C A L I FO RN I A C A L I FO RN I A
Left Coasting The “California Way.” The phrase once suggested innovation and efficiency. On the lips of Governor Gavin Newsom, the words ring hollow.
By Lee E. Ohanian
T
he “California Way” was the theme of Gavin Newsom’s State of the State address last March as the governor tried to draw parallels between California today and the state’s remarkable history of economic success and growth. But Newsom’s
attempt to rekindle California’s past glories failed, precisely because what once was the “California Way”—the most innovative private sector in the country, working together with a cooperative, efficient, and highly functional public sector, a public sector that focused on capital investments—is long gone. Newsom tried hard, but his words rang hollow: California is doing what we have done for generations, lighting out the territory ahead of the rest, the horizon of what’s possible. That was the California that many of us knew back in the day. But today’s “California Way” has turned that previous simple model of success on its head, with current state and local governments overtaxing and overregulating and getting in the way and failing any sense of accountability. Governments whose basic functional responsibilities fail to deliver, despite an
Lee E. Ohanian is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a participant in Hoover’s Human Prosperity Project. He is a professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at UCLA. 136
H O O VER DI GEST • Summer 2022
