No Californians, save First Americans, are truly native born. Although many can trace their family tree back generations, almost all our roots originate elsewhere. My maternal roots snake over multiple ancestors through Northern California’s East Bay area and sod huts in Sheridan, Wyoming into midwestern states populated by forbears who came from Denmark and its colony in what became Norway. My paternal roots originally took hold in St. Petersburg, Russia, but then secretly absconded their way across Siberia, China, Indonesia, and the Pacific before being allowed to come to San Francisco. Because of Southern California’s Black Gold, I was born there. The need to mine more of it moved our family when I was barely a toddler to Texas where I was raised. All those years, my parents viewed themselves, one a native, the other an immigrant, as Californians. And so, they became again when retired. Their ashes enriched the ocean washing its storied shores.
Since I was raised in the penumbra of their love for their home state, a refugee from the universally praised paradise of the 1950’s and 1960’s, I naturally returned. My ambitions were many, but mainly to marry another native Californian and raise a family within its cultural nirvana. We were sidetracked here and there, but finally established our permanence in the Golden State of sun, sea, and apparently unlimited sociality. California was Hispano/Indian in origins and had dodged the pure evil of black enslavement, making up for that somewhat with the Spaniards’ treatment of the indigenous and later in the cruel indentured servitude of Chinese workers and the undocumented. We also led the way, under FDR, in sequestering Americans of Japanese ancestry in concentration camps (I have visited Manzanar and will not call these anything less pejorative). Thus, we were privileged not only by our location but by our ethnicity, without our knowledge or consent. That privilege was extended economically by the mutually attained professionalism of myself and my spouse. The generous proceeds of those professions were based on our service to people of other ethnicities and limited financial means. We considered ourselves no different, all “Californians”. With its savory stew of multiethnicities, the only state with a history less “American” than California might be Texas, once an independent nation on its own. Nonetheless all of us sought to live the same dream: dependency on our own skills and efforts, freely mixing amongst our fellow bears, enjoying the remarkably even weather and variant geography of the Golden State. Engulfed in lives of relative ease and constantly obtainable pleasures, we ignored our civic and social responsibilities to each other. While bemoaning the erosion of the coast under the relentless pressures of the Pacific, we missed the erosion of our economic, civic, and political freedoms.
Over most of its history, especially since WW II, Californians “suffered” from a lack of boundaries and a plethora of opportunities. The resources intrinsic to the state seemed endless, even after the gold and silver of the 1800’s and the black gold of this century were diminished. Other resources, natural and man-made, constantly arose and supported good incomes and inexpensive lifestyles for most. The horn of plenty seemed infinite. We were agreeable when our elected and appointed officials attained and maintained their status by arranging seemingly innocuous distributions of more tax dollars, new rights, and new privileges to many newly discovered social niches. The first glimmer of awareness may have been the late 1970’s passage of Proposition 13, our state government’s nemesis ever since. Most now insist that the only reasoning behind its overwhelming passage was older folks wishing to avoid being taxed out of their homes; certainly, this was a profound and truthful motive. But as a younger homeowner with many similar friends, I knew that the main topic of discussion was finding a way to limit or strangle state government’s avarice and actions. Since nothing seemed to change by changing our elected officials, many Californians decided to try the power of the purse string. And to some degree, for a while, it seemed to work.
Despite the recession of the early 1980’s, which California tolerated better than other states, and the feverish economic expansion of the following decades, our state found new ways to entwine its tentacles throughout our lives in beneficent ways. Powerful subgroups of our population and corporations exerted untoward monetary influence on state and local governments to enhance their own economic status without demonstrable improvements in “the general welfare” (a Constitutional term frequently used to justify public largesse but historically referring only to the welfare of the States, not the people). Some few efforts were positive, placing the power of gambling almost solely amongst tribes of our long-suppressed First Californians. Others had predictably oxymoronic results; legalizing and heavily taxing marijuana has enhanced the hugely expanding illegal market. Other measures show more direct failure. School achievements have advanced little or not at all despite the massive increase in funding generated by pressure from unions. Mental health has not improved with deinstitutionalization of the seriously ill despite huge spending on continually inadequate community care resources. State funding of health care for non-citizens motivates their entry to the state but does nothing to enable their entry to legality. Drug use amongst the public increases unabated, with millions spent on what can be seen as enabling. Prisons became overpopulated cesspools of corruption despite our attempts to remove criminality from our streets, as public safety unions resisted attempts at controlling their behavior while insisting on ever more compensation without directly addressing increased needs for more officers and better care. The immediate solution was to flush many levels of criminals into unprepared, unfunded county and community incarceration or to the street without serious consideration of risks of recidivism. Then our elected representatives discovered a revolutionary way to enhance and enlarge their constituencies.
Ethnic, economic, racial, and gender atomization began as politicians realized the benefits of creating newly dependent coalitions of willing supporters. Californians need not depend solely on their own efforts and skills; the government of what has become the “nation-state” of California would seek out, find, and fund newly defined social and cultural problem groups, socializing the support costs to all. New ways of bypassing the intent of Proposition 13 (that is, limiting government’s overreaching and powers in real terms by limiting its ability to fund itself) were invented by our state legislature, governor, and an ever more powerful and permanent bureaucracy. And the cost seemed so small, individually. What had been a state of lauded personal and public achievement based on conservative principles of recognizing authority, liberty, sanctity of certain social traditions, loyalty to those same principles, and never forgoing aspirations of fairness and avoidance of harm, became a one-party state dedicated solely to assuaging and compensating all perceivable harms and dictating fairness through state-led redistribution. Lone wolves are rarely heard, such as State Senator Kelly Seyarto howling “I think there is a point at which we start to do more than necessary for people that can make decisions on their own behalf”. California clearly seemed a place affording to each, according to their need, from all, according to their means. After all, over 50% of state tax revenue comes from the top 1%. Our large middle class may not be tappable by taxation, but their fungible equity can be tapped by regulation of their activities, economic and otherwise.
These new efforts are often without direct legislative action. Appropriation of what had been local governmental authorities and powers by the bureaucracy, the governor, or the judiciary now reach into every aspect of the lives of Californians, except perhaps for that financially immune top 1%. Our choices on how we lead our daily lives are becoming ever more limited; soon they may be dictates, not choices. These encompass everything from housing to transportation to sustenance to employment and education, as well as almost any other endeavor of daily life. The heavy restrictions on our Constitutional freedoms and activities mandated so unnecessarily during Covid have whetted the appetite of those whose need to reform and control us for our own good is unbounded. That reformative control begins in our homes.
Housing in California, despite residual wide-open spaces, has become restricted financially due to the interventional capitalism of our government. Through prior decades of increasing taxation and regulation for the public good we have forced exportation of many industries. We, like the rest of an ill-led nation, have come to believe that consumption, not production, is the basis of wealth-building. Consumptive industries are service industries and seek the lowest prices to achieve the biggest markets. That translates to low wages regarding lesser skills than by production of goods in factories. Our only “products” are knowledge and entertainment, whose value rapidly disappears with every click of the mouse. Unlimited welcoming and public support of anyone from other states and countries keeps downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on public funding and housing costs. Increasing fees for almost everything associated with housing to fund state mandated, locally responsible programs raise costs further. Environmental mandates that may have little demonstrable connection to outcomes raise costs and prices. Minimizing the variability in quality of housing is also an effect. State law recently expropriated local control from counties, cities, and townships regarding zoning and siting of newly absolutely required but necessarily government-subsidized housing (misnamed low-income housing to make it more palatable). The state now requires some denser areas to achieve the building of very dense housing near established or intended public transportation nodes. All areas are required to allow several abodes to be built on what previously were thought fit for only one. Those local entities that resist usurpation of their local authority are cudgeled into submission by the state. Ironically, many areas that previously established “no build zones” to sustain the environment and local quality of life must now find a way to overcome those prior green intentions. Huge sums have been budgeted and spent, and budgeted again, to increase housing for the homeless (now being referred to as the unhoused), yet the cost, for the above reasons and many others, of building new units in any reasonable time frame is unreasonable and unsupportable. Some municipalities, previously wanting to achieve and sustain “equity” despite all these excesses, have been “rent control” areas for many years, and this itself has been shown to increase costs and decrease availability over the long term, as well as massively restrict the local community’s share of property tax revenue. Given all these negatives, as well as prior enhancement of unmeetable mortgages for lower income individuals by the federal government, we cannot be surprised that some are abandoning their homes to foreclosure and many small landlords (when adding further restrictions on their ability to meet costs much less generate profits) are selling their properties to large corporate buyers who “will buy your house or property for cash immediately as is with no hassle”. These large corporate buyers do not hold for long term value or resale; they turn the properties to rental or for destruction and building of newer higher density housing—both at higher prices. Since over 40% of Californians rent, and most of what is being built and/or newly available is for rent, little prospect of increasing home ownership exists. Given the ever-increasing costs required by California, the likelihood of mandated distribution of housing by the state seems likely (see prior article “A Progressive Solution to Housing in California”). And this does not even consider the new accessory costs of the housed in energy, water, and insurance.
Caught between the rising costs of fires, floods, earthquakes, and replacement with new codes much more costly than old, insurers are the next cadre of corporations disembarking from the ship of state. Both Farmers and State Farm, prior stalwarts of home insurance in California, have been deciding not to renew current policies nor write new ones in many areas. Until the Insurance Commissioner forces them to participate as before in return for continuing to suck at the teat of lucrative automobile insurance in the state (a wonderful example of interventional capitalism since the Commissioner controls what they can charge), this too will limit the availability of housing both to individuals and corporations. But before needing insurance, the “housed” must have water and energy.
Water distribution for California from Sacramento to the Mexican border was set up in the early 1900s, with further refinements for the Los Angeles basin by the self-taught engineer Mulholland in the 1920’s. These decisions were based on what are now known to be faulty evaluations of the water available from California rivers, rain, snow, and the Colorado river. The latter was not tapped until the 1930’s after Hoover Dam. Some climate scientists have noted that this was an historically “wet” period for the West Coast. Senior water rights were granted agriculture in the Central Valley and later in Imperial County when the Colorado river’s Lake Mead came online. These “rights” (entitlements) were inviolable and have withstood many onslaughts by thirsty cities and environmentalists. Now we have filled our coastal water deserts with people, while the nation has become dependent upon California’s produce from the subsiding Central Valley and Imperial County. Despite our unusually wet year of 2022, the recent history of prolonged droughts probably represents a more normal situation. Domestic water use technology has changed, and lawns have died, but 70-80% of water use in California is still agricultural. Water-hungry crops may change but expensive drip irrigation systems only save so much. The need to reduce water extraction from the Colorado river system, residential Southern California’s main alternative source, remains and expands. As Grayson Zulauf writes in a recent CalMatters commentary, California along with other states has agreed to reduce Colorado river water consumption by 13% through 2026, with no likelihood that it can be increased thereafter due to 1) climate change 2) increased population consumption. As an expansion of interventional capitalism further into the agricultural industry, the federal government will pay water districts and tribes twenty-six times the current charge for each acre-foot of water they don’t use. This in addition to continuing federal subsidies for the costs of delivering water at a subsidized $20 per acre-foot to agriculture. Quoting Zulauf, “With this new agreement, every use of water must exceed the value of not using it”. 80% of Colorado river water currently goes to agriculture in Imperial Valley. Farmers in the Midwest are used to eking out a living from federal payments for “phantom crops”. Now California farmers may thrive on using “phantom water”. Those reduced foodstuffs mean higher prices for less food for Californians and the nation, less workforce, and lessened water from other sources as well for households and businesses. Quoting Zulauf again, “Some businesses will become more water efficient. Some will move. Some will close.” The reduction in the workforce won’t translate into replacements in now market-reduced housing if that housing has no water and there are no jobs at that economic level. Yet our state government encourages and mandates more housing with no concrete plans for sourcing the needed water.
California state government likewise chooses to strangle its current and future population by reducing affordable energy supply. The state is working hard to kill off the remnants of the oil production industry, while working just as hard to eliminate consumption by forcing change to more expensive electric cars, buses, trucks, and even trains. Perhaps dirty airplanes in the near future may land outside our borders and a new system of “high speed rail” will transport people the rest of the way to their final California destination. While it may be less expensive for housing builders to not run natural gas lines to new construction, this is offset by the cost of equipping every new household with solar hookups, distribution, and the burgeoning increased cost of conversion to universal electrical appliances. Our entire relatively compact systems of fossil fuel and nuclear power generation are to be replaced by widely distributed solar generation fields, wind turbines, and giant toxic battery farms on shore and offshore. These will require massive new investments in the sites as well as a new distribution system. From where will those dollars come? Further fees and taxation may drive out more corporations and even members of the 1%; printing of fiat currency by the federal government will further debase the value of investible funds (this is the definition of inflation). The vast remaining majority, a disappearing middle class, will pay via increased fees and decreased lifestyle. Perhaps the aforementioned water-starved farmers will make up lost foodstuff production revenue through phantom water subsidies and rental of acreage to the new green generators. Electricity may then be priced at so many dollars per acre-foot. Granted, a large workforce will be required to build such a system but that is only temporary. The only housing available may be through exchange. As many leave the state, they may be replaced by the new techno immigrants. But their union-driven wages are no more likely to allow housing affordability than those leaving under the current and expected limitations noted above. Once our green system is “built out”, maintenance is supposed to be much less intensive, one advantage that is seen with electric vehicles (offset by the reduced workforce of needed automotive technicians). Those skilled builders will have no continuing jobs. Perhaps they will be employed in the constantly needed replacement of solar panels, wind turbine blades, and battery farms—and overseeing or recycling the massive toxic waste so produced. Provided we can obtain the needed scant and foreign controlled industrial elements to build them. After all, California is a nation-state, a beacon to the world, above and beyond the United States, working hard to fulfill the good intention of providing everything needed for the general welfare at no cost to nature.
Those good California intentions are akin to the “One Health” concept of the World Health Organization. That encompasses all earthly events under the definition of health and mandates the authority and power to itself to establish, empower, and defend that concept. California seeks, insidiously and indirectly, to evoke that same omniscience. In making housing, water, energy, transportation, and public welfare of all kinds a human right enforceable solely by state actions they seek to distribute human equity to the environment. We are not to be stewards of nature, but its servants. And servants to each other as directed by the state.
Last and least, serious discussions at the state level are underway regarding paying reparations to California residents who can show descendancy from the enslaved. Given that this was not a slave state, and the need to be completely fair and equitable to all, this will require expansion to include payments to First Californians who were enslaved by the Spaniards. Should we, as a nation-state, try to collect from Spain via the International Court of Human Rights? Such is the unforeseen foreseeable.
The indirect effects of these subliminal thought processes are already underway. The evidence is in the demographics of the net outflow of people from the state compared with that of the lesser inflow. Last person to leave, turn off the sprinklers, open the doors, and turn out the LEDs. The closing of California has begun.