Fat public sector sickens California

George Will reports:

California’s increasingly severe and largely self-inflicted economic crisis will deepen May 19 if, as is probable and desirable, voters reject most of the ballot measures that were drafted as part of a “solution” to the state’s budget deficit.

They would make matters worse. California is driving itself into permanent stagnation. The state’s perennial boast — that it is the incubator of America’s future — now has an increasingly dark urgency.

Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states next to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating to those states. For four years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in.

California’s business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state’s. If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit, which is larger than the full budgets of all but 10 states.

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