DeVore Explains Why He Left for Tex

by John Seiler | March 15, 2012 10:42 am

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One of California’s best Assemblyman of recent years was Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine. He especially was good on the state budget.

Term-limited, he left office, then left California. As with so many others who splilt, the Golden State became the Pyrite State: too expensive, too high-tax, too regulated, too absurd.

He just wrote about his experiences in National Review[2]. Some excerpts:

“I moved to Texas late last year, joining the 2 million Californians who have packed up for greener pastures in the past ten years, with Texas the most common destination.

“In his State-of-the-State address[3] this January, California governor Jerry Brown said, ‘Contrary to those declinists who sing of Texas and bemoan our woes, California is still the land of dreams. . . . It’s the place where Apple . . . and countless other creative companies all began.’

“Fast forward to March: Apple announced it was building a $304 million campus in Austin[4] with plans to hire 3,600 people to staff it, more than doubling its Texas workforce. 

“California may be dreaming, but Texas is working.”

This is typical of Silicon Valley. If you’re a hotshot, pimply, on-your-way-to-billionaire twentysomething who looks 14, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg[5], then Californy is the place you want to be, so you load up the Prius and move to Silicon Valley. That’s where all the other gearheads congregate. High taxes? Who cares. Let your accountant figure out how to avoid them.

But you put your server farms, your manufacturing, and as much of everything else elsewhere — in Texas, North Carolina, or China.

Chuck:

“California’s elected officials are particularly adept at dreaming up ways to spend other people’s money. While the state struggles with interminable deficits caused by years of reckless spending, the argument in Sacramento isn’t over how to reduce government; rather, it’s over how much to raise taxes and on whom….

“Meanwhile, lawmakers in Texas are grappling with a fiscal question of an entirely different sort: whether or not to spend some of the $6 billion set aside in the state’s rainy-day fund.”

Rainy day fund? Declinists!

Union Power

Chuck:

“California’s government-employee unions routinely spend tens of millions of dollars at election time to maintain their hold on power. In Texas, the government unions are weak and don’t have collective bargaining, leaving trial attorneys as the main source of funding for Lone Star Democrats.”

Yeah, but, aside from Silicion Valley billionaires, government workers are the only ones who can afford to live in California.

Chuck:

“California’s habit of raising taxes to fund a burgeoning regulatory state isn’t without impact on its economy. Californians fork over about 10.6 percent of their income to state and local governments, above the U.S. average of 9.8 percent. Texans pay 7.9 percent. This affects the bottom line of both consumers and businesses.”

Let’s add it up: Texans pay 7.9 percent to state and local government. Californians pay 10.6 percent. That’s 2.7 percentage points more. Now, 2.7/7.9*100 = 34.

So, Californians are paying 34 percent more than Texans for state and local government.

True, but the weather in California is at least 100 percent better than in Texas. So, it comes down to this: if your job is destroyed by California’s high taxes — not to mention the tens of thousands of absurd regulations — you can a) stay here and go on California’s generous welfare dole, spending your copious leisure hours surfing; or b) move to Texas and get a job.

Chuck:

“While California seeks more ways to tax success, it excels at subsidizing poverty. The percentage of households receiving public assistance in California was 3.7 percent in 2009, double Texas’s rate of 1.8 percent. Almost one-third of all Americans on welfare reside in California.”

There are positives to living in California beside the weather. If you’re a government worker, it’s paradise. And the state Legislature is made up of people just like you.

Chuck:

“only 18 percent of the Democrats who control both houses of California’s full-time legislature worked in business or medicine before being elected. The remainder drew paychecks from government, worked as community organizers, or were attorneys.

“In Texas, with its part-time legislature, 75 percent of the Republicans who control both houses earn a living in business, farming, or medicine, with 19 percent being attorneys in private practice. Texas Democrats are more than twice as likely as their California counterparts to claim private-sector experience outside the field of law.”

California’s motto should be changed to: Of the government, by the government, for the government.

March 15, 2012

 

 

 

 

Source URL: https://calwatchdog.com/2012/03/15/chuck-de-vore-explains-why-he-left-for-tex/

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