All That Glitters is not Gold

The woes of New York, Michigan and California are familiar to us now. New York has regulated and taxed itself into oblivion, Michigan's workers have priced themselves out of the global market, and California's progressive wizards have turned its gold into lead.

Only California liberalism could produce a situation where there is a surplus of empty houses while people live in tent cities. But there's trouble in the sun belt as well. Nicole Gelinas writes in the City Journal:

But during the boom times, elected officials in Arizona, Florida, and Nevada took a page out of the old states’ playbook, driving up spending at an unsustainable pace. Now that the growth of the low-tax states has hit a wall, shattering revenues, they face a tough choice: they can raise taxes to fund permanently higher costs, or they can aggressively cut spending.

This is happening in other sunbelt states as well. They are not in as deep as Michigan and California, so these states still control their own destiny, but the author is not optimistic.

But the low-tax, low-services culture is up against a potent force: the inexorable mathematics of budgets that take on a life of their own once they’ve passed the point of no return. If the way that Arizona, Florida, and Nevada are confronting the current crisis is any guide, these states will continue to grow—but they will also grow a little bit more like us.

Can we learn from the failed liberal experiments of Michigan, California and New York? Or are we doomed to replicate them in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada?

Merctus.org - Freedom Study
CJ - Malanga
CJ - Gelinas