Here’s the core of the fix California is in. Californians hate the way things are in their state government. But they don’t want to do anything – change taxes, change the budget process, reform the constitution – that might fix the system.
Instead, as a recent USC-LA Times poll shows, they prefer scapegoats: “special interests”, big-spending legislators, and population increases that they blame on illegal immigrants.
The problem is: when voters look at these scapegoats, they’re really looking in the mirror.
When it comes to the power of interests, it is voters who have empowered such interests by electing candidates promoted by those interests and passing ballot initiatives written by those interests.
When it comes to big-spending legislators, voters have a point. But voters themselves are big spenders, passing billions in bonds and other spending programs without identifying money to pay for their priorities. And California’s legislators all have voted for budget cuts; voters haven’t.
And what about the immigrants? Well, it used to be – 20 years ago – that net migration to this state (both from other states and other countries, both legally and illegally) was driving population increases. That simply isn’t true anymore.
California’s population is growing by more than 400,000 people a year. But net migration (again, including everybody—Americans who come from other states, and people who come from other countries) is a little more than 100,000 annually—about a quarter of the population increase, according to 2007 figures compiled by demographers at USC. Illegal immigrants are only a fraction of that number.
So where is the rest of the increase coming from? Californians themselves. And their tendency to breed The net “natural” gain – the extent to which births exceed deaths – has averaged 320,000 a year.
So if you’re concerned about soaring population and the budget, you might back off the illegal immigrants and think about attacking the heart of the problem. With aggressive birth control. Or celibacy.
If that seems to extreme or scary, maybe you should give constitutional reform a second look.