If you wonder what has gotten
In other words, if you are renting to a tenant who refuses to pay the rent, plays his music loud all night and makes himself a pain to all and sundry, he can give you the finger for two months before you can get rid of him — all courtesy of California politicians.
If you think federal safety regulations go beyond all reason, they are nothing compared to
High taxes on
This means that people who work in such places in modestly paid jobs — including nurses, teachers and policemen — are usually forced to live far away and commute, spending three or four hours a day fighting congested highway traffic.
An insurance executive in
The anti-business climate in
One executive said: “When you look at the Board of Supervisors and how they talk about business, you’d think we were the enemy.” Another said: “The city’s lost 60,000 jobs and yet many members of the Board (of Supervisors) are doing everything they can to prevent job growth.” He added: “The Board of Supervisors has to cut it out and start acting like adults.”
No they don’t! On the left coast, they can get elected and re-elected on anti-business rhetoric and anti-business policies. The same is true of the state legislators.
When the state budget is deep in the red, the state legislature’s answer is to raise tax rates. Not only do they not want to cut spending, it would never occur to them that moderate taxes paid by more businesses could bring in more revenue.
On the contrary, the exodus of businesses gives them just one more reason to raise tax rates some more on the remaining businesses, in order to make up the difference.
Massive bureaucratic red tape is also part of the anti-business package. The head of Sun Microsystems said: “There’s a million rules that make the cost of operating here just off the charts.”
The net result is that some businesses are moving to other states, taking their jobs and their taxes with them. Other businesses that are looking for a place to locate or expand know that in
Only part of this is due to political pandering and demagoguery to win votes. There are many ideological activists in
They — along with college students — have the time to spend promoting whatever political crusades are in vogue among the fashionable elites, whether that is “open space” restrictions on housing, “living wage” laws or “anti-war” resolutions.
Usually activists have neither practical experience nor economic literacy, so they go around blithely creating huge costs for those who have to work for a living and those who employ them. Not only businesses but Californians as a whole end up paying a staggering price so that a relative handful of people who are a drain on society can feel superior to those who contribute to it.
