{"id":12035,"date":"2025-05-29T08:17:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=12035"},"modified":"2025-05-29T08:17:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:17:25","slug":"how-california-has-destroyed-its-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2025\/05\/29\/how-california-has-destroyed-its-middle-class\/","title":{"rendered":"How California Has Destroyed Its Middle Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is a dynamite write up on how California has destroyed the middle class, and pay attention the government spending per citizen which is crazy and unsustainable. Throw in the high income and sales taxes, and paying double or more for housing, energy and gasoline. The only thing saving their population numbers from the people leaving is the illegal aliens. When we moved out of northern California in 2020, U-Haul trucks were renting for over $4,000 for a one-way trip out of state, but Penske only cost us $2,300 for a nice new truck and car hauler. For fun I looked it up, out of where we lived in Rancho Cordova to Cheyenne, it’s $5,200 now, but check out a 26 ft. truck rental from Los Angeles below. That’s just for the truck. And when almost three quarters of society are living paycheck to paycheck with no savings, you’d have to think an even larger percentage of Californians can’t afford to leave even though they desperately want to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/how-california<\/a>–<\/a>has-destroyed-its-middle-class<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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By Edward Ring via American Greatness<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California has declared war on its middle class, and the special interests controlling the state are doing everything they can to impose this punitive economic model on the rest of America. <\/strong>It\u2019s a quasi-feudal system, with the entire population divided into aristocrats and serfs. The means to destroy the middle class is to engineer an unaffordable cost of living for households, and a regulatory environment that only huge corporations can afford to navigate. The moral justification for this destruction is to cope with the \u201cclimate emergency\u201d and to achieve social \u201cequity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While the Trump interregnum has slowed the march of neo-feudalism in the rest of America, in California, the plan continues to move relentlessly forward<\/strong>. If you\u2019re extremely wealthy, California\u2019s abusive cost of living is not a big concern, and you stay for the scenic beauty and abundant sunshine. If you\u2019re extremely poor, you stay because California\u2019s taxpayer-funded assistance programs\u2014financial aid, food assistance, healthcare, and other support services\u2014offer a lifestyle orders of magnitude better than what you may have previously endured in the barrios of Tegucigalpa or the suburbios of Maputo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if you\u2019re not rich, and you\u2019re not poor, but just work, pay taxes, and pay for everything you need with after-tax earnings and without government assistance, California is a hostile environment.<\/strong> The numbers on out-migration are unequivocal. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an astonishing 8.5 million people<\/a> have moved out of California since 2010. In 2023 alone, the last full year for which estimates are available, 690,000 people left. In 2022, 818,000; in 2021, 841,000. No other state has sustained anywhere near this 15 years of unrelenting mass exodus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These people aren\u2019t just leaving. By the millions, they\u2019re being driven out. The latest reported cost of a home in California<\/a> averages nearly $788,000 compared to $361,000 in the rest of the U.S<\/a>. The price for a gallon of gasoline<\/a> in California is roughly $5.00 compared to $3.00 nationwide. With refineries quitting production in California thanks to ridiculous and escalating regulatory harassment by state agencies, the price of gasoline is only going to rise. As for residential electricity rates<\/a>, consumers in California have to pay around $0.30 per kilowatt-hour, a rate that is twice<\/em> the national average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn\u2019t news. It costs a lot to live in California due to restrictions placed on housing and pretty much any enabling energy or water infrastructure by extreme environmentalists and the special interests that support them.<\/strong> It\u2019s simple math. Homes cost twice as much. Gasoline costs nearly 60 percent more. Electricity costs twice as much. Double the cost of real estate and energy, and you double the cost of everything that needs real estate and energy to be produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to ameliorate the problems they caused, California\u2019s state legislature has indulged in a spending spree designed to shower benefits onto residents who can\u2019t afford the overpriced necessities.<\/strong> It\u2019s a good trick. Deny people the ability to make a living, blame a scapegoat (climate change, greedy corporations, billionaires, racism), and then distribute free stuff from the government in exchange for votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But massive government benefits are expensive for the state to maintain, with costs going into hyperdrive in the 21st century. Between 2010<\/a> and 2020<\/a>, the per capita<\/a> state government spending in California, adjusting for inflation<\/a>, more than doubled. Since then, it\u2019s continued to grow, with Newsom\u2019s proposed 2025-26 state budget<\/a> of $322 billion equating to $8,173 per resident. Back in 2011, in 2024 dollars, total state spending was only $4,696 per resident. Did anything get better? Schools? Crime rates? Homelessness? Affordability?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, the middle class pays. <\/strong>Not only via the cost of living, which they pay for in full since they\u2019re not poor enough to qualify for free stuff from the government. They also pay higher taxes to support the swollen state. A lot more taxes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suppose a person works as an independent contractor in California and makes $100,000 per year in their regular job. They then work nights and weekends to make enough money to support their family. Let\u2019s assume that second job doesn\u2019t pay enough for their total annual income to exceed $176,100<\/a>, which is the ceiling beyond which workers don\u2019t have to contribute any further to Social Security (Medicare withholding has no limit). Here\u2019s how bad these taxes get:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The marginal withholding rate for the State of California on income over $141,212 is 9.3 percent<\/a>. Anything over $111,732 is taxed at 8.0 percent. Then there is federal tax of 22 percent<\/a> on any income over $94,300, with Social Security and Medicare (for which an independent contractor pays the employee and the employer share) adding another whopping 15.3 percent<\/a>. In all, the government taxes 46.6 percent of those last hard-earned dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s how the State of California thanks an independent contractor who is working nights and weekends to make some extra money. <\/strong>Sure, the federal government takes most of it, and the federal government wastes trillions instead of merely wasting hundreds of billions. But other states don\u2019t have California\u2019s punitive cost of living, and in states with low or minimal state income taxes, the hit for federal income tax and Social Security\/Medicare would be 37 percent, little more than a third of marginal earnings instead of nearly half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it doesn\u2019t end there. Let\u2019s have a look at sales taxes in Los Angeles County, where 9.7 million people live, 25 percent of the entire state\u2019s population. The combined state and local sales tax rate<\/a> is 9.75 percent, which means if the household in our example spent $2,000 per month on retail purchases, they\u2019d be out another $2,340 annually. The average home in Los Angeles County<\/a> costs $900,000, which means California\u2019s supposedly low property tax rate<\/a> of 1.0 percent still equates to another $9,000 per year in property taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people in California haven\u2019t mustered the degree of hard work and good luck it takes to make a six-figure income.<\/strong> The average annual salary<\/a> in California is $68,917. For people making that amount of money, owning a home is an impossible dream. Just paying for gasoline and electricity is a hardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The betrayal that California\u2019s state and local politicians have inflicted on the people living there is unforgivable. The state is run by a coalition of public sector unions, allied with environmentalist billionaires and the nonprofit advocacy groups they fund, and the monopolistic corporations that thrive in over-regulated environments that smaller competitors can\u2019t survive. These aligned special interests pour billions into backing politicians who do what they\u2019re told. The result is a bloated public sector and \u201cgreen\u201d industries profiting off of high prices and a captive market. And the established media\u2014increasingly populated with indoctrinated youths straight out of union-controlled universities\u2014marches in lockstep with this corrupt establishment, saying all the right things and controlling the narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy enough to blame California\u2019s voters for the predicament they\u2019re in. Except that 40 percent of the electorate<\/a> routinely votes against the one-party Democratic machine candidates. And the rest of them, certainly enough to swing the result away from Democrats, have been thoroughly indoctrinated by what is probably the most powerful political machine in America. They spend literally billions to foment nonstop fear of boiling oceans, burning forests, and genocidal Nazis lurking in every shadow. They hire the best behavioral scientists on earth to foment this paranoia. And it works. Never mind the price of gas; we have to save the planet and end racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

California is a failed state.<\/strong> The only people of modest income who can possibly afford to live there are people who purchased their homes decades ago or people who inherited those homes from their parents and grandparents. Everyone else just works, all the time, and barely survives, or they give up and get government handouts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Americans in the rest of the country need to thoroughly recognize the threat coming from California, because it is not obvious. The special interests running the state don\u2019t merely deflect accountability by blaming the hardship they\u2019ve engineered on climate and racism. They\u2019ve also successfully conned voters into thinking that these special interests fight against each other, when in fact they are united. Public sector unions, billionaire-backed NGOs, and monopolistic corporations are not<\/em> antagonists. These aligned groups share the same agenda, and they work together. <\/strong>To serve each of their varied interests, they intend to destroy the middle class in this country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In California, they\u2019ve succeeded in doing exactly that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a dynamite write up on how California has destroyed the middle class, and pay attention the government spending per citizen which is crazy and unsustainable. Throw in the high income and sales taxes, and paying double or more for housing, energy and gasoline. The only thing saving their population numbers from the people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12037,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions\/12037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}