to leave, but also the middle class. Not to be too crass here, but the Republicans have traditionally stuck to the taking from the poorest precisely because they had few options. The poor vote at disproportionately low numbers, but that is not really the case of the middle class.
If we abandon our middle class, we shouldn’t be surprised at the consequences. We’ll get a less educated work force that is less desirable for investment in the state. Jobs will leave the state, and then eventually so will the Californians. The Reverse Okie Migration is far more likely to occur than the migration of the rich. Of course, the Rich will ultimately find it’s hard to develop wealth in a state without a middle class.
In the short-term, it will be very hard to really analyze data for these types of questions. But as our infrastructure deteriorates, our manufacturing sector withers, and the innovation inspired by education diminishes, will the Middle Class really stay in California? Could they afford to?
So, with Arnold’s cuts to CalGrants, public schools, community colleges, state parks, and other services utilized heavily by the middle class, will the middle class flee? Is this the way that the California Dream really ends?
is the obvious truth that businesses use social infrastructure like schools and universities. These are being decimated right now (what is left of them). Yet Republicans continue to talk as though taxes are the only factor that a business owner might consider in deciding whether to stay in the state. (And the fact that new businesses compete against those paying 1978-level taxes never seems to come up…)
They are cynical, mendacious creatures, these California Republicans.
(OT: The longer Obama lets us swing in the wind, the more upset I get. I can’t be the only one.)
Could someone please define the term “middle class” as it’s used in this post and, indeed, as it’s used by political types these days? “Middle class” was originally a sociological term and there is little or no middle class left as it was originally defined.
In California, the destruction of the middle class began with Ronald Reagan’s second term, to which he was elected in November, 1970. It was a deliberate destruction, which Reagan then carried to the White House and the national stage.
The “middle class” disappeared quite some years ago. What do we mean now?
Don’t we really need to rebuild a middle class before it can threaten to flee the state?
Couldn’t get into the UC system so he’s at University of Arizona. Contributing to their state budget through out of state tuition. Which, sadly, is not a hell of a lot more than the UC system costs anyway….
Lack of healthcare and education opportunities is what is killing the value of living here. Sunshine is nice, Arnie, but we don’t like it blown up our asses, thanks anyway.
“When you have an unemployment rate as high as it is in this state, it should be a signal to people to look for jobs in other states with more jobs and a lower cost of living,”