Legalize Immigrants From Mexico; Ban Immigrants From California
Until a few years ago, I did business up and down the Pacific Coast. If I had to rank the business climates of these states, from worst to best, I would informally come up with something like:
- (worst) Certain California counties (e.g. Ventura, San Francisco, Santa Barbara)
- Oregon
- Western Washington
- Rest of California
- Eastern Washington
So I was interested to see that Oregon may finally be getting the bad press it deserves as a difficult place to do business, though, interestingly enough, this particular article blames it on the Californians:
Some might call this California disease. This refers to a chronic inability to make hard decisions as well as a general disregard for business and economic activity....
With all the influx of Californians, it's not surprising that Oregon shows some signs of California disease. It recently increased its tax rates so that Oregon's highest-income taxpayers face marginal tax rates that match Hawaii's for the highest in the nation. Oregon's land-use planning had been extremely centralized for some time. Indeed, Oregon's land-use planning may be the most centralized in the United States. This makes it harder for communities to control their own destinies, whether they want to grow or not.
Interestingly, I actually wrote about similar effect in the context of immigration into the US. While I am a supporter of open immigration, my greatest fear is that in the name of individual liberty, we would let in millions of new people who would someday vote against individual liberties. It seems that may be a more substantial problem with Californian than Mexican immigration.
The good news for the rest of us is that Oregon may preferentially be attracting the slackers
Our analysis of California migrants has shown a gradual reduction in their earnings over what they were earning in the Golden State. There also are less quantifiable impacts. Portland, a city attractive to many unemployed and underemployed younger Californians, could well be becoming the "slacker" capital of the world.
Fortunately, Arizona is so politically un-correct with slacker/socialist/statist/greenie types that we don't get a lot coming here.
