2aHawaii
General Topics => Political Discussion => Topic started by: Flapp_Jackson on January 14, 2018, 02:42:37 PM
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Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?
Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia,
but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor. That’s according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental
Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes non-cash
government assistance as a form of income.
Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it’s worth asking why California has fallen
behind, especially when the state’s per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over
the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).
It’s not as though California policymakers have neglected to wage war on poverty. Sacramento and local governments
have spent massive amounts in the cause. Several state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in
some cases, individuals with incomes 200% above the poverty line receive benefits. California state and local
governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance
payments, vendor payments and “other public welfare,” according to the Census Bureau. California, with 12% of the
American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients.
The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse.
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Apparently content with futile poverty policies, Sacramento lawmakers can turn their attention to what historian Victor
Davis Hanson aptly describes as a fixation on “remaking the world.” The political class wants to build a costly and
needless high-speed rail system; talks of secession from a United States presided over by Donald Trump; hired former
attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr. to “resist” Trump’s agenda; enacted the first state-level cap-and-trade regime; established
California as a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants; banned plastic bags, threatening the jobs of thousands of workers
involved in their manufacture; and is consumed by its dedication to “California values.” All this only reinforces the rest of
America’s perception of an out-of-touch Left Coast, to the disservice of millions of Californians whose values are more
traditional, including many of the state’s poor residents.
With a permanent majority in the state Senate and the Assembly, a prolonged dominance in the executive branch and a
weak opposition, California Democrats have long been free to indulge blue-state ideology while paying little or no political
price. The state’s poverty problem is unlikely to improve while policymakers remain unwilling to unleash the engines of
economic prosperity that drove California to its golden years.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-jackson-california-poverty-20180114-story.html
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Hmmm. The strategy of propping up a voter base with people reliant on govt assistance....hmmm...that can only last for so long before it collapses. By then Democratic elites will have built their high towers and moats...
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Hmmm. The strategy of propping up a voter base with people reliant on govt assistance....hmmm...that can only last for so long before it collapses. By then Democratic elites will have built their high towers and moats...
California has by far the largest number of unauthorized immigrants, about 2.3 million in 2014. About six-in-ten
unauthorized immigrants live in the six states with the largest populations of unauthorized immigrants—California,
Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas.
http://www.pewhispanic.org/interactives/unauthorized-immigrants/
If cheap labor from immigrants is so vital to our economy, why does the huge immigrant population in CA not raise the standard of living above the poverty level for everyone?
Hmmmm...