What is going on in California? Can you understand why California went Democrat against the grain of most of the rest of the country? I think I just might know where it all started. Remember the Prop #13 several years ago where California voters voted to reduce their property tax? They found that they could just go to the ballot box and vote money into their own pockets. One of the results of the Prop #13 was to reduce their monthly house mortgage payments. The impact of this was to allow people to now buy larger more expensive homes because they didn't have to make such big monthly payments. The other factor was that if you owned a home back when the Prop #13 passed, you got in on the special tax deal. New people who moved to California did not get in on this special deal. If you had a special "rent control" type deal based on Prop #13, you could move it along as you "flipped" homes. This gave these people who were grandfathered in special rights. Who would have thought Prop #13 would have such a long term affect on national economics.
Now, here is where it gets worse. Once California voters found they could vote money into their own pockets at the ballot box, California voters were ready to do it again. I think this is the reason that we see there people in California voting the way they just did. After the Prop #13 fiasco, I knew school teachers in Palo Alto who had to have at least 20 years of seniority to keep their jobs. Now California has some of the worst schools in the country. Now, new people don't want to move to California because of the home prices and poor schools. California has dug a very deep hole and it is going to be a very long time before they dig out, if they ever do.
California has had a lot of "one shot" factors that pushed them ahead of many other states, but those "one shot" deals are playing out. How about the Gold Rush? How about oil? California still produces a lot of oil. How about WWII when every thing had to be shipped out of West Coast ports? How about the weather? How about all the forests? How about all the military bases located in California? How about all the high quality farming? The problem with all these is that they are "one shot" deals. Remember the brain drain? It has not only stopped, it is flowing the other way. Much of California is Public land that can not be developed. Much of the other is steep mountains that can't be developed either. Most people do not know that much of the good land now has homes on it and good farm land is being converted to subdivisions. Santa Clara county was one of the riches farm areas in the world, but now there is "no" farming there. They had 12 big canneries there and there are none now. The big company FMC started in San Jose under the name Food Machinery. Caterpillar started in Fresno under the name Holt and moved to Illinois. Winnebago started in California too.
The point is that the decline in California started a long time ago and it is still falling, but Prop #13 started if allover again.
