Except for one bill sponsored by the Assembly Committee on Budget, every bill was Democrat-sponsored. The list is meant to sound “the alarm when a bill will hurt employers and the economy.”

The bills run the gamut from Assembly Bill 1761 –  which, inspired by #MeToo revelations, would require hotels to decline service to patrons who harass employees and issue panic buttons to employees working alone in guestrooms – and ACA22, which would add a 10 percent tax on net earnings of more than $1 million, with the revenue being funneled toward programs such as the earned income tax credit and health care.

While CalChamber is traditionally one of the biggest spenders when it comes to lobbying in Sacramento, spending $2.8 million lobbying last year alone, it figures to face an uphill battle. Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Committee passed Senate Bill 1284 (mandates publishing pay data for certain companies) and SB1300 (makes certain litigation easier) Friday, while the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee will considered AB2351 (increases personal income tax by 1 percent) Monday.

However, CalChamber will find more success with longshot bills, such as AB1745, which would ban sales of combustion engine vehicles in 2040. Similarly, AB1745, which would create a single-payer government health care system, has been in legislative purgatory since last year and is likely dead.

For a full list of “job killer bills,” see CalChamber’s website.

New data has brought a new urgency to the souring fortunes of California’s middle class.

“Not only are Californians leaving the state in large numbers, but the people heading for the exits are disproportionately middle class working families — the demographic backbone of American society,” the American Interest recently noted.

Looking at labor force categories provides more evidence that California is losing working young professional families,” argued Hoover Institution research fellow Carson Bruno; “while there is a narrative that the rich are fleeing California, the real flight is among the middle-class.”

“Knowing that net out-migrants are more likely to be middle-class working young professional families provides some hints as to why people are leaving California for greener pastures. For one, California is an extraordinarily high cost-of-living state. Whether it is the state’s housing affordability crisis — California’s median home value per square foot is, on average, 2.1 times higher than Arizona, Texas, Nevada, Oregon and Washington’s — California’s very expensive energy costs — the state’s residential electric price is about 1.5 times higher than the competing states — or the Golden State’s oppressive tax burden — California ranks 6th, nationally, in state-local tax burdens — those living in California are hit with a variety of higher bills, which cuts into their bottom line.”

Real estate indicators

“In 2006, 38 percent of middle-class households in California used more than 30 percent of their income to cover rent. Today, that figure is over 53 percent,” according to Christopher Thornberg, director of the UC Riverside School of Business Administration Center for Economics Forecasting and Development. “The national figure, as a point of comparison, is 31 percent. It is even worse for those who have borrowed to buy a home — over two-thirds of middle-class households with a mortgage are cost-burdened in California — compared to 40 percent in the nation overall.”

Recent studies illustrated a continuing plunge in homeowning among traditional buyers in-state. “California’s middle class is being hammered,” wrote Joel Kotkin at the Orange County Register. “The state now ranks third from the bottom, ahead of only New York and the District of Columbia, for the lowest homeownership rate, some 54 percent, a number that since 2009 has declined 5 percent more than the national average.”

Low on houses

Some analysts looking to explain the trend have pointed to a so-called housing shortage statewide. “With supply falling far below demand, California needs to build at least 1 million more homes for low- and middle-income Californians in the next 10 years,” CAFWD suggested, adding that, although Gov. Jerry Brown “did not mention housing in the State of the State address,” he has “not explicitly ruled out addressing the issue in the next three years.”

Giving ammunition to the housing shortage thesis, meanwhile, was “a new report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office that found that poorer neighborhoods that have added more market-rate housing in the Bay Area since 2000 have been less likely to experience displacement,” the Washington Post noted. But experts have differed significantly on how to read the tea leaves of the data, and analysts disagree on whether increasing density — or what kind of density — is the right answer.

A cloudy picture

The Golden State has been haunted in recent times by sharply mixed economic indicators. “While California has added 2.1 million jobs since 2010, employment in six industries is still below 2007 levels, before the Great Recession, according to the center’s analysis. Those sectors — including construction, finance and manufacturing — generally pay more than the service-type jobs that we’re adding in droves,” the Sacramento Bee noted late last year.

Economic growth concentrated in Silicon Valley has also not done much to relieve the income or jobs picture for middle-classers. “In a recent survey of states where ‘the middle class is dying,’ based on earning trajectories for middle-income cohorts, Business Insider ranked California first, with shrinking middle-class earnings and the third-highest proportion of wealth concentrated in the top 20 percent of residents,” Kotkin observed.

“During an Asian tour last month, Obama invited leaders from the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the Sunnylands resort in Rancho Mirage,” as The Hill reported, noting that National Security Council spokesman Myles Caggins would only characterize the event’s objective as advancing “important conversations about the Asia-Pacific region.”

“The president is pleased the leaders have accepted his invitation to gather at Sunnylands, in early 2016,” Caggins said.

A favorite destination

Observers have speculated for years that the Obamas may opt for a post-presidency move to the Coachella Valley. In two years, The Desert Sun noted, he has visited the desert five times. “Sunnylands is a sprawling 200-acre estate in‎ Rancho Mirage, just outside Palm Springs. The mid-century mansion situated on the property was built by the Annenberg family and is now used by presidents and other public officials as a desert retreat,” as CNN explained.

But the Palm Springs destination carried some geopolitical significance as well. “The choice of Sunnylands is symbolic as the Rancho Mirage retreat there was the venue of an informal meeting between Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 that sought to chart a new way forward in U.S.-China relations but did little to ease tensions,” according to Reuters. “Four ASEAN members — Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam — are also part of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which is the key economic plank of Obama’s economic and security pivot to Asia in response to China’s growing power.”

International economic politics

The president’s intended pivot has drawn substantial criticism as events in the Mideast siphoned military and strategic resources away from the Pacific. In a particularly divisive controversy, some Republicans and Democrats assailed the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a secretive, pro-corporate deal brokered more as a bulwark against Chinese political interests than as a guarantor of American economic ones. “Vital Republican backing for the deal is waning,” the Wall Street Journal observed. “The party is divided on trade, and establishment Republicans are having a harder time defending the administration’s Pacific deal against outspoken criticism from a number of Republican presidential candidates, including front-runner Donald Trump.” In recent months, even Republican-aligned industry figures have begun to sour on the deal; “business groups including the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable can’t formally begin the job of building congressional support until they iron out deep differences among their own ranks,” the Journal added.

As a result, White House watchers have anticipated a summit aimed at marshaling the kind of international support that Obama could use to try forcing lawmakers’ hands. “Obama’s push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership […] and China’s military aggression in the South China Sea are expected to be among the main topics at the summit,” according to the Washington Post. Several ASEAN countries, the Post noted, “have clashed with China over the South China Sea, a key international shipping lane, where Beijing has constructed artificial islands that U.S. officials fear could be used as military installations. Obama warned Xi about China’s intentions during a U.S.-China summit at the White House in October, and the Pentagon dispatched a U.S. warship within 12 nautical miles of the artificial islands in a challenge to Beijing’s claim on the waters.” The votes of some wavering Republican legislators could be tilted in the TPP’s favor if southeast Asian allies rally around the president.

In the meantime, speculation continued to swirl around the exact scheduling of the event. “Japan’s Kyodo news agency on Monday quoted an ASEAN official source as saying the summit was expected to be held February 15-16,” Reuters reported. “Diplomats from two ASEAN countries said they understood this to be the timing, but it had yet to be confirmed.”

On the work front, the year finished out with weaker, but not alarming, numbers. “California employers added just 5,500 jobs in November, according to federal data — a significant slowdown from more robust monthly gains earlier in the year,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “But the state unemployment rate continued its five-year-long decline, dropping to 5.7 percent in November, the lowest in eight years.” By way of comparison, the nationwide unemployment rate has been hovering around 5 percent.

For a broader view of the economy, analysts looked to other factors. A string of reports reinforced the significance of Silicon Valley to the state’s health, although “red tape, high taxes and a burdensome cost of living” continued to dog Californians statewide, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “In one report, prepared by Beacon Economics for nonprofit group Next 10, a comprehensive look at California’s business climate determined that the Golden State is considerably more hospitable to business than suggested by conventional wisdom that sometimes elevates less costly states such as Texas,” the paper noted. “Another study, the Milken Institute’s annual Best-Peforming Cities Index, found that the San Jose metro area, which includes most of Santa Clara County, is the top performer for 2015.”

Two Californias

The analyses helped paint the picture of a state increasingly divided between a relatively prosperous coast and a more struggling interior. “By about 2 to 1, Californians believe the state is split between haves and have-nots, with slightly more people putting themselves in the latter category,” according to a survey reported by the Times and conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California. “Just fewer than half of Californians believe that the state will experience good economic times in the next year, but 41 percent say the economy will suffer tough times.”

Even cities just a few hours’ drive from Silicon Valley have limped toward recovery in the wake of the Great Recession. “Stockton, Fresno and Modesto were among the country’s 10 weakest performing metro regions in 2009, according to a Brookings Institution study, and in parts of the Inland Empire, 1 out of 75 homes was in some state of foreclosure — the fourth-highest count in the nation,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “While the Bay Area was by no means spared from the recession, the impacts weren’t as stark. All counties in the region recorded lower employment losses than Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. A third of the counties in the Bay Area fared better than San Diego and Orange counties.”

Doubling down

Critics have warned that undue reliance on the seaboard, and on Silicon Valley in particular, would have risky distorting effects on policymakers’ views and deeds. Setting aside Silicon Valley and the Bay Area, for instance, “the Golden State’s employment growth between 2009 and 2014 and real gross domestic product per capita between 2009 and 2013 each drop about 2 percentage points,” as the Hoover Institution’s Carson Bruno observed. “This is a 55 percent reduction in economic growth and a 25 percent cut in employment growth for California without this one region.”

Thanks to the region’s dominance, the Golden State’s budgeting has become increasingly captive to its tax base. “California’s budget is currently in a strong position because of a surge in tax collections, specifically personal income tax collections,” Bruno added. “Without the Silicon Valley-Bay Area, average assessed taxes per capita would have dropped $249 per year since the Great Recession ended or the equivalent of approximately $7.9 billion per year. That is the difference between budget surpluses and budget deficits.”

California’s coastal metropolises have proven especially exposed to the ups and downs of international markets — especially China, where a weakening economy has broken the state’s run of record-setting exports. “California shipments to China in the August-to-October period fell by 11.4 percent, from $4.19 billion last year to $3.71 billion in 2015,” the Sacramento Bee noted. “Shipments declined across the board, from computer equipment to agricultural products.”

“About 33,000 immigrants moved to California from China last year, roughly triple the number who came in 2005,” the Sacramento Bee reported, citing data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Public Policy Institute of California. “The number of immigrants coming to California from Mexico fell from almost 100,000 in 2005 to just over 30,000 in 2014, a roughly 70 percent decline.”

Long-term shifts in the west coast economy appeared to have influenced the shift, tilting away from so-called “jobs Americans won’t do” to high-tech opportunities that require college or graduate education. “Arrivals from Asia have disproportionately settled in and around Silicon Valley,” the Bee noted, adding that “India, which sent about 29,500 immigrants to California last year, also is poised to overtake Mexico. Some of California’s recent Asian arrivals are college students or long-term workers who eventually may leave the country; others will stay permanently.”

Making money

For that reason, they have remained a target for rhetoric and policy proposals this U.S. election year. But Mexico’s American immigrants have become a political football in a truer sense as well: both teams now wish to have them. In an appearance on WFAA’s Inside Texas Politics, former Mexican president Vicente Fox made the pitch for return migration. “We are building the opportunities in Mexico. We work hard to have jobs for them. We want them back,” he said. “We need them back.” Alluding to the economic rise of China, Fox hinted that Mexico could attract back former U.S. immigrants in much the same way the U.S. draws Chinese newcomers. “At the very end, we have to meet the challenge of the East,” he said. “The East is growing fast. The East is getting powerful.”

New Melones Dam (Wikimedia)

Demonstrating the simple power of reducing daily water usage, Californians have impressed regulators and policymakers by taking a huge bite out of statewide consumption. “The numbers reflect broad conservation success at a crucial time,” the Sacramento Bee reported. “Last year, Californians used more water in July than any other month, mostly because of lawn watering in the summer heat. This year’s urban conservation efforts resulted in a savings of more than 74 billion gallons in July compared with 2013, more than double the amount of water that the entire city of Sacramento will use in a year.”

Changing minds

The data lent some unexpected credence to what seemed like an outlandish prospect just a year ago. While many analysts presumed that huge new infrastructure projects would have to be undertaken to respond effectively to the drought, now some have begun to suggest that mere saving may be enough.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the sheer quantity of water saved — 414,800 acre-feet — measured favorably against some of the biggest and most expensive water storage facilities proposed to date. Both the expansion of Shasta Dam and a new Temperance Flat Dam on the San Joaquin River would open up around half that amount annually, the Times noted. Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy for Stanford’s Water in the West initiative, told the Times “there are so many soft paths that we can take that might have a lot less environmental impact and be a lot less expensive, and still meet our future demand. This is probably a smarter tack than building more infrastructure, and moving more water around long distances.”

A massive new Delta tunnels project, promoted by Gov. Jerry Brown and set to cost at least $17 billion, has recently become the center of one of the Golden State’s several water-driven controversies. Meanwhile, predictions of a powerful El Nino storm season have done little to reduce ongoing jockeying between Northern and Southern California over water sources, water rights and water costs. And economists have begun to question whether California’s more limited access to water will begin to take a toll on the state’s pace of expansion, including many new housing developments authorized before the cutbacks began in earnest, according to the New York Times.

Unintended costs

The big savings have come with significant unanticipated costs, however — not always measurable in monetary terms. In what the Los Angeles Times called “a paradox of conservation, water agencies say the unprecedented savings — 31 percent in July over July 2013 — are causing or compounding a slew of problems.”

“Sanitation districts are yanking tree roots out of manholes and stepping up maintenance on their pipes to prevent corrosion and the spread of odors. And when people use less potable water, officials say, there’s less wastewater available to recycle. Water suppliers, meanwhile, say the dramatic decrease in consumption has created multimillion-dollar revenue shortfalls.”

At the same time, California’s smaller cities have been thrown back on their heels by the stringent new regulations keeping consumption low. “State officials are starting to realize that some water mandates have the potential to cause serious economic problems for smaller communities such as Lemoore, Sanger, Hanford and Livingston,” the Fresno Bee reported.

The problem suggested a Catch-22, with the choice coming down to businesses in those areas making water cuts that result in cuts to jobs, or residents making up the difference by scaling back their consumption well in excess of the new mandates. “The cities are at or near the top of the state’s priority watch list to reduce water consumption, according to state Water Resources Control Board documents. All are missing the state’s reduction mandate by 10 percent or more.”

Disappointing numbers

Voted in as Proposition 39, the act “raised taxes on corporations to fund energy-efficiency construction projects,” as the Hill recalled. Lawmakers directed half of the revenue toward clean energy efforts at California schools. But an Associated Press report revealed that “money is trickling in at a slower-than-anticipated rate, and more than half of the $297 million given to schools so far has gone to consultants and energy auditors.” Meanwhile, the jobs numbers amounted to almost 10 percent of what voters were led to expect.

Asked by the Los Angeles Times why Prop. 39 boasted 1,700 jobs instead of the 11,000 that had been promised when voters passed the measure, state Senate leader Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, asked for patience. “We are taking our time because I think we want to do things right,” de Leon said.

The oversight board also created by the measure, the Times observed, still has not met. According to the Orange County Register, the board includes nine members drawn from the fields of academia, engineering and climate science.

In a statement issued by de Leon and Tom Steyer, the environmentalist billionaire who fueled the Prop. 39 campaign, the two Democrats suggested that schools simply needed more time. “Most school districts are either in the planning phase or are preparing to launch large-scale, intensive retrofit projects that will maximize benefits to students, school sites and the California economy,” they argued, according to the AP.

A backlog of projects

Regulators at the State Energy Commission made an effort to back up de Leon’s and Steyer’s claims, the AP added, estimating some $25 million a year in the pipeline despite a lax reporting requirement that leaves the state in the dark until as many as 15 months after school projects are finished.

According to Pete Miller at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports Prop. 39, the Energy Commission has approved 253 plans affecting 788 schools, to the tune of some $170 million.

“The eligible projects include repairs to heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems; new chillers, boilers and furnaces; new lighting and lighting control systems; installation of energy-efficient windows, shades and programmable thermostats; and onsite clean energy generation.”

The expectations game

But some Democrats have joined California Republicans in calling for new oversight over the program. Assemblyman Henry Perea, D-Fresno, raised the prospect of hearings, while Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff, R-San Dimas, demanded they be scheduled immediately.

Because the act was passed as a proposition, even supportive legislators found themselves having to speak to voters’ expectations, which were inflated by Prop. 39’s biggest boosters over the course of the campaign. Steyer, for instance, “repeatedly said the measure would generate $1 billion annually, half of which, $500 million, would be earmarked for energy efficiency in each of the first five years after its passage,” according to the Sacramento Bee editorial board.

Assembly Bill 357 affects California food and retail businesses with at least 10 stores and 500 employees that change or cancel a worker’s scheduled shift or require an employee to be “on call” to work. Those businesses must provide the following extra compensation for changed schedules:

• One hour of pay at the employee’s regular hourly rate if less than seven days’ notice but at least 24 hours’ notice is given to the employee.
• Two hours of pay for each shift of four hours or less if less than 24 hours’ notice is given.
• Four hours of pay for each shift of more than four hours if less than 24 hours’ notice is given.

When those businesses require an employee to be available to work but the employee is not called in to work, it must provide two hours of pay for a shift of four hours or less and four hours of pay for shifts of more than four hours.

In addition, AB357 prohibits these businesses from firing or discriminating against employees because they receive CalFresh food assistance or either receive CalWORKS cash aid or are a parent, guardian or grandparent of children who receive CalWORKs cash aid. The bill also allows employees to leave work for eight hours twice a year without pay to attend appointments at a county human services agency.

The Chamber of Commerce argues that the bill “dramatically increases the cost of doing business for a broadly defined ‘food and general retail establishment’ in California by exposing employers to significant penalties and litigation for accommodating employee and business scheduling demands, creating a new protected classification for employees, and a new leave of absence for employees.”

The Chamber has labeled it a job killer because it:

• “Creates significant penalties against employers for schedule changes, which will limit flexibility.
• “Discourages employers from offering additional work to part-time employees.
• “Creates new leave of absence for employees.
• “Creates a new, protected classification of employees.
• “Subjects employers to multiple threats of extensive litigation.”

CalChamber Policy Advocate Jennifer Barrera told the committee on April 22 that a similar ordinance is due to go into effect in San Francisco in July. “Why don’t we let that work out first in San Francisco before we impose this on a statewide mandate in California and to counties and cities that are not reflective of San Francisco?” she said.

Also speaking against the bill was Angie Manetti, representing the California Retailers’ Association.

“We believe this bill seeks to mandate a rigid, one-size-fits-all scheduling model for food and retail establishments,” she said. “Retail by nature is dynamic and highly competitive. As such, retailers are constantly undertaking the challenge of balancing the needs of employees, responding to customer demands, all while enhancing our customer experiences.

“AB357 fails to contemplate these unique needs. The bill instead creates a significant administrative burden for retail employers and doesn’t take into consideration the rapidly changing business environment of retail establishments.

“The reality is that retailers and employers need a predictive schedule in place just as much as our employees do. We do this to the best of our ability and provide as much flexibility that we can. Stores must consider, number one, employee scheduling requests. There’s also sales forecasts that are considered, store productivity, workload, in-store events, merchandise deliveries and customer traffic patterns. Additionally, at any given time those factors can change due to unexpected scenarios.”

Manetti agreed with Barrera that the state should wait to see how San Francisco’s scheduling regulations work out. But the bill’s author, Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, who also authored the San Francisco legislation, responded that there has been significant interest from legislators around the state in implementing it statewide.

“We are not talking about a job killer policy,” Chiu said. “In fact, we know the minimum wage, health care, sick leave – those were also called job killer policies. I would suggest there’s a lot about this policy that helps people to maintain and to take on second jobs or third jobs, to actually be job creating.

“Major employers like Costco, like Starbucks, like Wal-Mart … understand it’s good for business. When you are an employee and you have a predictability in scheduling, you are a more productive employee, you’re a happier employee, and you do better and you want to work hard.”

Chiu said there more than three million low-wage food and retail workers in California. Eighty percent of them have unstable schedules, he said, and 40 percent receive a week or less notice on their upcoming schedule.

A co-author of the bill, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said that one out of five California children live in poverty, and their mothers have to work two or three part-time jobs to make ends meet.

“We see [reliable scheduling] as being critical in how we reverse California poverty levels,” she said. “California has the highest poverty rate in the nation. They need security to say ‘this is when you work.’ It’s not unreasonable to ask employers to give some sense of predictability on how their schedule is going to be and how they manage their lives.”

Two grocery workers, one of whom has two college degrees, also testified in support of the bill. They said not having a predictable schedule makes it difficult to attend college on off days.

Unlike most so-called “job killer” bills, AB357 did not break down strictly along party lines. One Democrat, Assemblyman Evan Low, D-Campbell, voted against it. Although he agrees with Chiu that it’s not a job killer, he said he’s concerned that it will have an impact on businesses in his Silicon Valley district.

The committee approved the bill, 4-3. It will next be considered by the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Toebben said trust your experiences — when wages go up speedily, businesses, especially small businesses, have to cut somewhere. If minimum wage is increased there would be fewer jobs (just as the Beacon Economics study sponsored by the Chamber stated, up to 140,000 fewer jobs over five years).

Hicks said it is common sense — if workers have more money they will spend the new money, which will increase the economy and create jobs (46,000 new jobs according to the Economic Roundtable who did its study for the Labor Federation).

The third study by UC Berkeley, done at the behest of the LA City Council, decided the lives of low-wage earners would improve which would overshadow job losses.

Since the dueling studies didn’t offer clarity to observers considering the question of raising the minimum wage, perhaps the debaters could break the gridlock. Reflecting the studies they sponsored, the debaters rolled out familiar arguments to buttress their positions.

Hicks argued that increasing the minimum wage for those barely getting by would decrease government subsidies in such things as child care and food stamps, saving the taxpayer dollars. Toebben said implementing a minimum wage increase of 50 percent in three years and 75 percent over 5 years, as proposed, would slow job growth in half and reduce revenue for city services for low-income families.

Hicks argued that business has claimed job loss as a result of minimum wage increase since the minimum wage came into being in the 1930s, and that has not happened. Toebben countered that business will have to compensate for the increased wages in some way. If not layoffs, then reductions in charitable contributions or advertising, for example, would come into play.

Toebben insisted that he was defending small business, which would be most affected by the increase. “This is all about Main Street, not about Wall Street,” he said.

Hicks conceded that exemptions might be made for some organizations like non-profits, some small businesses or young workers to ease the conversion to a higher minimum wage. The Chamber president said if no accommodation is made Los Angeles will have a reputation of a place not to start a business.

Common ground? Perhaps a small patch of turf, but not much more. Figuring out the exemptions and who gets what could be a regulatory nightmare, not to mention a field day for lobbyists.

The minimum wage increase proposals in Los Angeles include Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan for an increase from $9.00 an hour to $13.25 by 2017. A city council proposal calls for an increase to $15.25 by 2019.

Other major West Coast cities — Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland — have already lifted their minimum wages recently. Could Los Angeles learn from those experiences?

Rusty Hicks said it was too early to measure the true impact, but he said there are now more restaurants in San Francisco since the minimum wage law was changed. To which Gary Toebben replied restaurants have closed in Oakland because of the minimum wage increase.

The studies didn’t give any clarity to those considering the minimum wage deliberations. The Town Hall debate probably didn’t change too many minds, either.

In polling conducted by USC Dornsife and the Los Angeles Times, respondents confirmed some eye-opening facts about California’s appeal to its own residents — such as the primary importance of its largely snow-free climate. Although good weather has long been known as a point of pride among West Coasters, the continued economic uncertainty nibbling at Californians cast their appreciativeness in a darker, more politically interesting light.

The poll revealed Californians like their climate far better than their fellow Golden Staters or their job prospects. While over 70 percent expressed a preference for their home state over any other, 69 percent attributed their continued residence to the weather.

As the LA Weekly observed, that struck a sharp, unflattering contrast to the 18 percent who credited “family, friends and the people” of their state, or the 12 percent who said their “employment and earnings potential” kept them sticking around.

Perhaps even more remarkably, given California’s stereotype as a culturally and politically deep blue bastion, a scant 17 percent associated their decision to stay in-state with its “progressive atmosphere.” Despite a virtually unbroken string of legislative victories and dominance in the state’s congressional delegation, the poll suggested, Democrats have failed to produce political and economic outcomes that alone appeal enough to most of their voters to stop them from picking up stakes.

Indeed, according to the poll, some 25 percent of respondents admitted they were more likely than in the past to do just that — blaming cost of living, employment conditions, taxes and business climate, and government and politicians above all. All told, a whopping 42 percent said the next generation of Californians would find it worse off than today’s generations.

A hidden demographic

Some analysts who examine how Californians vote with their feet raised concerns the USC/Times poll appeared to reinforce. In a recent study, Carson Bruno, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, noted that California’s 0.9 percent population growth from July 2013 to July 2014 obscured the thinning-out of a specific and important demographic. Young middle-class professionals, he explained, were the most likely group to leave the state.

That exacerbated just the kind of economic trends that respondents in the USC/Times poll identified among their biggest reasons to relocate.

Californians’ difficulty in getting or staying ahead has been shown to correlate with another potentially problematic demographic trend — population stagnation. Over a period of 15 years, Bruno determined:

“California’s natural increases have fallen by over 18 percent, a direct result of the birth to death ratio falling over 13 percent to just two births for every death.

“And the shift has accelerated more recently. Since 2008-2009, births have fallen by an annual average of 2.1 percent and deaths have risen by an annual average of 1.2 percent; both rates are over twice as fast as the 1999-2000 to 2007-2008 period. This suggests that despite natural increases accounting for a larger share of California’s population growth (thanks to falling net migration), it is itself trending in the wrong direction.”

In other words, despite a massive budget and a world-class quality of climatological life, California appeared set to rely increasingly on immigration in order to drive economic and population growth. For a state where productivity, opportunity and economic inequality have dominated residents’ concerns, that prospect could sour them even more on their vision of the future.

Doubling down

Nevertheless, Californians seemed exceptionally unwilling to consider fundamental changes to the political status quo.

As CalWatchdog.com previously observed, the USC/Times respondents strongly affirmed their support for both Gov. Jerry Brown and for presumptive presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Brown’s 26 percent unfavorable rating came in at less than half of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s at the close of his term in office, when 75 percent viewed him negatively.