California is the American Greece?

URKEL from Austria

Lazy shiftless slackers like Schwartzenegger are one of the reasons Texas is overtaking California in economic productivity. 1.5 million people have left CA since Obama was elected while 848,000 have entered Texas during the same period. Schwartzenegger was disgracing himself giving a commencement speech making inaccurate jokes about Arizona while his state rotted on the vine. Here's "Hit and Run":

Lest anti-Greek bias rear its ugly head, note that you can get a subpar workforce right here in these United States. In Chief Executive magazine's annual survey of "Best and Worst States for Business," California workers scored a gentleman's B-, helping the Golden State come in 51st place out of the 50 states. (District of Columbia is included in the rankings.)

Chief Executive's survey of business owners tabulates the tax and regulatory environment, the quality of the workforce and the state's living environment. There are actually quite a few states with less appealing workers than California's, but the state's high taxes and heavy regulation give it the only F on the list. The Orange County Register explains:

It doesn't take a national survey to reveal California's failing business climate. Seven California metro areas were among the 15 national leaders in commercial bankruptcy filings in 2009, according to Equifax Inc. Not coincidentally, California had twice as many personal bankruptcies as any other state in 2009 when it ranked 11th in bankruptcies per capita.

It also doesn't take a CEO to notice the differences between California and top-rated Texas. Texas, with nearly as many residents and the world's 12th largest economy, "is where 70 percent of all new U.S. jobs have been created since 2008," the magazine reported. Also unsurprisingly, Texas gained more than 848,000 net residents based on migration in and out of the state in the past decade, while California lost 1.5 million, according to the Census.

Must be all those ganja shops in LA dispensing dope with a doc's prescription or maybe the porn industry has sapped the vital juices out of much of the CA work force!?!

The insidious thing about an unfriendly business climate is that it takes a long time for the effects to show up in the government's inability to pay its bills. So long, in fact, that when the sovereign bankruptcy comes, it's easy to draw the conclusion that tax rates are too low. Both California and Greece are going through a variety of this type of denial right now. But with the governor of California and the prime minister of Greece both promising to turn over a new leaf, this is a good time to remember that you can't take people's money if you prevent them from making money in the first place.

California's been having a party blow out since Clinton came to LA to help CALPERS erect a pension system that beggars the future of the Golden Staters from here to eternity [all the while harvesting those BJ's he lied under oath about!]. California was what Philip K Dick saw in his crystal-meth ball and wrote about before he croaked. Sin City and Screw the Farmers and their scary work ethic!

The Left Coast Sucks.