Academic

JOEL KOTKIN: END OF THE CALIFORNIA ERA, BEGINNING OF THE TEXAS ERA. In the future, historians ma?

By Glenn Reynolds

JOEL KOTKIN: END OF THE CALIFORNIA ERA, BEGINNING OF THE TEXAS ERA.

In the future, historians may likely mark the 2010 midterm elections as the end of the California era and the beginning of the Texas one. In one stunning stroke, amid a national conservative tide, California voters essentially ratified a political and regulatory regime that has left much of the state unemployed and many others looking for the exits.

California has drifted far away from the place that John Gunther described in 1946 as ?the most spectacular and most diversified American state ? so ripe, golden.? Instead of a role model, California has become a cautionary tale of mismanagement of what by all rights should be the country?s most prosperous big state. Its poverty rate is at least two points above the national average; its unemployment rate nearly three points above the national average. . . .

Texas? trajectory, however, looks quite the opposite. California was recently ranked by Chief Executive magazine as having the worst business climate in the nation, while Texas? was considered the best. Both Democrats and Republicans in the Lone State State generally embrace the gospel of economic growth and limited public sector expenditure.

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Full post as published by Instapundit.com on November 18, 2010 (boomark / email).