ANALYSIS / OPINION:

Forget what you hear most pundits say about last week’s recall election that failed to topple California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Some Democrats believe Newsom has run on an anti-Trump platform that will bring success to the party – or cause it less damage – in the next two elections.

They are wrong. The real story is the slow but accelerating exodus from California to states with lower or no state taxes. This mass outing likely reduced the number of people who could have voted to oust Newsom. Then there is the increased cost of just about everything, including gasoline. At nearly $ 6 a gallon at some stations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, California has the highest average gasoline price in the country.

There are also other forces at work.

Writing last week in the Wall Street Journal, James Freeman said, “Californians suffer from one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, and the state has the largest homeless homeless population in the country. . Those who think Sacramento cannot become more hostile to job creation should remember that the Tax Foundation ranks the Golden State as the second worst fiscal climate in the country… Newsom (s) victory gives California the chance to enter new The Crown of Jersey.

A Hoover Institution / Stanford University report found that people are leaving the state at an even faster rate than in recent years. More importantly, he said, California lost 74 headquarters in the first six months of this year alone. This compares to 62 companies that had moved in the year 2020.

Where are they going? Mainly in Texas, where there is no state tax, gas prices are much lower, and you can buy a house (depending on where you choose to live) at prices much lower than many. areas of California.

If you think it can be blamed on the pandemic, researchers used data starting in 2018 to show the three-year exodus. The San Francisco Bay Area accounted for five of the ten counties in the states with the highest number of business departures. A total of 47 companies have left.

According to Hoover, during the boom years of 2018 and 2019, “765 commercial facilities left California. This exodus does not count Charles Schwab’s announcement to leave San Francisco this year. It also does not include the 13,000 companies estimated to have left between 2009 and 2016. ”

The economic and other benefits for Texas and the relocated company employees are enormous. According to Hoover, 114 of 265 known California companies have moved their headquarters in the past three years.

The predictable reasons are high taxes, high cost of living, energy prices and regulations. California has become a one-party state because too many people still trust the government to do things the government was not supposed to do. Gone are the calls for autonomy, replaced by over-reliance on government as a nanny state.

It is hoped that those leaving California are not liberals who bring their policy and approval of failed programs to Texas and other states with more favorable business environments.

Sadly, no one can budge to escape the long arm of Washington, which under the Biden administration appears to want to raise taxes to new levels and pass us into oblivion. California is a prime example of where damage to businesses and individuals leads.

It’s astonishing that California has gone from the fiscally conservative policies of Ronald Reagan to the Democratic disaster of Gavin Newsom in just 50 years.

• Readers can email Cal Thomas at [email protected] Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers, and the Future of the United States” (HarperCollins / Zondervan).