Social Security Taxes and the “Gig Economy”

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It is fashionable to refer to the job market of the future as “the gig economy.” In this enlightened, technology enabled wonderland, everyone will be free to balance work and leisure as they see fit. When they want to earn more money, they get online, find a “gig,” and when the job’s performed the money flows into their checking account. Not quite the utopia of Galt’s Gulch, but tantalizingly closer. The problem with the “gig economy” is the troublesome intervention of reality. Tell an Uber driver who has two hungry children, a wife home with the flu (unable to “gig”), who makes $20 per hour and has no health insurance that he’s living in utopia. You may have to duck.

In 2017, the opinion section of the New York Times ran a guest editorialthat included a graphic entitled “Our Broken Economy, In One Simple Chart.” That chart was drawn from data gathered by a team of economists that included Thomas Piketty, author of the 2014 bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Each dot on the chart below represents an income percentile. They form two lines, the grey line showing income growth by income percentile between 1946 and 1980, and the red line showing income growth by income percentile between 1980 and 2014.

As can be seen, during the 34-year post-World War II period, the lower income groups actually increased their income (on an annual percentage basis) more than did the higher income groups. In stark contrast, during the 34-year-period from 1980 through 2014, the higher income groups did significantly better. So much so, in fact, that a logarithmic scale is necessary after the 99th percentile, showing a dot for every 10th of 1 percent, then another for every 100th of 1 percent, and so on. And it keeps on rising. Between 1980 and 2014, the top 1/1,000th of 1 percent saw their income rise at an annual rate of 5.5 percent, compared to “only” 2.3 percent for the top-1 percent, compared to zero for the bottom 5 percent.


Piketty’s data is interesting, as is one of the central premises of Capital in the 21st Century. “The rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth,” he writes, “and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future.” One may argue Piketty’s premise all day, but his focus—and the focus of his acolytes—tends to be on the very highest income earners, along with the very lowest wage earners. Meanwhile, there remains the great American middle class, which labors to earn and retain income against tremendous institutional barriers. Most significantly, the Social Security tax that, as of 2018, is only assessed up to an income of $128,400.

How does this affect an independent contractor? You know, the people who do “gigs.” It all depends on how much the gig pays.

The next chart shows the cumulative and marginal tax brackets by income based on 2018 state and federal tax rates. California’s state tax brackets are applied in this example, because even there, where high-income households pay very high taxes, the burden on the middle class is higher. Using data compiled by the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota, a household income of $77,400 is in the 59th percentile in America; a household income of $128,400 is in the 80th percentile. Take a look at the marginal tax rate for these households. Between $70,000 and $80,000 it soars from 33 percent to 43 percent, then peaks at 47 percent at 120,000, before plummeting to 34 percent at $130,000. The rapid rise is the impact of the federal income tax rategrowing from 12 percent for earnings below $77,400 to 22 percent for earnings above that amount, plus a steady rise in the California state tax rate (6 percent at $64,000, 8 percent at $89,000, 9.3 percent at $112,000). The sudden fall is the result of the Social Security tax of 12.4 percent going away for incomes over $128,400.

It’s valid to question whether we need Social Security, or any government solution to retirement security, but let’s set that aside for a moment and consider what these assessments do to independent contractors, those members of the “gig economy.” In 2018, roughly 70 million Americans lived in households with incomes between $77,000 and $128,000. Not all of them were independent contractors, but if they wanted to supplement their salaried jobs, chances are they were doing that extra work as independent contractors. This is where the marginal tax bracket is so much more relevant than the cumulative tax bracket. The marginal tax bracket shows what individuals in those household income brackets could expect to keep, after they paid all their taxes. Barely more than half. Take a second job that pays $20 per hour? Keep $10.80 after taxes. Take a second job, working nights and weekends, paying $50 per hour? Keep $27 after taxes. Ouch.

The significance of this fact—that upper middle income households pay far less on their extra income than middle income households—has profound implications. People who take on extra work to feed their families, know they’re going to pay not 12 percent federal income tax, but 22 percent (for all income between $77,000 and $165,000), and as an independent contractor they know they’re going to pay 12.4 percent tax for the employer and employee share of Social Security. Add to that Medicare (employer and employee portions), and a high state tax (such as in California), and they know they’ll give back nearly half of what they earn to the government. Crappy gig. But if they’re making over $128,400, they’ll only give back about one-third of what they make to the government. Not a crappy gig.

The implications of this disparity are likely reflected in the attitudes and habits of those who are paying far higher taxes on their extra work. The advantages of working off the books would be hard to resist. The decision to vote for higher taxes on wealthier individuals would be easy to justify. Not depicted on the chart, but worth mentioning, is that once you hit around $165,000 in household income, your taxes don’t increase significantly until you’re making over $400,000 which is where the federal income tax rate jumps to 32 percent. And even in California, the overall marginal tax rate paid by people making under $128,400, 47 percent, is never significantly exceeded, not reaching 48 percent until household income is nearly $700,000. In states without state income tax, the marginal rate (there is no cap on Medicare payments) tops out at 41 percent, well below what people making under $128,000 have to pay.

What might people on either side of this great tax divide think about issues such as immigration and trade? It’s tempting to generalize. The people paying 46 percent on every extra dime they make might wish to see an end to mass immigration of unskilled laborers, since the result of their influx is even higher taxes and lower wages. The higher income people who only pay about one-third of their extra income in marginal taxes might not want to curtail the flow of unskilled migrants, since the more who come in, the less they’ll have to pay for house cleaners and gardeners.

On the question of trade, the people with well-paying manufacturing jobs probably still make less than $128,000 a year, and would like to see fair trade practices. The people making more than $128,000 per year probably have so-called white collar jobs in the “services” sector, relatively immune from globalization. With respect to Piketty’s chart, showing the maddening growth in income inequality between 1980 and today—how much of that had to do with trade and immigration policies? Ideological fill-in-the-blanks answers not accepted.

Coming back to the issue of Social Security, it’s easy to take the libertarian position that everything should go into private accounts. Compounding returns! Market-based! Private sector! Rah rah! But as with so many libertarian fantasies, privatizing Social Security ignores critical factors. To name a few: Social Security mitigates against long-term market risk, whereas private accounts can lead to the complete destruction of savings for an entire generation. Investments perform according to unpredictable long-term cycles, meaning some decades may be far kinder to people living off their investments than others. Social Security also mitigates against mortality risk, wherein some people may outlive their investments, and others may die young and oversave.

There’s more: Social Security benefits— to cross into rank heresy—are progressive, which means it pays higher returns to people who had lower lifetime earnings. And then one must consider the impact of dumping the entire Social Security fund into the global investment markets, exacerbating the already challenging reality of too much speculative money chasing too few high-return investments. Finally, Social Security is not a “Ponzi scheme,” because Ponzi schemes imply a return of principal, nor is Social Security a “Pyramid scheme” because Pyramid schemes require increasing numbers of entrants and therefore must always eventually collapse.

Here’s a better idea. Why not take away the cap on Social Security tax, and use all that extra money to make Social Security forever solvent? At the same time, why not decide once and for all who is a U.S. citizen and stick to that, so Social Security benefits aren’t diluted by payments to people who didn’t contribute to the system their entire life? And while we’re at it, why not liquidate public employee pension funds, and convert all public employee retirement benefits to Social Security (and Medicare), so that every citizen in the United States faces the same set of challenges and opportunities?

Whether or not the “gig economy” is a desired feature of the brave new world we’re entering largely depends on just how much that “gig” is paying. Because if their extra gig puts them into a marginal tax bracket that’s under $128,400, they owe the government nearly half the money they make from their “gigs.” But if they make more than that, they actually pay far less in taxes.

A fitting, if somewhat ambivalent way to sum this up would like this: Make America’s tax system fair, so that no matter how much you make, you pay the same percentage of your income into Social Security, or, get rid of Social Security entirely. As long as 70 million Americans are paying more in taxes than the people who make more than them have to pay, it is a farce to tout the gig economy as part of an inevitable and desirable future.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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Is Gavin Newsom California’s Denier-in-Chief?

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California’s newly elected governor, Gavin Newsom, gave his first “state of the state” address on February 12, and it was a speech more noteworthy for what he didn’t than for what he did mention. Were Newsom’s sins of omission the conscious choice of a seasoned politician, or is he in denial, like so many of his California leftist cohorts?

Before criticizing the content, and the omissions, of Newsom’s speech, it’s necessary to make something clear: Nobody can deny California’s accomplishments; its great universities; its vibrant, diverse industries; its global economic and cultural influence. But California’s accomplishments are in spite of its state government, not because of it. That cannot be emphasized enough.

Newsom began by saying Californians had to make “tough calls” on the issues of transportation, water, energy, migrants, the homeless, healthcare, and the cost-of-living. He proceeded next to make no tough calls.

Forget About Fixing Roads, Let’s Build Half a Bullet-Train
With respect to transportation, Newsom made no mention of California’s crumbling, clogged freeways and connector roads. To be fair to Newsom, when you don’t have to commute day after day during rush hour—and even when you do drive, you have a driver so you can sit in the back seat of a very quiet, very smooth ride, and conduct teleconferences—you don’t really think about “roads” the same way the rest of us do. So understandably, Newsom chose to talk about high speed rail, and even on that topic, he hedged his bets. He proclaimed the project would cost too much and take too long to build a track from Sacramento all the way to San Diego, or even from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Instead he committed to focusing on completing the track from Merced to Bakersfield, where work has already begun.

Is this denial? Or just the out-of-touch priorities of an extremely wealthy man who doesn’t have to drive? Merced? To Bakersfield? Along the entire 163 mile stretch between these two cities, including everyone living in all the five surrounding counties, there are only 2.8 million people. How much will that cost? $10 billion? $20 billion (more likely)? Has Newsom considered how much highway improvement could be done with all that money? For that matter, might we ask the voters of Fresno and Kern counties, as if all that money should be spent there—“would you rather have $20 billion spent on road improvements, or that train?” Or are we afraid of the answer? Does Gavin Newsom understand that even if high-speed rail were built in all its original scope, it would still do virtually nothing to ameliorate California’s transportation challenges, which can only be solved by building new roads and widening existing roads?

Forget About Increasing Water Supply, Let’s Build Half of the “Twin Tunnels”
On the issue of water, Newsom also split the difference on what promises to be California’s second biggest infrastructure money pit after high-speed rail. That would be the two proposed “delta tunnels” that would transport runoff from Northern California, under the Sacramento River Delta, and onward to thirsty farms and cities in arid Southern California. But the governor didn’t call for two tunnels, nor did he kill the project. Like Solomon, Newsom is going to give the “water fix” advocates half of their baby. He wants to build one tunnel.

Newsom correctly stated that demand for water exceeds supply in California, but he was firmly in denial as to the solution, which is to create more supply. For the cost of even just one delta tunnel, massive desalination plants could be constructed on the Southern California coast. Those facilities, combined with runoff capture and sewage reuse projects throughout California’s coastal cities, could make them water independent. Seismic upgrades to levees along with new fish hatcheries could preserve cost-effective, environmentally acceptable movement of northern water to southern customers through the delta, something that’s worked for decades. And more storage via new off-stream reservoirs, aquifer recharge, and raising the Shasta Dam would supply additional millions of acre feet. Instead? A tunnel that will cost at least $20 billion, and add zero water to California’s annual supply.

Never Mind the Shortages We Created, Let’s Invite the World to Migrate Here
California’s politically sacred mission these days, of course, is to invite the migrants of the world to settle here. Newsom didn’t disappoint his crowd, trotting out dubious statistics to prove that undocumented immigration is a “manufactured problem.” But again, Newsom is denying the big picture: If California rolls out the welcome mat for the destitute masses of the world, where does it end? There’s good, accurate data available on this.

More than 800 million people in the world live in extreme poverty—defined as living on less than two dollars per day. What about Latin Americans, who according to Newsom’s equally photogenic counterpart in the U.S. Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), “must be exempt from immigration laws because they are ‘native’ to U.S. lands”? Over 150 million Latin Americans live on less than $4 per day. Hundreds of additional millions of Latin Americans struggle economically. Why not form “caravans” to bring them all here? Newsom, along with the entire California Legislature, will cheer them on and let them in, no matter what the cost.

As it is, currently 2.6 million undocumented immigrants live in California. Even the liberal website politifact.com acknowledges that 55 percent of immigrant households in California benefit from welfare, with their only supposedly debunking caveat being that some of these households have U.S. born children. Other recent studies put the California total as high as 72 percent. There is a cost to Californians for all this, estimated as high as $25 billion per year, so where does Gov. Newsom draw the line? Three million more migrants? Five million? Ten million? One hundred million? Or is he in denial?

And What About Those Politically Created Shortages?
Newsom mentioned “overcrowded classrooms,” and talked about “too much demand, too little supply” for housing. But his solution for education was, what a surprise, more money and “accountability for all public schools, traditional and charters” (a slap at the charter schools, well received based on the applause from the union-controlled audience). Newsom remained in denial as to the real reason California’s public schools are failing, the fact that teaching professionals have been unionized, and the unions have used the dues revenue to exercise nearly absolute control over state and local politicians. Thanks to the teachers union, bipartisan reforms to union work rules (dismissal policies, layoff criteria, lengthened tenure) are watered down or completely squelched, and charter schools are under constant attack.

As the old cornball adage goes, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, Gov. Newsom. Public sector unions destroyed public education in California. Do something about that, if your thousand watt compassionate smile is doing anything more than hiding a vacuous brain, guiding a feckless, morally indifferent human, attracted to nothing more than publicity, power, money, and beautiful women. That’s probably an overly harsh, unfair and inaccurate assessment of the Governor. So maybe he will silence his skeptics, by doing something that takes actual courage. Take on the teachers union. Don’t talk about it. Fight them. Fight them tooth and nail. Fight them on the beaches. Fight them in the streets. Fight them in the hills. Never give up.

Wasn’t Newsom’s campaign slogan “courage for change”? Offer that slogan, but nothing else, to the semi-literate, totally innumerate, thoroughly indoctrinated products of California’s public schools, and see how much good it does. They are the victims of the teachers unions. Theyneed courage from the Governor. Not a pretty face. Not a pretty phrase.

Newsom’s solution for the housing shortage, so far, is to sue cities and counties that won’t build government subsidized “affordable housing.” But “affordable housing” is never affordable, and everyone knows that by now. It’s just a money tree for connected developers. To make homes “affordable” doesn’t have to cost taxpayers a dime. Just deregulate the private housing industry, making it easier to develop land. Then, strip away the overreaching design mandates that turn ordinary homes and apartments into hermetically sealed, stupefyingly expensive, miniature Borg cubes with embedded, connected chips in everything from the toilets to the coffeemaker, festooned with phony “gingerbread” eaves and trim that some marketing department tested with focus groups.

Newsom, to his credit, did mention the need to modify the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), an absurdly intrusive law that is a gold mine for trial lawyers and unions who use it to stop land development in its tracks. But his solution? Turning CEQA reform over to a task force consisting of union officials and large home developers.

Newsflash, Gov. Newsom! Union officials and large home developers won’t benefit from CEQA reform, so they won’t come up with anything useful. They like CEQA just the way it is. Because CEQA is the reason the median home price in California is $547,400. That is an absolutely obscene amount for anyone to have to pay for a home. But it further enriches the billionaire land developers who have the political clout and financial heft to withstand the avalanche of CEQA lawsuits and regulatory hurdles. Who is harmed by CEQA? The average Joe who owns ten acres and knows a building contractor. Those guys can only dream of meaningful CEQA reform. Better yet, they should move to Texas which is still open for business. Or, that is, move to Texas before Gov. Newsom’s other photogenic counterpart, “Beto,” and his gang of Leftists with a twang, manage to turn that state into another California.

Charisma Can’t Make Up for Denial, But Redemption is Possible
On every topic, Newsom’s theme was at least consistent. Let’s be tough, let’s be honest, let’s do our duty to ALL Californians. But he wasn’t tough, and he wasn’t honestly choosing the right questions to ask, so it’s hard to see how he was doing his duty to all Californians. And for a man leading the biggest state in the United States, who could very well end up being inaugurated as the next U.S. President in January 2024, we need more. Much more. Here are three topics of bipartisan urgency that Newsom should have, but didn’t touch.

He didn’t talk about how on the next economic downturn, state and local public employee pensions are poised to bankrupt half of California’s cities and counties and totally blow up the state budget.

He didn’t talk about how California’s public employee unions have formed a coalition with extreme environmentalists and Leftist billionaires to stop all development of land and energy in order to create an asset bubble that benefits public coffers and private investments while screwing everyone else.

He didn’t talk about how, even if you believe all the alarmist hyperbole regarding climate change, you can’t possibly go “carbon free” without more hydro-electric and nuclear power.

Newsom’s mannerisms might remind one of Chris Collinsworth, a tall and well-liked sportscaster who talks with a perpetual smile on his face. But Newsom isn’t a sportscaster. He’s presiding over a state—with 40 million people and “the fifth largest economy on earth”—that has been taken over by a gang of money grubbing, power-mad, opportunistic, platitude-spewing con artists.

If Newsom’s intentions are half as benevolent as that compassionate smile of his tells us they are, and if his “courage for change” is sincere, then here’s another way he can redeem himself in the eyes of his skeptics. He can live the life that his political comrades have imposed on California’s hardest working residents. Instead of moving into a 12,000-square-foot mansion, located on an eight acre compound in one of the wealthiest ZIP codes in Sacramento County, Newsom should move his family into one of those California median priced $547,400 homes, situated on a 3,200 square foot lot, surrounded by other homes on 3,200-square-foot lots, and send his four children to a public school.

Redemption is good for the soul, so there’s more: for Newsom to fully live the California dream, and prove he cares about “ALL Californians,” he should give his personal wealth away to charity—or better yet, send it to the CalPERS public employee pension fund because they’re going after every dime they can get their hands on. Then, Newsom should cut his governor’s pay to $71,805, which is California’s median household income, and refuse all outside honorariums and fees. And he should do this not for two weeks to make a statement, or even for the next four years. He should do this for the rest of his life.

He would be in denial no longer.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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California’s Climate Agenda Sets an Impossible Example for the World

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We will never waver on achieving the nation’s most ambitious clean energy goals..
–  Excerpt from Gavin Newsom’s State of the State Address, January 12, 2019

California has long been proclaiming itself the leader in fighting “climate change,” and incoming governor Gavin Newsom promises to continue the efforts. The big push began over ten years ago, with Gov. Schwarzenegger, who pivoted left after failing to reform public employee unions in 2005. Schwarzenegger promoted, then signed, AB 32, in 2006. This so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act,” set the initial targets for greenhouse gas reduction, empowering the California Air Resources Board to monitor and enforce compliance with laws and regulations aimed at achieving these reductions.

Other significant legislation followed. SB 107, also passed in 2006, mandated a “renewable portfolio standard,” wherein by 2010 at least 20% of California’s electricity would come from renewable sources.

The legislation has been unrelenting. SB 1, 2006, mandated utilities pay rebates to homeowners that installed photovoltaic panels on their roofs. AB 118, 2007, funded the “Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program,” the first step towards mandating a minimum percentage of electric and hybrid vehicle sales. SB 375, 2008, the “Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act,” directed cities and counties to increase the housing density of their communities.

When Jerry Brown took over as Governor in 2010, legislation accelerated. SBX1-2, 2011, raised the renewable portfolio standard to 33% by 2020. AB 1092, 2013, mandated electric vehicle charging stations in new multi-family dwellings. SB 1275, 2014, set a goal of 1.0 million “zero emission vehicles” by 2020. SB 350, 2015, raised the renewable portfolio standard to 50% by 2030. SB 32, 2016, set a greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. AB 398 extended the “cap and trade” program to 2030.

This is just a partial list. High speed rail, water rationing, “urban containment” policies, a virtual prohibition on any conventional energy development, retrofit mandates for trucks and dwellings, and much more – all of it has come down from Sacramento in an attempt to “address climate change.”

But will any of this work? Is California setting an example that the world can follow?

CAN RENEWABLES MEET FUTURE GLOBAL ENERGY DEMAND?

The short answer is no. Renewables alone cannot possibly power the global economy. Using data on energy from the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, along with population data from the World Bank, the following graphics make this clear.

In the above chart, row one shows the US population in 2017 of 324 million, which is 4.3 percent of the world total. Over 7.2 billion people are living in the rest of the world “ROW.” Row two shows that in 2017, using million metric tons of oil equivalents, the US consumed 2.2 billion “MTO equivalents,” which was about 17 percent of all energy consumed worldwide. That is, in 2017 the average American consumed nearly 4.5 times as much energy as the average person living in the rest of the world. Expressed as kilograms of oil in row three of the chart, in 2017 the average American burned 6,898 “KGO equivalents,” while the average for someone living in the rest of the world was only 1,561.

Most people would agree that access to cheap energy is a prerequisite for economic development, which in turn sets in motion a cascade of positive effects on societies – individual empowerment, female emancipation, access to clean water, healthcare, education, reduced infant mortality, fewer infectious diseases.

If one accepts that argument, the next chart projects how much more energy needs to be produced worldwide to achieve these positive economic benefits, and the positive effects that would follow from more abundant and affordable energy worldwide. A primary assumption is that Americans become somewhat more efficient in their use of energy, with their per capita KGO/year consumption declining from the 2017 average of 6,898 to 5,000 by 2035. The other related assumption is that the people living in the rest of the world increase their energy consumption from the 2017 average of 1,561/year up to 2,500/year by 2035, which would still only be one-half as much per capita as Americans would be consuming.

Based on these assumptions regarding individual energy consumption trends, as can be seen on the above chart, total global energy production will need to increase by 71 percent, from 13.5 billion metric tons of oil equivalents in 2017, to 23.1 per year in 2035. This is based on World Bank projections for 2035 that estimate the US population at 355 million and estimate the total world population increasing to 8.9 billion.

Can windmills and solar panels make that happen? They’ll have a long way to go. The next chart, courtesy of BP’s most recent Statistical Energy Review, shows the fuel mix of global energy production today.

It’s hard to even find the renewable slice on this graphic that shows global energy production by type for the last 25 years. On the right, where the 2017 mix is depicted, renewables are the minute orange slice, just below coal (grey), and hydroelectric (blue). As is obvious, coal, natural gas (red), and oil (green), constitute the overwhelming majority of energy produced in the world.

It is difficult to imagine 50% of this chart to be represented by renewables by 2035, when even under minimal scenarios to provide adequate energy for economic development, global energy production needs to nearly double. But how green are renewables?

IS RENEWABLE ENERGY REALLY CLEAN AND GREEN?

To answer this, an unlikely source provides an illuminating perspective. From the website of the “Deep Green Resistance,” a critique of green and renewable power is offered with a lucidity that eludes California’s policymakers. If the “deniers” of the right have no credibility with California’s green movement, perhaps the deep greens do. Consider these excerpts from the Deep Green Resistance website’s “Green Technology & Renewable Energy” FAQs:

“Aren’t renewables better than fossil fuel?

It’s debatable whether some ‘renewables’ even produce net energy. The amount of energy used in the mining, manufacturing, research and development, transport, installation, maintenance, grid connection, and disposal of wind turbines and solar panels may be more than they ever produce.

What about solar power?

Solar panel production is now among the leading sources of hexafluoroethane, nitrogen triflouride, and sulfur hexaflouride, three extremely potent greenhouse gases which are used for cleaning plasma production equipment. As a greenhouse gas, hexaflouroethane is 12,000 times more potent than CO2, is 100% manufactured by humans, and survives 10,000 years once released into the atmosphere. Nitrogen Triflouride is 17,000 times more virulent than CO2, and Sulfur Hexaflouride is 25,000 times more powerful than CO2. Concentrations of nitrogen triflouride in the atmosphere are rising 11% per year.

What about wind power?

One of the most common wind turbines in the world is a 1.5 megawatt design produced by General Electric. The nacelle weighs 56 tons, the tower 71 tons, and the blades 36 tons. A single such turbine requires over 100 tons of steel. This model is a smaller design by modern standards. The latest industrial turbines stand over 600 feet tall and require about eight times as much steel, copper, and aluminum.

What about hybrid and electric vehicles?

The production of electric cars requires energy from fossil fuels for most aspects of their production and distribution. This requirement is perhaps even more extreme with electric cars as there is a need to manufacture them to be as lightweight as possible, due to the weight of the battery packs. Many lightweight materials utilized are extremely energy intensive to produce, such as aluminum and carbon composites. Electric/hybrid cars are also charged by energy that, for the most part, comes from power plants using natural gas, coal or nuclear fuels. A recent study by the National Academies, which analyzed the effects of vehicle construction, fuel extraction, refining, emissions, and other factors, has shown that the lifetime health and environmental impacts of electric vehicles are actually greater than those of gasoline-powered cars.”

These are tough assertions. Not included here is the environmental footprint for literally gigawatt-years of storage capacity, not only to deliver continuous energy on windless nights, but, even more daunting, in winter when there are far fewer hours of sunlight. Most of what the Deep Green Resistance advocates may be considered dangerous extremism, but their assessment of renewable energy cannot be ignored.

Where California’s mainstream greens depart from the deep greens is in their optimism. But a realistic assessment of renewable energy must combine the optimism of mainstream greens with the lucidity of the deep greens.

Renewables are not necessarily “greener” than conventional energy, particularly if conventional energy is produced using the cleanest technologies available. If the all the governments on earth enforced on their peoples the experiment that California is committed to – 50% renewable energy by 2030 – the likely result would be the collapse of civilization that the deep greens not only predict, but wish to hasten.

An “all-of-the-above” energy strategy is the only way to offer humanity the possibility of peaceful economic development.

Back in the 1990s, when environmentalism had not yet matured into the polarizing climate change bogeyman that it has become, one of the most reputable environmentalist journals was produced by the WorldWatch Institute. Back then, they consistently advocated “methane” (natural gas) as the “transitional fuel” to power the global economy until breakthrough technologies such as fusion power or satellite solar power stations became commercially viable. More recently, environmental activists such as Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore have advocated nuclear power as an essential part of our global energy future.

There is no place on earth more capable of developing clean fossil fuel and nuclear power than California. Californians have a choice. They can impoverish their population by creating artificial scarcity of land, energy and water, enforcing draconian restrictions on all development in the name of fighting climate change. Or they can face reality, and become pioneering partners in a new age of clean energy development from all sources. That would set a viable example for the world to follow.

This article originally appeared in the California Globe.

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Modest Strike Settlement Nonetheless Puts LAUSD in Even Worse Financial Shape

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One of the grievances expressed by the union during their recent strike against Los Angeles Unified School District was that, according to them, charter schools are draining funds from public schools. This assertion, repeated uncritically by major news reports on the strike, does not stand up to reason.

Public schools in California receive government funding based on student attendance. Since one of the other primary grievances of the union was overcrowded classrooms, it would be reasonable to conclude that LAUSD schools are not underfunded, but overfunded. There should be plenty of money, but there’s not. LAUSD is teetering on insolvency, and the strike settlement agreement is going to make their financial challenges even worse.

Charter Schools Outperform LAUSD’s Unionized Schools

The reason LAUSD is running out of money has little or nothing to do with charter schools. It has to do with inefficient use of funds. A study conducted by the California Policy Center in 2015 calculated the per student cost in LAUSD’s traditional public high schools to be $15,372 per year. The same study evaluated 26 charter high schools and middle schools located within LAUSD’s geographic boundaries, and found their cost per student to be $10,649 per year.

At the same time as LAUSD spends far more than charters per student, they do a poorer job educating their students. The same 2015 study, “Analyzing the Cost and Performance of LAUSD Traditional High Schools and LAUSD Alliance Charter High Schools,” compared the educational outcomes at nine charter high schools to nine traditional public high schools in LAUSD. These 18 schools were selected based on their having nearly identical student demographics to LAUSD’s traditional public high schools – i.e., the same percentage of English learners, learning disabled students, and low income students. The charter schools clearly outperformed LAUSD in every important metric – SAT scores, graduation rates and college admissions.

There are two critical issues here, neither of which appear to have been discussed in the strike negotiations. One, why do charter schools generally manage to educate students better than traditional public schools, and two, why do they manage to do it for so much less money?

The answer to the first may be hard for the union leadership and their supporters to accept: These charter schools are able to better educate students because they are not subject to union work rules. Incompetent teachers can be dismissed. If layoffs are necessary, the best teachers can be retained, instead of the most senior. What is more teachers do not acquire “tenure,” a job-for-life right negotiated by the teachers union despite its origins in the university with the purpose of protecting scientific inquiry, not protecting bad teachers in K-12 schools.

There are a host of reasons charter schools don’t cost as much as traditional public schools. Much of it has to do with teacher compensation. The average base pay in charter schools is less than in public schools, as is the average cost of benefits. But the “other pay,” typically taking the form of performance incentives, is higher in the charter schools. An interesting compilation, using data taken from Transparent California, estimated the bonus pay in the charter networks within LAUSD (Green Dot and Alliance) to average two to three times the average in LAUSD’s traditional public schools. This disparity, wherein compensation in charter schools is linked to the effectiveness of individual teachers, undoubtedly also helps explain why they achieve better educational outcomes.

The Cost of Benefits is Breaking LAUSD

LAUSD’s cost of employee benefits increased from $1.54 billion in 2015-16 to $1.92 billion in 2016-17, an increase of 25 percent, when the total employee headcount only increased by six-tenths of one percent. The reason for the increase is simple, and immutable: LAUSD, like many public agencies throughout California, has fallen woefully behind in its funding of retirement benefits, and they have reached a point where they must dramatically increase payments in order to catch up.

Staggering Pension Debt: LAUSD now carries an unfunded pension liability of $6.8 billion. Just paying down that debt over twenty years should be costing LAUSD over $600 million per year, not including the normal contribution they have to pay each year as their active employees earn additional pension benefits. As it is, including the normal contribution, in 2018 LAUSD “only” paid $584 million to CalSTRS and CalPERS.

The financial sickness relating to pensions is a statewide problem. CalSTRS, the pension system that collects and funds pension benefits for LAUSD teachers, as of June 30, 2017, was only 62 percent funded. Sixty-two percent. CalPERS, the pension system that collects and funds pension benefits for LAUSD support personnel, is only slightly better off financially than CalSTRS. It has already announced it will roughly double the required employer contributions between now and 2025. CalSTRS, if it wants to survive, will likely follow suit.

Retiree Healthcare Costs: If anything, the financial challenges surrounding LAUSD’s other primary retirement obligation, retiree health benefits, are even more daunting. LAUSD’s OPEB unfunded liability (OPEB stands for “other post employment benefits,” primarily retirement health insurance) has now reached a staggering $14.9 billion. Like many public agencies, LAUSD does not pre-fund their retiree health benefits. In 2018, retiree healthcare cost the district nearly $400 million. A 2016 study prepared for LAUSD estimated that cost to double in the next ten years, and to nearly quadruple within the next twenty years.

LAUSD does face declining enrollment, something they claim is exacerbated by diversion of students into charter schools. Total enrollment in 2013-14 was 621,796, and by 2017-18 it had declined somewhat to 591,411. As a percentage of total enrollment during that period, unaffiliated charter enrollment rose from 15 percent to 19 percent of all students. But LAUSD nonetheless contends with bursting classrooms. LAUSD’s traditional, unionized public schools are still collecting revenue based on attendance that stretches the capacity of their facilities. If they are still attempting to teach more students than their facilities can handle, they can’t blame charters for their financial problems.

There is, however, an indirect financial threat that charters represent to traditional unionized public schools that is very serious indeed. The problem is not that charter enrollment steals money from LAUSD’s classrooms, because the classrooms are full. More students might bring in more money, but they would also require more classrooms. The problem is the growth of charters shrinks the revenue base LAUSD needs to pay the costs for retirees.

Charter Schools Dilute LAUSD’s Revenue Base Necessary to Pay Retiree Benefits

As LAUSD’s traditional unionized public schools contend with burgeoning per-retiree costs, every student that they lose to charters represents less available revenue to feed the pension funds. Every student lost to charter schools decreases LAUSD’s ratio of active workers to retirees.

These compounding effects are similar to what faced the auto industry back in the 1980s – retirees collecting expensive benefits, supported by companies with fewer workers and lower revenues. The difference, of course, is that public schools, and public sector unions, do not contend with the irresistible reality of global markets. Instead their ultimate solution will be to call for higher taxes.

This prediction is borne out by the strike settlement, which called for more hiring of teachers and support personnel, retroactive raises, and nothing in the form of benefit reductions or higher employee contributions to their benefits through payroll withholding.

The other key victory for the union, an aggressive stance by the LAUSD Board against any new charter schools, is a rear guard action to preserve the revenue base necessary to pay retiree benefits. Stop the charters, or reform pensions and retiree healthcare formulas. It was one or the other. But all this war on charters does is buy time.

LAUSD Will Eventually Have to Adapt to Financial Reality

Sooner or later, financial reality will strike. LAUSD’s total expenses in 2016-17 were $7.6 billion. Benefits constituted $1.9 billion. Twenty-five percent of all spending. Ten years from now, those benefit costs are likely to double, as the pension fund payments rise to around $1.2 billion, annual OPEB contributions near the $1.0 billion level, and current benefits – which constituted around $900 million in spending in 2016-17 – rise with inflation. Can LAUSD afford to pay current and retiree benefits equal to 40 percent of all spending? Will higher taxes, to enable much higher per student reimbursements – make up the difference?

Financial reform to put LAUSD on a stable financial footing requires benefit reform. Teachers will have to pay, through payroll withholding, a higher percentage of the costs for their current health benefits, their retirement health benefits and their pensions. The alternative is for them to get more state funding for these benefits, or accept lower benefits. Increased state funding is on the way, but it is unlikely it will be sustainable.

There is another solution that bears discussion, which concerns the ratio of teachers to other employees. Based on their own data, LAUSD in 2016-17 had 26,556 classroom teachers, and 33,635 administrators and support personnel. Why is it necessary to have so many non-teachers? Why is it that between 2016-17, and the year before, the number of classroom teachers declined by 271, while the number of non-teaching employees grew by 639? In this regard, charter schools also offer a lesson. Just as they don’t spend precious funds on employee benefits that dwarf what private sector professionals typically expect, charters also don’t spend as much money on support personnel.

Not all charter schools succeed academically, but the ones that do offer examples that LAUSD and other traditional public school districts could emulate, and would emulate, if it weren’t for the intransigence of the teachers union. In all critical areas, from benefits reform to tenure, dismissal policies, and layoff criteria, the teachers union fights change. They have declared war on charters, and just won a major battle in LAUSD. But like the auto industry in Detroit back in the 1980s, unionized public schools need to adapt to changing times.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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Attack of the Watermelon People

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Supposedly, the “Green New Deal” is “green” because it would help the environment. But a close reading of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed resolution reveals a deal that looks more red than green.

The freshman congresswoman from New York released more specifics of her sweeping idea this week. In simpler times, we called extreme environmentalists “watermelons,” because they were green (environmentalists) on the outside, but red (socialist or communist) on the inside. Ocasio-Cortez, her Green New Deal, and all her fellow travelers, are watermelons through and through.

Almost everything about Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal is wrong. The premises, the priorities, and the “solutions.” It’s easy, and necessary, to criticize the priorities and the solutions proposed by this very red, outwardly green plan. But to have a completely honest debate, you also have to challenge the premises.

In the preamble, the resolution claims that sea levels are rising, wildfires are increasing, and extreme weather “threatens human life, healthy communities and critical infrastructure.” It claims humans are to blame. These are flawed premises.

Flawed Scientific Premises

The most threatening of these claims is sea level rise, but even mainstream publications that have completely embraced climate change hysteria are backing off of the most catastrophic forecasts. One of the most credible climate “lukewarmists” (a somewhat derisive term that alarmists attribute begrudgingly to skeptics they haven’t yet managed to silence or discredit) is Dr. Judith Curry, who is frequently called upon for congressional testimony. She recently completed an 18-month study on sea level rise. In the summary, she made the following points:

  • Sea level was apparently higher than present at the time of the Holocene Climate Optimum (around 5,000 years ago), at least in some regions.
  • Tide gauges show that sea levels began to rise during the 19th century, after several centuries associated with cooling and sea level decline. Tide gauges also show that rates of global mean sea level rise between 1920 and 1950 were comparable to recent rates.
  • Recent research has concluded that there is no consistent or compelling evidence that recent rates of sea level rise are abnormal in the context of the historical records back to the 19th century that are available across Europe.

Curry’s findings, consistent with those of other scientists such as the brilliant Richard Lindzen of MIT, are that over the past 150 years global sea level has risen at a “slow creep,” and since 1900, the sea has risen about 7-8 inches. The likely increase between now and 2100, according to Curry, is between 8 inches and 24 inches. While a rise on the higher end of this distribution would increase the destructive impact of storm surges in coastal areas, it is far from the catastrophe being touted by the Watermelon people.

And what of these “extreme storms”? Here again, we have data that contradicts the doomsday predictions.

Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and author of The Climate Fix, has done extensive research on extreme weather. His unequivocal conclusion is that the cost of weather-related disasters over the past 30 years have decreased as a percentage of GDP. Using IPCC data, he observes that tropical cyclones have not increased in frequency, intensity, or landfall since the 1970s. Quoting the IPCC, Pielke says “there is no trend in the magnitude or frequency of floods on a global scale,” and “there is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail,” and also “there is low confidence in detection and attribution of changes in drought over global land areas since the mid-20th century.”

Why doesn’t any of this make it into the mainstream press?

Flawed Geopolitical Premises

Ocasio-Cortez’s resolution preamble goes on to predict “mass migration from the regions most affected by climate change.” Here again, we have a flawed premise. “Climate change” is neither the reason migrants want to migrate, nor the reason that Watermelon people want them to migrate to America. Expect those regions to be in nations where poverty has always been the norm, only ameliorated enough in recent decades to ensure absurdly high birth rates. Normal droughts and storms don’t cause mass migrations out of successful nations. Rather it is endless internal warfare and recurrent famine that causes teeming populations to flee failed states with corrupt, incompetent governments.

Around the world, desperate people, leaders and ordinary citizens alike, will jump at the chance to blame someone else for “climate” events causing their misery, as they demand reparations including the right to immigrate en masse to America and Europe. And because once they are here, they will vote for greater government benefits, the Watermelon people want them to come. The more the better. The sooner the better.

Flawed Economic Premises

The economic premises underlying the Green New Deal are, if anything, even more flawed. Another part of the preamble states climate change will wreak “more than [$500 billion] in lost annual economic output in the United States by the year 2100.” The United States in 2018 had a GDP of $20.4 trillion. But by 2100, even at the modest rate of 3 percent annual GDP growth, the United States would have a GDP of $230 trillion. So half-a-trillion “by 2100” represents a whopping 0.2 percent worth of diminished “economic output,” eight decades from now. Is that the best they can do? Who comes up with these terrifying numbers?

The preamble also predicts “a risk of damage to [$1 trillion] of public infrastructure and coastal real estate in the United States,” though it doesn’t say by when. But just the public infrastructure in the United States is estimated to be worth at least $37 trillion. What about real estate? All U.S. homes are estimated to be worth a cumulative $31.8 trillion. And that doesn’t include commercial real estate.

The financial numbers sound scary. Obviously, $1 trillion is a lot of money. But put in perspective, their actual economic scope is not scary at all. Infrastructure and homes need to be replaced every 50 to 100 years anyway. Trillions are already being spent each year to build and maintain structures of all kinds in the United States. So the premises Ocasio-Cortez lays out are unconvincing. We adapt. We always have.

But adaptation isn’t good enough if you’re a Watermelon. A brief gallop through the “Resolved” or “solutions” sections of the Green New Deal provides us a glimpse into what is good enough for the Watermelon people. Please note these are just highlights. There’s so much more.

Highlights of the “Green New Deal Mobilization”

Here are some goals Ocasio-Cortez lays out for her Green New Deal:

  • Ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change.
  • Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.
  • Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.
  • Zero-emission vehicle infrastructure and manufacturing.
  • A Green New Deal must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses.
  • Providing resources, training, and high-quality education, including higher education, to all people of the United States, with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities.
  • Ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers.
  • Ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages.
  • Guaranteeing a job with a family-sustaining wage, adequate family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security to all people of the United States.
  • Obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous people for all decisions that affect indigenous people and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous people, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous people.
  • Providing all people of the United States with (i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.

And it should all be accomplished “through a 10-year national mobilization.”

Reading these highlights, much less the entire congressional resolution, indicates the Watermelon is indeed strong in these people. Notwithstanding the staggeringly unrealistic goals, note the code words that saturate the document: “inclusive consultation,” “vulnerable communities,” “worker cooperatives,” “participatory processes,” “prevailing wages,” “high quality union jobs,” “consent of indigenous people,” “traditional territories.”

Like all Watermelon-inspired rhetoric, all of these words are calculated to sound morally unassailable. But behind the high minded compassion, the message is clear: the Green New Deal is designed to redistribute wealth and power, correct “systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices,” and transfer wealth to people who will vote for democratic socialism.

Imagine a nation where “worker cooperatives” manage the redistribution of wealth in order to provide universal health care, affordable housing, and a guaranteed job complete with family and medical leave, paid vacations, and retirement security. All the while, making certain that whatever is done is first cleared with the “indigenous people” and evaluated for its impact on climate change. And, of course, doing all this in one decade, while simultaneously shutting down the entire fossil fuel industry. What could possibly go wrong?

The Insanity of Watermelon Politics

Finding value in Ocasio-Cortez’s Watermelon vision for America is tough, but there are some elements of her Green New Deal that merit discussion—particularly the frequent references to infrastructure investments. But if the federal government is going to be investing big money again in national infrastructure, it had better be on projects that make sense for sound economic reasons.

Obviously, some infrastructure investment should be in climate resiliency, such as upgraded sea walls to protect major cities on the east coast. Other forms of adaptation may simply involve no longer subsidizing flood insurance in resort communities built on sandbars that probably already should have washed away. But inviting social justice warriors and climate alarmists to join forces to define what the federal government is going to build, and how they’re going to build it, is the worst possible way to adapt to what may come.

It isn’t enough to question the economic absurdity of the Green New Deal. A rational response would be to assert that it doesn’t matter how much it costs. For this reason it is necessary as well to reinvigorate the scientific debate over just how serious climate change is likely to be, what the causes are for climate change, and what the cost/benefits are of various strategies.

One thing is certain: The path of the Watermelon people is a road to poverty and tyranny. There are far better ways to achieve a more universal prosperity, while helping vulnerable communities and vulnerable ecosystems, all over the world.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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California’s Nursing Schools Need to Increase Enrollment by 60 Percent to Avoid Shortage

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Los Angeles recently endured a teachers strike, lasting seven days and affecting over 30,000 employees of Los Angeles Unified School District. In the time leading up to the LAUSD teachers strike, 7,000 Los Angeles County nurses narrowly avoided a strike, an event that did not make headlines.

As reported by ABC’s local Los Angeles affiliate, the main grievances of the nurses union were that LA County had violated a law requiring minimum nurse to patient ratios and failed to retain nurses. The inadequate staffing leading to these grievances might be attributed to a shortage of nurses, but apparently that is a controversial topic.

For example, why, if there is a nursing shortage, has the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) issued guidelines designed to limit the annual enrollment in approved schools of nursing? These guidelines stipulate that even within fully accredited nursing schools, prior BRN approval is required to increase or decrease the number of student enrollments, or make changes in enrollment cycles.

Apparently, not much approval is forthcoming. For example, according to the BRN’s own surveys over the five year period from 2014 through 2018, nursing programs in California turned away 62 percent of qualified applicants for lack of openings. The problem is so acute, that public nursing programs in California are actually admitting qualified applicants based on a lottery, instead of based on their academic achievement and other qualitative factors.

But is there a shortage of qualified nurses in California? And if so, will the shortage get worse over the coming decades? According to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, over a million new nurses will be required within the next five years to accommodate rising demand and to make up for retiring nurses. California is at the top of the list for the greatest shortage.

A report published in the American Journal of Medical Quality notes that California will need 193,000 new nurses by 2030. Corroborating this is a 2017 registered nursing study, based on federal labor statistics, that found by 2030 the demand for nurses in California would outpace supply by 11.5 percent.

Using data compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of October 2018 there were 337,738 registered nurses in California. Another  survey conducted by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, found that 55 percent of the nursing workforce is older than 50. Assuming the average retirement age of a nurse is in their early sixties, this means by 2030, if not sooner, California will have to replace more than half of its nursing workforce, over 165,000 positions.

Meanwhile, other factors are likely to increase that number. Job stress, often induced by low nurse patient ratios, prompts nurses to change careers. Put another way, the shortage of nurses causes job conditions that drive nurses out of the profession, which makes the shortage of nurses even greater. And, of course, if mandated nurse to patient ratios are lowered, either through labor negotiations or legislation, overnight the existing shortage will rise.  The other primary factor that’s driving up demand for nurses is increased patient demand.

California’s nursing shortage has been downplayed by critics who claim that compared to the rest of America, California’s population is younger than average. This contention doesn’t appear to conform to available data, however. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2017, the median age in the US is 38 years old, whereas the median age in California was 36 years old. Moreover, as reported by the Los Angeles Times in October 2018, California’s senior population is growing faster than any other age group.

As can be seen on the population pyramid below, which uses 2016 data, in that year, 384,000 Californians turned 65. In 2021, as can be seen from the data, 470,000 Californians will turn 65, and in the year 2026, only seven years from now, 535,000 Californians will turn 65. California’s senior population is increasing, and it is increasing as a proportion of the general population at almost exactly the same rate as it is in the US population.

If, as noted, projected retirements between now and the early 2030s suggest approximately 165,000 nursing positions will open by then, poor retention, increases to the mandated nurse/patient ratio and an aging population all suggest that is the low estimate. Another way of evaluating demand for nurses in California uses the ratio of professionally active nurses per 100,000 population. Using Kaiser Family Foundation data, there are 3.4 million active nurses in the U.S., which equates to 1,030 nurses per 100,000 of population. In California, a state with 40 million residents, there are 338,000 nurses – a ratio of only 844 nurses per 100,000 population. To bring California up to the national average would require another 74,000 nurses.

One of the demands of California’s nurses in the recently averted strike in Los Angeles was to improve the nurse to patient ratio. This demand appears credible in view of California’s lower than average number of practicing nurses per 100,000 residents. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that between now and 2030, to replace retirees, compensate for attrition, cope with an aging population and bring the nurse/patient ratio up to national standards, at least 220,000 new positions will have to be filled. How many nurses currently graduate each year in California?

On this, the data is readily available. An authoritative study, “Forcasting the RN Workforce in California,” using information from the Annual Schools Report produced by the California Board of Registered Nursing, predicted 10,627 graduates for the academic year ended June 2018. For the 2018-19 academic year, it predicted 11,200; for 2019-20, 11,489. Clearly this is not enough.

Based on current graduation numbers, assuming an average of 11,500 per year, the next 12 graduating classes through 2030 will add 138,000 nurses to California’s workforce. That falls 82,000 short of what the industry needs. To meet likely demand, the number of nursing graduates in California need to immediately increase by 60 percent.

These are all conservative estimates. California not only has an aging population in proportion to the overall aging U.S. population, but also a disproportionate share of the nation’s low income welfare recipients and undocumented immigrants – cohorts that likely require more medical care than typical middle class residents. And what if state law requires California’s 10,473 K-12 schools to all have a full time RN on staff, as appears to be a trend based on the settlement agreement in the recent LAUSD strike?

California appears to be facing an increasingly serious shortage of nurses in the coming years. The grievances of California’s overworked nurses, already sufficient to nearly warrant a strike last Fall in Los Angeles, appear to be legitimate indeed.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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Police Cannot Police in Liberal California

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California’s political dysfunction is directly responsible for making the state unaffordable for middle class families. The so-called “housing crisis,” the most visible and harmful manifestation of California’s unaffordability, is precisely the result of California’s policymakers inviting the welfare cases of America and the expatriates of the world to move here, at the same time as they’ve enacted environmental policies that make it extremely time consuming and expensive to build anything.

There is a parallel dysfunction in California, also entirely the creation of the political elites who run this state. That is the near impossibility of efficiently policing the state. Members of law enforcement contend with powerful transnational gangs, often sheltered from arrest by sanctuary laws. They contend with burgeoning populations of the homeless that now dominate some of California’s most cherished public spaces. How many of these homeless would find refuge with families or friends if laws didn’t prevent vagrancy enforcement? How many of them would find entry level jobs to pay a living wage if laws hadn’t made housing prohibitively expensive?

And then there are the common criminals, to be found everywhere, and bound to be numerous in a state with over 40 million residents. Here too, in the fight against ordinary crime, thanks to “progressive” state legislation, law enforcement in California fights an uphill battle.

The turning point in California’s progressive assault on law enforcement was the passage of Prop. 47 in November 2014. Supported by nearly all Democratic politicians, a smattering of naive libertarians, the ACLU, and several unions including AFSCME and SEIU California, this ballot initiative was misleadingly marketed as the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act.”

Ostensibly to empty the jails of expensively housed “nonviolent” offenders, unintended consequences were felt immediately. Over four years later, the negative consequences of Prop. 47 continue to compound and intensify.

Here are some of the impacts of Prop. 47:

  • Freed tens of thousands of felons from state prisons and county jails back into communities.
  • Reduced to misdemeanors the personal use of (or being under the influence of) most illegal drugs including heroin and methamphetamine.
  • Reduced to misdemeanors any crime where the value of property stolen doesn’t exceed $950. This includes shoplifting, grand theft, receiving stolen property, forgery, and fraud.

Downgrading drug and property crimes has led to what police derisively refer to as “catch and release,” because suspects are just issued citations with a court date, and let go. Many of them don’t show up for their court dates. Habitual offenders know they’re no longer vulnerable to the “three strikes” statutes. They know that even repeated misdemeanor convictions are unlikely to land them in jail for very long. Even the liberal Washington Post reported on the impact of Prop. 47 as “A ‘virtual get-out-of-jail-free card’”

California’s generous welfare and inviting sanctuary policies, combined with unaffordable housing and the most forgiving winter climate in America, mean a large homeless population is inevitable. Prop. 47, which releases inmates from prison at the same time as it makes it harder to incarcerate new offenders, inevitably adds rather than decreases the total population of California’s homeless. Recent estimates put the number of homeless in California at nearly 140,000, with the largest number, approximately 55,000, in Los Angeles County.

The concentration of homeless in Los Angeles isn’t just because it is the largest city in the state. It’s also because in 2006, the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Jones v. City of Los Angeles ruled that law enforcement and city officials can no longer enforce the ban on sleeping on sidewalks anywhere within the Los Angeles city limits until a sufficient amount of “permanent supportive housing” could be built. And as the city bureaucrats fitfully apply grant funds that apparently can’t construct a basic apartment for much less than a half-million each, police are forced to permit massive and permanent homeless encampments which have become havens for criminals of all kinds.

Policing has become tough everywhere in California. As if the fallout from Prop. 47 and rulings such as Jones v. City of Los Angeles aren’t bad enough, now there’s something new, the “The Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015.” This law, supposedly intended to address dubious claims, especially in California, of discriminatory policing, has made it even more difficult for police to do their jobs. Each year, police departments are now required to submit to the State of California an annual report of their “stop data.” The following table, drawn from this report, shows the “Officer Reporting Requirements.”

When it comes to the practical effect of AB 953, it’s hard to find anything good. Every single time they interact with a citizen, for whatever reason, officers have to input 17 variables into a form that is either paper (four pages, requiring reentry into a database), or onto a tablet, cell phone, or in-car laptop. The mere fact that this is a time consuming process will prevent a police officer from making as many stops during a normal shift, and may deter them from even making some stops. Worse, the data collected is designed to either prove or disprove that officers in any given police department are stopping a disproportionate number of citizens who are members of “protected status groups.” Needless to say, officers, and their departments, may become reluctant to exceed their “quotas,” and as a result have an incentive to not make stops when stops are warranted.

This sort of meddling in the day to day actions of police officers does not serve the community, and it is demoralizing to officers. And it is important to emphasize that this focus on trying to prove that a disproportionate number of, say, African American, or Latinos, or other “people of color” are being “profiled,” has little or nothing to do with appropriate police oversight. There are over a million sworn police officers in the United States. It is statistically impossible for a population of individuals that large to not have a few bad apples. For this reason, and others, police tactics and police oversight should constantly evolve, and they do. That’s a good thing. But laws like AB 953, which pressure police into bringing their “stops” into conformance with ethnic and religious quotas, ignore the disproportionate reality of crime statistics, and further tie the hands of law enforcement.

California is ran by a progressive elite who have decided to sacrifice the aspirations of ordinary residents on the altar of utopian dreams. It’s not working, but they’re doubling down, and at this point there’s no end in sight.

The laws they’ve passed in virtually all areas make it harder for individual Californians to succeed. Astronomical costs for housing and tuition. Utility and gasoline prices that are the highest in the nation, and unaffordable to many. Regressive, often embedded taxes that make everything more expensive, from food to telephone bills. Then on top of that, laws that make California a magnet for welfare recipients and undocumented immigrants; laws that create an exploding population of homeless; laws that release thousands of criminals onto the streets. All of this makes crime more likely.

The last thing California’s lawmakers should be doing is making it harder for police to police. But that’s exactly what they’ve done. Things may have to get much worse, before they get better.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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When is Hating Hate More Hateful Than Hate?

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This week’s scoundrel of the century is Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who faces growing calls to resign ever since the website “Big League Politics” broke the story, where, as they put it, “Northam and a friend were photographed together—one in blackface, one in Klan robes.”

In 1984. As college students. And for this, the “Virginia capitol is thrown into chaos.” God help Virginia if a real crisis ever descends on that city.

This isn’t to defend Ralph Northam. He is, after all, a member of the Democratic wing of the establishment uniparty. Even worse than their Republican counterparts, these Democrats rely on race-baiting, gender pandering, and other divisive, prurient distractions to obfuscate the fact that they actively collaborate with globalist billionaires to destroy America’s traditions, its economy, its culture, its heritage, and its people. The Republican establishment wing of the uniparty, by contrast, just wants to sell America to the Chinese, in the name of “free trade,” and overwhelm America with millions of destitute, unassimilable immigrants, in the name of “free movement of peoples.” A pox on both wings.

Everyone wants Northam to go. But is this really the way to make America Great Again? By adopting the fascistic, zero-tolerance, pandering hypersensitivity and retribution obsessed tactics that define America’s extreme Left? Is anyone actually “healed” by this?

This is also not to disparage the website Big League Politics. As long as the tactic of personal assassination remains a specialty of the Left, the Right needs people who are willing also to play that sordid game. But at the same time, it’s necessary to be clear about what’s happening: The destruction of anyone who isn’t “perfect” by every imaginable standard of political correctness is a nihilistic dead end.

It may be offensive by the standards of any age to wear blackface, or dress up as a member of the KKK, or, for that matter, as the Frito Bandito. But even today, it is possible for people to do this with intentions that either are entirely innocent, or transgressive merely in an irreverent context and not in a malevolent, racist context. And back in 1984, we lived in a very different cultural milieu.

In 1984, you could go to bookstores (the big bookstore chains hadn’t yet emerged), and popular titles included “The Official Polish/Italian Jokebook.” Example: “How do you sink the Italian navy? Answer: Put it in the water.” There weren’t calls to ban these books. Does anyone think Polish people weren’t victimized? That they didn’t suffer historical trauma? Tell that to the old-timers who still remember that 5.8 million Poles died in World War II, nearly 20 percent of that nation’s population. Tell that to the historians who still correctly depict Poland as the perennial slaughterhouse of Central Europe, as for several centuries preceding the war they were repeatedly assailed by invaders from Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary.

We don’t tell jokes like that anymore, but we did back in 1984. Back then, every time there was a disaster in the world, within days, sick jokes on the topic would spread across the nation by word of mouth, even without an internet to spread them. Remember the famine in Ethiopia? “What happened to the Ethiopian who fell into the crocodile infested swamp? Answer: He ate three of them before they pulled him out.” Remember the Challenger disaster? “What did the Challenger astronaut say to his spouse as he left home for the launch pad? Answer: You feed the kids, honey, I’ll feed the fish.”

If you were alive in 1984, you’ll remember jokes like that, because they were common. You may have even laughed at some of them. You may have even, gasp, repeated some yourself.

Nobody tells jokes like that anymore, just like nobody wears blackface, or KKK costumes, or dresses up as Pocahontas. But back in 1984, it wasn’t terribly uncommon. Back in 1984, the first thing you might think if someone told an offensive joke or wore an offensive costume was that they were irreverent. It would only be in the face of other corroborating evidence that you might instead think they were actually racist, or sexist, or just cruel.

Today, those presumptions have been reversed. Sometime between the 1986 Challenger explosion and the terrorist attacks in September 2001, America changed. The oppressive and relentless encroachment of political correctness on free speech paralleled this change, but was a separate phenomenon. It’s worth recognizing this distinction. We changed. Certain things just stopped being funny, and they would have stopped being funny even if the politically correct crowd hadn’t come along to capitalize on that change.

Attacks on public figures based on things they did over thirty years ago are not being pursued to enact overdue justice. They are being done to virtue signal, to score political points or achieve political objectives, to create “teachable moments,” to demonize a segment of the population, to galvanize a political base. But they accomplish very little in terms of Making America Great Again, no matter how you may define “great.” Because by the standards that are being set, primarily by the Left, everyone did something back in 1984 that, today, would render them unfit for any position of public responsibility.

What the Left is doing—and the Right is now emulating—destroying public figures based on something they did decades ago, is part of something bigger. They are attempting to rewrite history at the same time that they intimidate millions of conscientious Americans to feel guilt and shame. America’s brilliant evolution to become the most prosperous, inclusive, creative, tolerant society on earth is overshadowed by epic stories of shame. Pull down the statues. Disrespect the flag. Disparage people “of privilege.” And by all means, destroy the lives of anyone who violated the standards set today, even if their transgressions were committed over 30 years ago.

It feels good to shout with the angry crowd, to be part of the hateful mob, when the target deserves to be attacked. But when does hating hate become more hateful than hate? Those on the right should take this opportunity to proclaim their intolerance of Gov. Northam’s politics on issues that matter, at the same time as they resist the temptation to join the mob in attacking him for something he probably shouldn’t have done, several decades ago. Those on the Left should take this opportunity to forgive, and spread some love around, instead of fomenting hatred of hate every chance they get.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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AOC Shows Why a Libertarian-Progressive Alliance Will Fail

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Implementing a “Green New Deal” probably won’t happen unless Democrats take control of the White House and the U.S. Senate—but that won’t stop proponents from doing everything they can to shape the national conversation around the topic. And the legitimacy of the Green New Deal, its credibility, its urgency, the entire premise on which it stands or falls, is the theory of climate change.

Therefore it’s no surprise that the youthful congressional standard bearer for climate change action, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is trying to prevent corporations from supporting anything remotely skeptical of that theory. Hence the recent letter the freshman House member from New York sent to the CEOs of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, as if these companies weren’t already using their almost unimaginable influence to shape that conversation in a way Ocasio-Cortez would like.

The transgression committed by the tech giants was to participate as sponsors of “LibertyCon 2019,” where, as reported in Mother Jones, “the event featured a group called the CO2 Coalition, which handed out brochures in the exhibit hall that said its goal is to ‘explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.’”

It’s more than a little ironic that these companies, Google and Facebook in particular, should find themselves in Ocasio-Cortez’s crosshairs. These are companies that in all areas—their leadership, their political spending, their employees, and, crucially, how they use their near monopoly power to favor or suppress online content—are overwhelmingly partisan in favor of Democrats like her. The fact that these liberal tech giants aren’t partisan enough for Democratic Socialists is cause for alarm. Consider this excerpt from Ocasio-Cortez’s letter:

“Given the magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis that we are now facing, we find it imperative to ensure that the climate-related views espoused at LibertyCon do not reflect the values of your companies going forward.”

“Urgency.” “Crisis.” “Imperative.” These are powerful, intimidating words. And while it is unlikely the Democratic Socialists in the U.S. Congress could actually do anything to force Google and Facebook to stop sponsoring events like LibertyCon, it’s quite likely that won’t be necessary. Beyond allowing members of the “CO2 Coalition” to pass out flyers that pointed out, accurately, that CO2 is a beneficial gas, not a pollutant, what other transgressions did they commit at LibertyCon?

Back to Ocasio-Cortez’s letter:

“We were deeply disappointed to see that your companies were high-level sponsors of a conference this month in Washington D.C., known as LibertyCon, that included a session denying established science on climate change.”

Reviewing LibertyCon’s agenda, the offending session was probably the one called “Population, Climate, and the Problem with Externality Arguments.” Here’s the program description: “The existence of external costs is a legitimate economic argument for government interference in a market system. But there are serious problems in applying that argument to an issue, such as population or climate change, where there are both positive and negative externalities of uncertain magnitude with the result that both the size and the sign of the net effect are unknown.”

In plain English, it appears that the panelists in this session discussed why the government should not destroy the energy industry before knowing whether or not it would do any good. After all, that challenges the premise: Climate change is a crisis, urgent action is imperative.

“Progressive Libertarian” Is an Oxymoron

This fight Ocasio-Cortez has picked with big tech illuminates the challenge facing the so-called progressive libertarians. The Silicon Valley is an epicenter of progressive politics. That dominant ideology manifests itself everywhere; the electorate, the politicians, the business community, the philanthropic community, the culture. Yet libertarian philosophy is also popular on the Left Coast. From programmers working for the tech giants to the hipsters driving for Uber, libertarian ideas attract widespread grassroots support. But while libertarians and progressives have much in common, they are not compatible ideologies.

On the one hand, many big tech CEOs and their employees consider themselves libertarians on social issues championed by progressive Democrats. These include legalizing drug use, criminal justice reform, gay marriage, and protecting a woman’s “right to choose.” They also largely embrace libertarian positions on issues such as open borders, cyber currency, innovation, disruptive technology, and maybe even on school choice, police accountability, and military spending. There’s a lot of overlap.

On the other hand, when it comes to other major issues, big tech culture veers away from basic libertarian values. By and large, big-tech culture supports affirmative action, with corporate cultures committed to race and gender “equity.” That these policies have put them on a collision course with the reality of profound disparities in group aptitude is something they have yet fully to confront.

Libertarians, by contrast, object to enforced race and gender quotas in hiring, promotions, college admissions, and the like.

Similarly, big-tech culture is almost monolithically committed to policies and products dedicated to fighting “climate change.” Libertarians have diverse opinions on the question of climate change and object to suppression of dissenting points of view.

For these reasons, it is impossible to be a “progressive libertarian.” For the progressives, the indispensable wedge issues that galvanize the masses and inform the policymakers are social justice and climate change. On those core premises, progressives and libertarians are worlds apart. Yet for progressives, on those core premises there can be no compromise. No cost is too high and resistance must be crushed.

Moreover, reduced to absolutes, progressives seek statist utopia, and libertarians seek stateless utopia. That they happen to agree on some issues, but not others, is incidental to that fundamental schism.

Irreconcilable Differences

From the perspective of a compassionate nationalist, or a Christian, or a secular advocate for the preservation of Western Civilization, libertarians and progressives are both wrong on the most critical issue, which is the sovereignty of nations. Libertarians and progressives may indeed disagree on the fundamentals of governance, but if they are true to their principles—cultural Marxism on the part of progressives, open borders and “free trade” on the part of libertarians—they are two sides of the same globalist coin. As a matter of fact, sadly, what may unite progressives and libertarians despite irreconcilable differences is their opposition to nationalism.

From a practical standpoint, and despite their denials, the ultimate outcome of worldwide progressive political triumph would be a one-world socialist government, and the ultimate outcome of a libertarian political victory would be a world run by multinational corporations. The pragmatists among them both would settle for some hybrid of these competing visions.

What may be worth emphasizing in the here and now, however, is the current disagreement between libertarians and progressives as exemplified by Ocasio-Cortez’s letter to the big tech CEOs. The progressives are trying to shut down any discussion on the critical issue of climate change, just as they’re trying to silence anyone who dissents from their revolutionary agenda on questions of race and gender. Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades are blatant in pursuing this effort, to the point where they are willing to chastise big tech for being a few steps behind and a great deal more refined in their common pursuit of the same goal.

The libertarians, to their credit, are not trying to shut anyone up. For that not insignificant reason, and even if for nothing else, they are to be commended. Libertarians must know that while conservatives and nationalists may disagree vehemently with them on some of the most important questions of our time, nobody on the Right—unlike those on the progressive Left—would ever try to silence them.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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The Destruction of Venice Beach Epitomizes California’s Idiocracy

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Venice Beach, California, used to be one of California’s great places. A Bohemian gem, nestled against the sand between big Los Angeles and the vast Pacific Ocean. Rents used to be a little lower in Venice compared to other coastal neighborhoods. The locals mingled with surfers, artists, street performers, and tourists. People from suburbs further inland migrated to Venice’s beaches on sunny weekends year-round. Venice was affordable, inviting, inclusive. That was then.

Today, Venice Beach is off limits to families who used to spend their Saturdays on the sand. It’s too dangerous. On the sand, beached seaweed now mingles with syringes, feces, broken glass, and other trash, and the ocean has become the biggest outdoor toilet in the city. Over a thousand vagrants now consider Venice Beach their permanent home. At the same time as real estate values exploded all along the California coast, the homeless population soared. In Venice, where the median price of a home is $2.1 million, makeshift shelters line the streets and alleys, as the affluent and the indigent fitfully coexist.

What has happened in Venice is representative of what’s happened to California. If progressives take back the White House in 2020, it will be America’s fate.

California’s cost-of-living is driving out all but the very rich and the very poor, a problem that is entirely the result of policies enacted by California’s progressive elite. They reduce to two factors, both considered beyond debate in the one-party state. First, to supposedly prevent catastrophic climate change, along with other environmental concerns, California’s restrictive laws such as the California Environmental Quality Act, the Global Warming Solutions Act, and Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act make it expensive and time consuming to construct new homes. These laws also decrease the availability of entitled land, which further increases costs to developers.

At the same time, California has become a magnet for the welfare cases of America and the expatriates of the world. According to a 2018 report (presenting 2015 data, the most recent available – ref. page 20) issued by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, of the 4.2 million recipients in America of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income, an amazing 43 percent of them live in California, over 1.8 million people. And according to the liberal Public Policy Institute of California, as of 2016, California was also home to 2.6 million undocumented immigrants. Could California’s promise of health coverage for undocumented immigrants, or sanctuary state laws, have anything to do with this?

When you enact policies to restrict supply (to save the planet) and increase demand (invite the world to move in), which is exactly what California has done, housing has become unaffordable. Supply oriented solutions are relatively simple. Stop protecting all open space, everywhere, from development. Invest in public/private partnerships to increase the capacity of energy, water, and transportation infrastructure, instead of rationing water, “going solar,” and “getting people out of their cars.” Reform public employee retirement benefits instead of incessantly raising taxes and fees to feed the pension funds. It’s that simple.

Unfortunately, in California, nothing is simple. In 2006, the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Jones v. City of Los Angeles ruled that law enforcement and city officials can no longer enforce the ban on sleeping on sidewalks anywhere within the Los Angeles city limits until a sufficient amount of permanent supportive housing could be built. And how to create permanent homes for the more than 50,000 homeless people in Los Angeles? In 2016’s $1.2 billion HHH ballot measure was approved by 76 percent of Los Angeles voters, to “help finance the construction of 10,000 units of affordable permanent-supportive housing over the next ten years.”

The passage of Measure HHH raises many questions. Most immediately, why hasn’t much of the money been spent? As reported by NPR’s Los Angeles affiliate in June 2018, “so far only three of 29 planned projects have funds to begin construction.” Worse, the costs have skyrocketed. According to the NPR report:

“When voters passed the bond measure, they were told new permanent supportive housing would cost about $140,000 a unit. But average per unit costs are now more than triple that. The PATH Ventures project in East Hollywood has an estimated per-unit cost of $440,000. Even with real estate prices soaring, that’s as much as a single-family home in many places in Southern California. Other HHH projects cost more than $500,000 a unit.”

Spending a half-million dollars to build one basic rental unit to get one homeless family out of the rain sounds like something a bloated new bureaucracy might manage, and even in high-priced California, there’s no other way to explain this level of waste. What about the private sector?

A new privately funded development company, “Flyaway Homes,” has debuted in Los Angeles with the mission of rapidly providing housing for the homeless. Using retrofitted shipping containers, the companies modular approach to apartment building construction is purported to streamline the approval process and cut costs. But the two projects they’ve gotten underway are not cheap.

Their “82 Street Development” will cost $4.5 million to house 32 “clients” in a 16 two-bedroom, 480 square foot apartments. That’s $281,250 per two-bedroom apartment. Their “820 W Colden Ave” property will cost $3.6 million to house 32 clients in 8 four-bedroom apartments. That’s $450,000 per four-bedroom apartment.

Is this the best that anyone in Los Angeles can come up with? Because if it is, it’s not going to work. Let’s accept the far fetched notion that $5.0 billion could be quickly found to construct housing for the 50,000 homeless people in Los Angeles, and this could be finished within a few years. Does anyone think the growth in subsidized housing would keep pace with the growth in the population of homeless? Why, when California is a sanctuary state, a magnet for welfare cases, and has the most forgiving winter weather in America? One may take issue with the whole concept of taxpayer subsidized housing, but that is almost beside the point. There are more urgent strategic questions that aren’t being honestly confronted in California. For example:

Ten Tough Questions for California’s Progressive Elite

1 – Why is the national average construction cost per new apartment unit somewhere between $65,000 and $85,000, yet it costs five to ten times that much in Los Angeles to build one apartment unit for a homeless family?

2 – Is it wise to create subsidized housing that is of better quality than the apartments that many hard working Californians occupy and pay for without benefit of subsidies?

3 – Why hasn’t there been any attempt to get useful statistics on the homeless population, in order to apply different approaches depending on who they are? For example, how many of them are mentally ill, or criminals, or substance abusers, or sexual predators, or undocumented immigrants, or willfully homeless with other housing options, or hard working sane people who have encountered hard times (yes, “intersectionality” would exist among these categories).

4 – Why not immediately allocate open land to create campsites where the homeless can move their tents and belongings, to get them off the streets?

5 – Why not then study the refugee camps set up around the world, an activity where U.S. NGOs have in-depth expertise, and replicate these in areas of LA County where there is cheaper, available land? These semi-permanent structures are far less expensive than solutions currently offered.

6 – Does inviting millions of people from impoverished, politically unstable nations help those nations, when for every person who makes their way to California, thousands remain? And if not, why not directly help the people who are staying in those nations, which would be far more cost-effective?

7 – Wouldn’t it make more sense to moderate the inflow of unskilled workers across the border into California, in order to eliminate the oversupply of cheap labor which depresses wages? Wouldn’t that be better than mandating a higher minimum wage?

8 – Doesn’t offering welfare and subsidized housing to people capable of work make it unlikely they will ever seek work? While striking a balance is a compassionate necessity, has that balance perhaps been violated, since California is home to 43 percent of America’s welfare recipients?

9 – When will California loosen restrictions on land development and building code mandates, striking a balance between compassion for the earth and compassion for human beings, in order to bring the cost of new housing construction back down towards national averages?

10 – When will the elected officials in a major California city stand up to the litigants who use the 9th Circuit to impose rulings such as Jones v. City of Los Angeles, and take a case to the U.S. Supreme Court? While many homeless people have genuine stories of hardship and bad luck, must we be forced to cede to all of them our most desirable public spaces?

What has happened in Los Angeles is a perfect storm of progressive pressure groups and rent-seeking bureaucrats and profiteers, working together to amass money, power, and prestige. If they were efficiently solving the problem, that would be just fine. But they aren’t, and until they accept tough answers to tough questions, they never will.

As Venice Beach continues to reel from the impact of the homeless invasion, Los Angeles city officials are fast-tracking the permit process to build a homeless shelter on 3.2 acres of vacant city-owned property less than 500 feet from the beach. This property, nestled in the heart of Venice’s upscale residential and retail neighborhoods, if commercially developed, would be worth well over $200 million. Shelter capacity? About 100 people.

In a less utopian, less corrupt society, that single property could be sold, and the proceeds could be used to set up and monitor a tent city housing thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. But not in California. Under the warm sun, against the indifferent ocean, the idiocracy endures.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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