by Ross Douthat
The New York Times
December 23, 2009
The argument about what went wrong with California is really an argument about the future of America. To the right, the Golden State’s ongoing crisis is a case study in liberal failure: A big-spending state that lived far beyond its means, and let its public-policy priorities be dictated by the appetites of liberal interest groups instead of the common good. To the left, it’s a case study in how a malign nexus of conservative intransigence and institutional sclerosis can thwart good governance. The problem in California isn’t the spending, liberals argue: It’s the supermajority requirements that prevent a liberal majority from raising the taxes necessary to pay for it.
Whichever argument you believe, the implications for the current debates over health care, deficits, entitlements and taxes are obvious. Both conservatives and liberals fret that Washington is going the way of Sacramento: They just think the other side is responsible for taking us there.
I’ve dipped into this debate before, and I’m sure I’ll return to it again. For now, though, let me recommend these two essays by William Voegeli — one in City Journal, and one in the Claremont Review of Books — making the case for the conservative take on California’s collapse.
At the heart of his argument, especially in the first essay, is the question of what Californians actually get from all their spending, and whether the state’s welfare state would be worth the cost to taxpayers even if it weren’t bankrupting the treasury. Voegeli is skeptical — and so am I.
