If you want to know what the nation's economy will look like a few years down the road, all you have to do is look at California. California is the world's 8th largest economy and it is tottering on the edge of oblivion.

Now of course the left wing blame Reagan's tenure as governor and Conservatives in general. They like to point to 1978's Proposition 13 as the beginning of the downfall. But there's a lot more to it than that, as Time's Kevin O'Leary points out in his left-leaning article.

Prop 13 itself simply made it harder for California's traditionally liberal politicians to raise taxes. It requires a two-thirds majority vote for taxes to be raised. And even liberal taxpayers hate to have their taxes raised as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the legislature found out recently when their tax-laden ballot measure failed miserably. However, there is a liberal failing here--or multiple in this case--as well.

Californians love things for "free". They love water to be shipped across the desert for them and they love the freeways (although you wouldn't know it from their griping about gridlock). They love having large state grants for college students. These are liberal policies that over the years have added to a tax burden in the most populace state in the Union. And most of them have actually made the environment worse.

Californians also love direct democracy, like all Democrats, hence the name. The nation's founders knew that a direct democracy would eventually ruin the country. That's why they created a constitutional republic, with a constitution to restrict the powers of government and a representative legislature to restrict the damage that a runaway democracy would cause. It was all about checks and balances. Californians chose a direct democracy with a government that restricts freedoms instead. Talk about bass-ackwards.

One of the things that Californians are most proud of is that they are the harbingers of "change" (there's that word again) for the rest of the country. Just look at environmental legislation and make-work projects, all at the taxpayers' expense. Their senators and representatives are some of the most powerful members of congress, like Henry Waxman, coauthor of the Cap and Trade bill that just passed with nobody reading it. And then there is Nancy Pelosi who rammed through the same Cap and Trade bill so that she could go on vacation. Now they want to bring their form of liberal government to the rest of us and they have the numbers on their side in congress.

As I said in a previous post: Abandon all hope ye who live here.

SOURCE: Time article