California, Uber Alles

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Go ahead, Washington. Roll back environmental protections, step up immigration enforcement, cut funding for the arts.

California, which boasts the sixth-largest economy in the world, has a different agenda – and the power to muscle it through.

We can recite the data for pages: the most populous state, our 39 million people account for more than 10 percent of the nation’s population; we generate nearly $2.5 trillion in annual economic activity (with some 25 percent of that coming out of Los Angeles County); we buy more than 2 million cars a year.

If we want clean air, if we need workers from other countries, we’ll find a way to get them. There remains the political will to hold fast to an agenda that the Trump administration is attempting to move away from as quickly as it can.

To be sure, the Democratic supermajority in the state has eased that path, but this is a market in which business groups have aligned with labor and progressive interests in frequent and at times surprising ways.

Trucking companies, realizing that our aging infrastructure is on the cusp of doing more harm to their bottom line, have embraced (to a point) increases in fuel taxes that should be dedicated to badly needed repairs. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce has come out firmly behind an inclusive approach to immigration, understanding that embracing newcomers is vital to our economic growth.

Even environmental cleanup businesses, whose work has dried up thanks to an effective regulatory regime, have pivoted to stay competitive.

Which is not to say that despite all this sunshine everything is bright and cheery. Every business would prefer a lower tax rate, and housing affordability remains a serious problem in the state’s urban areas. Yet it works somehow.

If the states are incubators for social and economic policies, it’s hard to argue that – even holding constant for the state’s geological and meteorological advantages – California is on the right path.

With all due respect to Kansas, where the conservative policy petri dish has yielded a disaster, would you rather be in Kansas?

We thought not.

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