Leaving California for Aiken

The week before Christmas, my wife and I finalized the sale of our house in California, packed a minivan with the last remnants of our years there, and headed back east.

It was a bittersweet goodbye. We'd lived in California full time or part time since 1985, and for the last 17 years right by the Pacific Ocean - a stunningly beautiful spot.

When we first arrived in the San Francisco Bay Area in '85 for what was expected to be a three-year stay it was as if we'd stumbled into the Garden of Eden. Perfect, predictable weather for months at a time, brilliant sunshine, breathtaking scenery, no mosquitoes (really), warm days and cool evenings, orange and grapefruit trees in the backyard, Napa Valley, Big Sur, Squaw Valley, Yosemite all within easy driving distance.

We'd just left mid-winter cold and gray Pennsylvania, and I thought of the movie "Wizard of Oz" when black and white of Kansas shifted to brilliant Technicolor in Dorothy's dream. We were hooked and we stayed.

Our decision 26 years later to part ways with sunny California was driven primarily by family considerations - but there was an underlying factor as well: California may be as beautiful as ever, but the state is in a death spiral, locked in political and economic chaos, hopelessly in debt and showing little inclination to dig itself out.

At a time when tax revenues are desperately needed, businesses are leaving the state and few are coming in. The politicians plan to attack their deficit problem by raising taxes on the wealthy. They seem not to understand that:

1. Even if the state takes it all, there's not enough money in those wealthy folks' pockets to make a much of a dent in the deficit;

2. Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is always a bad idea. Wealthy people pay a large fraction of taxes, they create jobs in the businesses they operate or invest in - and some will choose not be stick around in California to keep doing so.

The impacts are becoming more and more visible. City services are disappearing. Last year, I had to get a permit from the city and then hire a contractor, at my expense, to repair the city street in front of our house. The city acknowledged the problem but had no money to fix our street.

The most bizarre part is that Californians (based on my wholly unscientific observation) seem oblivious to - or at worst just a bit irritated by - the steady deterioration of their state. Like the laboratory frog sitting in the pan of ever-hotter water, they seem only to notice their current condition, not its trajectory.

The icing on the cake: as we drove out of beautiful Half Moon Bay, perhaps for the last time, there on the street corner was the local Occupy crowd. These were not the young radicals who for no apparent reason had proudly shut down the Port of Oakland, causing financial hardship to plenty of working men and women. These were regular folk, neighbors, enjoying the beautiful weather and waving signs to passing cars, decrying the horribly unfair circumstance of the 99 percent.

Yes, freedom of speech is a fundamental American right, and these people were exercising it respectfully. But they seem stuck in the conviction that faced with anything they don't like, their civic responsibility is primarily to complain, loudly and publically. And then they continue to vote in the same crowd and support the same loony policies.

Does any of this sound familiar? In his popular 1982 book "Megatrends," John Naisbitt identified California as one of the 'bellweather' states in the US, meaning that social, cultural and political trends seem to take root there and then spread to the rest of the country.

It's a scary thought. California and South Carolina are about as different as two states can be.

But what's happening in California is by no means unique. The mind-numbing debt, a blame-and-tax-the-rich mentality, uncontrolled immigration, untouchable entitlements, clueless protesters complaining that it's just not fair, warring political factions that seem unwilling or unable to dig out of the mess - all are more and more common across the country and around the world. Most troubling of all is the malaise of its citizens, their steadfast refusal to confront the problem.

Californians are blessed with the opportunity to live in a place that is rich beyond measure - but evidently not too rich to fail. And in California's decline, there are important lessons for us all.