In this Daily Signal article, Victor Davis Hanson argues that California’s decline is not the result of bad luck or geography, but of one-party progressive rule that drove away the middle class while rewarding dysfunction.
- Hanson says California’s worsening condition is best measured by the number of people leaving, estimating that hundreds of thousands of residents fled in 2025 and 2026.
- He argues that people are not leaving an undesirable state, but one of the most naturally beautiful and historically prosperous places in America.
- The article points to poor infrastructure, low school rankings despite high spending, homelessness, welfare dependency, high poverty, high gas prices, high electricity costs, crime, and heavy taxes as symptoms of the collapse.
- Hanson blames the state’s political monopoly, noting that California has not had a Republican governor in nearly 20 years and has no Republican statewide officeholders.
- He presents Gavin Newsom as the central political figure in this decline, tracing Newsom’s long career from San Francisco politics to lieutenant governor and then governor.
- Hanson argues that California’s middle and upper-middle-class taxpayers, entrepreneurs, and small businesses have been pushed out by taxes, regulations, crime, and poor infrastructure.
- The piece also criticizes immigration policy, saying California failed to focus on assimilation and civic integration while embracing DEI and ethnic politics.
- Hanson claims Silicon Valley wealth and coastal elites have insulated themselves from the consequences of the policies they support, while the middle class shrinks.
- He says any recovery would require serious changes on homelessness, cooperation with ICE, lower taxes and regulations, energy policy, refinery retention, and election integrity.
- Hanson concludes that California now resembles a two-tier society: wealthy coastal elites and a large dependent class, with a shrinking productive middle caught in between.
Read the full story: https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/06/02/california-paradise-then-newsom/
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