California Concentration Camp

Oct. 12, 2012

By John Seiler

The Manhattan Institute recently released a study, using U.S. Census numbers, showing that Californians continue fleeing the state by the hundreds of thousands to avoid record high taxes and strangulating regulations. Walter Williams has a solution:

“Given the widespread contempt for personal liberty and constitutional values, there might be a way for California politicians to solve their fiscal mess. They can simply stop wealthy people from leaving the state or, alternatively, like some Third World nations, set limits on the amount of assets a resident can take out of the state. This would surely be within their jurisdiction and would not raise any constitutional issues, because it would serve a compelling state purpose. In other words, if California were to set up border controls to stop people, as East Germans did at Checkpoint Charlie, before they cross the state line, such action would be protected by the 10th Amendment.

“The fact that many Californians have managed to get their assets out of the state complicates the issue. Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” This is known as the commerce clause. There’s no question that people who pull up stakes and leave California affect interstate commerce; California has less tax revenue, and recipient states have more. What California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris might do is sue Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Oregon in the federal courts for enticing, through lower taxes and less onerous regulations, wealthy California taxpayers.

“Were California to take such measures and have a modicum of success, one wonders how many Americans would be offended by such an encroachment on personal liberty. After all, how would forcing an American to remain in a state differ in principle from forcing him to purchase health insurance?”

I expect such a plan — “Stay in California — Or Else” — to be part of Gov. Jerry Brown’s State of the State Address next January. It’s the only way to save the state. For one thing, building a California Wall around the state, much like the old Berlin Wall, would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unemployment would drop and the state’s economy would be booming again.