“It used to be I’d go places and people would say, ‘Where are you from?’ I’d say ‘California’ and they’d be, ‘Ah gee, aren’t you lucky.’ Now it’s ridicule.”
Mervin Field started polling Californians since shortly after World War II. In fact, there may not have been anyone who understood Californians better than Field, whose Field Poll focused only on one state for more than half a century. He arrived from New Jersey during the post-war boom, when the state’s population swelled to 10.6 million in the 1950 census. He was there during the can-do governorship of Pat Brown, when most of the state’s infrastructure was built.
And he was there from then on, through Ronald Reagan, through Proposition 13 and all the boom-and-bust times until he died in 2015 at the age of 93. There were 38.9 million people in the Golden State then, and non-Hispanic whites had gone from majority to plurality.
As usual, California led the way in looking like the rest of America will look in the not-so-distant future.
And what it looks like is … ungovernable.
Whether you want to blame it on too much spending, on too little taxation because of Proposition 13 in 1978 or on too many illegal immigrants, the fact is California will never have the money to pay for the government Californians want.
So they will hit 40 million people soon and eventually 50 million. The hillsides will be covered with houses, and people will be living farther and farther out into the desert and eventually everything will fall apart.
Growth has slowed, but not enough to make a difference.
Too many people, not enough water.
Too many families, not enough homes.
Too many students, not enough teachers.
Too many criminals, not enough police.
Yes, the Golden State eventually will lead the way either into anarchy or into some sort of fascist state. Those who have the money will either leave or barricade themselves into walled enclaves, and everyone else will fight over limited resources and eventually try and storm those enclaves.
Anyone who thinks the future on the present course is bright is fooling himself. By the 1950s and into the 1960s, America had built maybe the most egalitarian free society in history. The middle class was thriving and so were the wealthy.
But the super-rich never stand still very long. Enough is never enough for them. If they’ve got $1 million, they want $10 million. If they’ve got $1 billion, they want $2 billion. They’re the only ones who never seem to understand that we really are all in this together.
So bad things will ultimately happen, both here and in the rest of the country. Not because we couldn’t have stopped them, but because too many people had too short-sighted a view and the folks cashing in truly did think it would last forever.
But damn, it used to be such a beautiful state.
Just like this used to be one helluva good country.
Just like the Eagles sang in their ecology song, “The Last Resort:”
“… call someplace paradise, kiss it good bye.”