Rhetoric to Challenge California’s Statist Elites
California’s ruling elites have enacted policies that make it impossible for middle class citizens to live here. They have artificially elevated the cost of living, nearly destroyed public education, decimated public services, neglected public infrastructure, and declared war on small business. To deflect criticism, they’ve convinced a critical mass of voters that any attempts to roll back these abominable policies are being engineered by racist, sexist plutocrats, and their willing puppets in the Republican party.
Exposing this diabolical, conniving scam won’t be easy. The ruling elites are a powerful coalition, comprised of left wing oligarchs including most of Silicon Valley’s billionaires, California’s public sector unions armed with the billion dollars (or more) they collect every year in forced dues, and the environmentalist lobby and their powerful trial lawyer cohorts.
Defeating California’s ruling elite requires a new coalition, comprised of the private sector middle class, enlightened members of the public sector middle class, and members of disadvantaged communities that aspire to the middle class. Attracting members of these communities, especially California’s Latinos, Asians, and African Americans, requires convincing them that current policies actually harm their interests.
To do this, there are two moral arguments the elites make that have to be debunked, because they underlie all of the intrusive, statist policies that are destroying California’s middle class. The first is the argument that capitalism is inherently evil and must be strictly curbed if not completely replaced by socialism. The second is the argument that unprecedented sacrifices must be made in order to save the planet from an environmental catastrophe.
Corrupt Capitalism vs Competitive Capitalism
Here are examples of two very different ways to critique wealth. In each example, the first phrase is employed by the ruling elites. It feeds on resentment and ignorance. The second phrase is offered as a counter argument. It appeals to the aspiring middle class family, or the small businessperson. It is designed to extol the positive virtues of capitalism and expose the opportunistic cynicism of the statist elites.
(1) “Tax the corporations” vs “make corporations compete.”
(2) “Capitalism is inherently evil” vs “no economic system in history has delivered more individual freedom and prosperity.”
(3) “Wealth is usually the result of privilege” vs “Wealth is usually the result of hard work in a free society.”
(4) “Government needs to regulate corporations” vs “corrupt corporations use regulations to destroy their smaller competitors.”
(5) “We have to redistribute wealth so people can afford to live” vs “we have to nurture capitalist competition to lower the cost of living.”
These arguments shine a spotlight on the great con job promulgated by the elites: The ruling class does not care about you, but we do. Because like you, we have to try to make payments on a half-million or even a million dollar mortgage, just to own a small house. Like you, we have to pay more for gasoline and electricity than any other citizens in any other state in America. Like you, we have to send our children to failing K-12 schools, then sink further into debt to pay tuition for them to attend colleges and universities where they don’t get a good education.
Extreme Environmentalism vs Practical Environmentalism
Apart from the distraction of race and gender, environmentalism provides the moral argument used as cover for policies that have imposed a punitive cost of living on Californians. It is important to make the distinction between attacks that discredit environmentalism in its entirety, and environmentalist reform that exposes the hidden agendas and inherent futility of California’s extremist environmental policies. Here are examples of two very different ways to apply environmentalist values.
(1) “Stop urban sprawl” vs “California has 163,000 square miles of land and is nearly empty, adding 10 million more people on quarter acre lots (even including new roads and new commercial/industrial centers) would consume less than 2,000 square miles!”
(2) “People need to live in multi-family dwellings” vs “detached single family homes are cheaper per unit to build than multi-family dwellings, and are more popular among buyers.”
(3) “There isn’t enough water for people to have detached homes and yards” vs “for less than $20 billion, we could build enough desalination capacity to provide water to every home and business in Los Angeles County; farming consumes 80% of all water diversions in California, we are exporting water intensive crops like alfalfa, grown using massively subsidized water, in the Imperial Valley (desert)!”
(4) “The government needs to discourage further development of fossil fuels such as clean natural gas” vs “Californians are paying as much as ten times what energy consumers pay for electricity in low cost states, and that California’s CO2 emissions are a minute fraction of those from other nations such as China and India.”
(5) “We have to get people out of their cars and build passenger rail” vs “cars, trucks and buses offer far more convenience and versatility, and are on the verge of becoming 100% clean and sustainable modes of transportation.”
(6) “No new mines and quarries should be allowed within California, and existing ones should be phased out” vs “developing in-state natural resources creates in-state jobs and costs less than importing materials from elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada.”
When the elites demand “environmental justice” for people of color, ask them (using the San Francisco Bay Area as an example) what any of that has to do with why we can’t build homes on the eastern slopes of the Mt. Hamilton Range, or in San Jose’s Coyote Valley, or along the I-280 corridor in the Santa Cruz mountains. Ask them why they’re paying 60% of their income for rent or a mortgage, when California has 163,000 square miles of land and is nearly empty. Ask why money that is being spent on high speed rail, using imported materials, isn’t instead being used to create high paying jobs in road and infrastructure projects that will actually improve lives. Ask why thousands of people aren’t working in high paying jobs in mining and quarrying, so building materials can cost less.
For aggressive reformers, good questions are plentiful. What have California’s elites done for working families? Have they gotten you better jobs? Have they nurtured robust and competitive housing markets to lower the price of a home? Have they widened the freeways? Have they enabled competition to drive down the cost-of-living? Have they made your communities safe and prosperous and affordable? Have they done anything other than bribe your so-called leaders with campaign contributions so they’ll do what they’re told?
It comes down to this: These purported spokespersons for true environmentalist values have become personally successful by fomenting environmentalist panic, but they do not represent the best interests of ordinary Californians, and they do not articulate a realistic or practical vision of environmentalism.
California’s elite has declared war on the working class. They have used race as a distraction, and extreme environmentalism as the phony moral justification for their self-serving policies. They must be exposed.
The Moral High Ground
This fact – that the rhetoric of California’s elite does not translate into a better quality of life for the people they govern – is the core moral argument against current policies. Across virtually every issue, the policies of the elites are failing ordinary Californians. Pouring money into public schools has not helped students. Raising taxes has not improved services. Expanding college curricula that replace academic rigor with what amounts to political indoctrination has not improved employment opportunities for graduates. And creating artificial scarcity in the name of saving the planet has not helped the planet, but it has impoverished millions of California’s most economically vulnerable residents.
In claiming the moral high ground, reformers can use the same rhetoric the elites have employed for decades, and by doing so will find the elites have already done much of their work for them. The seditious goal of making California friendlier to small businesses, with more affordable housing, more affordable energy, better jobs and better schools is furthered by reminding Californians what the elites have done. They have engaged in one of the biggest cons of all time, enriching themselves at the expense of the average worker.
Once the issues of race and environmentalism are exposed as overstated issues, overemphasized in order to manipulate the electorate, then the resentment the elites have inculcated in their constituents can be turned against them.
Pro-growth policies don’t have to rely on terminology that has been tainted by the status-quo elites. “Free market,” “Libertarian,” “Conservative,” “Classical liberal,” etc. have seductive appeal for many ideologically driven reformers, but they have limited value in California politics. Reformers have to supplement their vocabulary, borrowing more from the left than from the right. The values and slogans that the ruling class has invested decades in inculcating in the minds of Californians can be used against them, because these elites have engaged in rank hypocrisy. Terms such as “social justice” and “equity” now have tremendous value to reformers, because reform policies will further those goals, whereas the policies implemented by California’s elite have condemned ordinary people to poverty.
Examples of using terms popular with the left to advance reformer causes:
Social justice – charter schools, teacher accountability
Civil Rights – the right to a quality education in a school chosen by parents
Equity – competitive land development to create affordable housing
Micro-aggression – countless taxes, hidden taxes, fees and regulations
Fairness – prices for energy and water competitive with other states
Progressive – pension benefits with lower percentage formulas for highly paid public employees
Diversity – college curricula that embrace conservative as well as liberal values
Anti-Discrimination – merit based, color blind criteria for hiring and college admissions
A pragmatic, centrist ideology that co-opts the rhetoric of the status-quo elites to attack the ruling class can resist being pigeonholed as left or right, or conservative or socialist. We are pragmatists. We are pro-growth, pro-job Californians and our policies will lead to prosperity, affordable housing, affordable utilities, affordable education, and social justice and equity for all Californians, and not just the elites.
Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.
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