Investors Business Daily: Middle-income workers have left in droves, seeking lower living costs, more-affordable housing and job opportunities in nearby states. From 2004 to 2013, 5 million Californians departed, while just 3.9 million people moved in from other states, a net loss of more than 1 million in population. California's population still grew overall, due to immigration and in-state births. But those who left took a net $26 billion in annual income with them.
Businesses are also skedaddling. Last year, business relocation firm Spectrum Location Solutions said that since 2008 nearly 10,000 companies either had left the state or cut back on investments, due largely to its tax and regulatory policies. And a planned hike in the state minimum wage to $15 an hour, which could destroy 600,000 jobs, will only make the business exodus grow.
Worst-case scenario: The technology and tech-driven entertainment media companies now carrying the state also pack up for less-costly locales, leaving a mostly low-wage, low productivity business landscape incapable of sustaining what's left of California's once-thriving middle-class dream.
I emphasized the bold. Tech companies, being run by historical ignorants, have decided to cover whatever boondogle the California legislature invents. Like Elon Musk, who thinks little brown legislatures are brilliant energy managers.
Then the bonehead executives bet gazillions on some flying car or mythical digital beast, at the insistence of a bunch of teenage software geeks with narry a bit of sense. Folks like me sit in dirty breakfast cubicle with old coffee stained computers and we systematically create better technology.
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