Culturally, the boomer retirement is going to wash over us here in greater numbers, and Medicare is the most pressing issue. Obamacare is going to kick in in 2014, and the costs will start to rain down on each one of us (the ones that haven’t already). You will probably be paying between a hundred to two-hundred dollars for 2014, for not having health insurance. This could increase to upwards of five-hundred dollars the following year, and the goal is to force everyone onto the exchanges. It is looking like a big mess.
Epstein:
‘What the President seems determined to impose on the American people is a grand economic bargain that marches us down the road to economic stagnation or worse. His policies of increased regulation will continue to stifle productive labor markets, and his redistributive programs will continue to shrink the capital base. Both of these policies will only shrink the overall size of the pie, so that the whole country will suffer. This nation deserves far better, but the prospects are glum that it will get it.’
Politically, I suspect Obama would fit in quite well in the Bay Area, or Seattle, and but for the predominant ‘whiteness’ of these areas, that is to say, without the larger populations of black migration out of the South into Jim Crow era industrial ghettoes, his green and red alliance (enviromentalist and union, collectivist and redistributionist) reminds me very much of these areas. The culture of Southern California produced the Reagan coalition and Reason magazine, both of which are more intimately familiar with this type of culture, and a more entrenched Leftism.
It’s a rather sorry state of affairs if you believe in private sector growth, as well as greater political and economic freedoms for individuals.
A lost decade?
Related On This Site: Covering the law and economics from a libertarian perspective: Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution Journal: ‘Three Cheers for Income Inequality’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution: ‘Death By Wealth Tax’…Richard Epstein At The Hoover Institution: ‘The Obamacare Quaqmire’
Originalism vs. The living constitution: George Will Via The Jewish World Review: ‘True Self-Government’.
Repost-Eugene Volokh At The National Review: ‘Multiculturalism: For or Against?’…Repost-’Kenneth Anderson At Volokh: ‘The Fragmenting of the New Class Elites, Or, Downward Mobility’
Victor Davis Hanson Via Youtube Via Uncommon Knowledge: ‘The New Old World Order’…Victor Davis Hanson At The City Journal: ‘California, Here We Stay’…
Dream big: Via Reason: ‘California’s Public Transportation Sinkhole’ A great city deserves great art extravaganzas…: L.A.’s New Public Art Piece ‘The Levitated Mass,’ Or As The American Interest Puts It: ‘A Moving Rock’
…California Dreamers From The Atlantic-A Brief Review Of Kevin Starr’s History Of California
The people who promise solutions to poverty and homlessness seem to be engaged in a utopian cost-shifting exercise which favors their interests and overlooks crime, violence and personal responsbility…hardly a way to balance the budget: Repost-Heather MacDonald At The City Journal: ‘The Sidewalks Of San Francisco’…
Some concentrated wealth on top, a stalled legislature with members who know how to play the game…and a service sector beneath…that probably can’t go on forever: …From The WSJ: ‘Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus’…