California Wealth & Poverty

got to go to the beach. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which my kids had never seen, so okay, yeah, we got some educational stuff out of it for the kids. We went to one of the California missions. A great time, but we were in some kind of through through bougie expensive parts of the Central Coast. We were in Monterey and then we were bopping over to Carmel to see stuff, and it's obviously a super high income place. All the

houses around. My mom was looking around, She's like, oh my gosh, these houses are all like, you know, two million, five million, ten million dollars. I was noticing. One of the things I noticed was that the realtor. The realtor that was selling a lot of these houses was not like your normal realtor, you know, it was not oh, such and such properties. And this is Janie Smith, she

is our realtor. She's helping sell this house. No, it was so the Bey's or South of Best however you pronounce it s O T H E. B y Apostrophes, which is the famous London based auction house that that sells this crazy expensive stuff. Apparently, house values in Monterey are so wildly expensive that so the Bees set set up up a whole office in Monterey just to sell houses. And it's one of the things I'm seeing. Holly and

I were looking around and we both noticed this. My mom noticed this that basically there weren't a lot of cars like ours. I was driving around in our famili's you know, Dodge Durrango with you know, seven seats and every seat has. Every seat in our Dodge Durrango is filled. Me, Holly, five kids, so seven seat car, seven people. What I noticed was that essentially every car was either luxury car or beat up car doing some kind of service sector job.

Tesla up truck for landscaping, Mercedes Benz pickup truck for auto mechanic shop you know Lexus yeah, BMW or pickup truck for some you know, the restaurant service sector thing. That was a hot much higher percentage of stuff on either end of the spectrum, and very little of the middle class signaling car yeah with our you know, our you know, ten year old Dodge Durango versus again super expensive or super beat up sort of service sector car.

And this relates to the one insightful quote that Gavin Newsom has ever made in his life, which I think is totally true. And this was sort of campaigning era Gavin Newsom, which was to say when at one time he said that California is the wealthiest and the poorest

state in the nation, and that is one true. I saw this total microcosm of it just going to Monterey, that we have the you've got homeless people on the streets, and you've got guys in you know, seventy thousand dollars BMW as you know elect you know, green SUVs, you know, electric powered SUVs driving past, you know, homeless guy living in a box. And this leads to, you know, our observations of this and this, you know, Monterey is not

the only place in California where you see this. You go pretty much anywhere in the Bay Area you can see this phenomenon where all of the housing is crazily, crazily crazily expensive, and it's alongside people living in the most abject squalor imaginable. You see this in southern California, you see this in Orange County. You see this all

up and down the state. Heck, you even see it in you know, you see it in Fresno, where you can be at you know, Shaw and van Ness and see an almost person just sort of walking by, and then you you know, turn north on van Ness and all of a sudden you're seeing some of the biggest, craziest

mansions in the city. You Know, you can go on a fifteen minute walk from Old fig Garden see some of those old houses that are worth gazillions of dollars, and then within a ten or fifteen minute walk you're in the middle of the you know, the highest concentration of homeless people in the city of Fresno along Blackstone Avenue. This leads to some new numbers coming out from the Census Bureau about California poverty and a piece about it

written by Dan Walters. Governor Newsom, he writes, is fond Dan Walters, by the way, who writes for Calumtters dot org. Dan Walters is the best commentator on California politics from a neutral perspective of anyone. He wrote for the Sacramento b for years. He's been covering Sacramento for a gazillion years. He is still the most insightful guy on California politics today.

Governor Gavin Newsom, he writes, is fond of comparing California's economy to those of other states, particularly archrivals Texas and Florida, and even other nations. Unsurprisingly, however, there was no braggadocio from the Governor's office Tuesday, when California found itself in a number one economic position, having once again the nation's

highest level of poverty. Actually, California's official poverty number, as calculated by the Census Bureau for the twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three window, was not terrible, at eleven point seven percent of its nearly forty million residents, just slightly higher than the eleven point four percent national figure. But the official percentage calculated by a formula that hasn't changed in decades and assumes the underlying economic conditions are

the same everywhere, is widely respected by academics. Responding to criticisms some years ago, the Census Bureau developed a supplemental measure that takes into account a broader array of factors, most importantly the cost of living. Okay, so the original thing says, Okay, California has the worst poverty, but it's eleven point seven percent of the population rather than eleven point four. Eh, that's not that bad. Hang on, that calculation's not taking into account cost of living. Let's take

that into account. It's California's supplemental poverty score where you factor in cost of living. That sets the state of up part. Fifteen point four percent of our population is in poverty. Based on that metric, California is notoriously sky high costs for housing, energy, and other living needs clobber the incomes of working class families, driving them into poverty.

And again, just so you understand that the federal poverty line is basically it's been a fairly consistent measurement over the last forty plus years, and it's basically it takes into account number of people in a household and income number of people in a household plus household income, so it factors those two things in. So if you're over, you need a higher amount of household income to get yourself over the federal poverty line if you have a

household with six people rather than two people. So when you factoring costs of living, fifteen point four percent of Californians are poor. Now by an even broader measure, California's fifteen point four percent supplemental poverty rate under states its immense economic divide. The Public Policy Institute of California, again

this is Walter's writing. Using a methodology similar to that of the Census Bureau, calculated that in twenty twenty three, thirty one point one percent of Californians were either at or near poverty. Thirty one percent of Californians were either at or near poverty. Deep poverty, defined as families with less than half of the resources to meet basic needs, was at three point four percent. At the other end of the scale, the average income of those in the

top one percent is one point two million dollars. The calculation that nearly a third of Californians are in serious economic distress. Yes, comports with the fact that more than a third fourteen point five million are enrolled in medical the state's medical the state's healthcare system. So we've got

almost a third. Thirty one percent of Californians are either at or near the federal poverty California the California calculation done by the California Public Policy Institute of Poverty, thirty one percent of Californians are living not just not just sort of a modest lifestyle, but like in a dangerously precarious lifestyle close to either definitely not having enough or close to not having enough. It then goes on to talk about Walter just goes on to talk about the

racial component of California's economic inequality. Starkly, but regrettably, there is a distinct racial opponent to the California divide, as displayed in a new report that was also released this week. The Oakland based Maven Collaborative, which advocates for economic equality, issued the report entitled Living on the Brink The True Cost of Being Californian that explores vast economic inequality along gender and racial divides in the state, particularly for black

and brown Californians with children. It found that the share of households quote barely scraping by increased by eight percent between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty three. That quote childless black households who are living paycheck to paycheck is nearly the same as white households with three children. So economically speaking, black households without children are doing about the same as white households with the additional burden the additional

economic cost of three children. That economic inequality is highest in Bay Area communities with the highest costs of living, that nearly a third of college educated black women face financial instability, twice the percentage of white men with degrees, and that an adult with one child living in San Francisco an adult with one child living in San Francisco would have to work twenty two hours a day, seven

days a week to cover basic living expenses. These findings show California's economic landscape is increasingly becoming one where only the white and wealthy can thrive. Maven's co founder and co president, Jumpa Batacharia said in a statement, lawmakers must take swift, decisive action to reverse these figures, which paint a clear picture black brown and Indigenous families are facing a near impossible financial battle to survive in our state,

and Walters concludes it with this short paragraph. California is, of course a deeply blue state in which Democrats hold almost total political power, enacted multiple programs in declosing the economic divide. However, if anything, if anything, it has gotten wider in recent years, and the state now faces multiple years of budget deficits. It's California's most glaring conundrum. I mean,

there you go. The Democrat policies for California economics have for economics, cost of living, housing, they have manifestly failed, complete and utter failure, and they have failed most egregiously for specifically for the minority communities that Democrats purport to care about the most. Okay, that that report I was reading from that, that's I'm pretty sure that's a super left wing entity that's talking about. And with this implication, oh, it's so much harder to be a black person, as

if there's racism baked into the system. There's no racism baked into the system. Democrats have made this system. They're not racist, they're not doing this out of racism, and yet this is the outcome. I mean, what a what a colossal, unbelievable failure. And the thing that Walters talks about at the end, which is our constant state of

budget deficits other than twenty twenty two. Okay, so twenty twenty two we had a big budget surplus and everyone thought, you know, we were heading for some era of sunshine and rainbows, that fat days were returned. But it was only because we had a bunch of big influx of federal COVID money. Twenty twenty three, though, big old budget deficit.

Twenty twenty four, big old budget deficit. And guess what the reason for those budget deficits is because in spite of the fact that we have all these absurdly wealthy people along with our absurdly poor people, a lot of the absurdly wealthy people, they're leaving a lot of them from twenty twenty to now, probably a ton of them left because of COVID, during COVID whatever. They're tired of the taxes, they're tired of the regulation, they're tired of

all these different things. Because guess what, you can't just tax, tax, tax, sex tax super wealthy people. They will leave. They will they have the ability That's the thing about being wealthy is that you can just up and move. It's a lot easier for a super wealthy person to just pick up and move to Texas, pick up and move to Florida,

pick up and move to Las Vegas. That's a lot easier for a wealthy person to do than someone who's barely scraping by and their income is not coming in anymore, their capital gains income, their work income, that's not their salary income. That's not coming into the state's coffers anymore. And that's why we're running deficit after deficit after deficit. We're not going to have the fun if we want

to address all these problems. And you think there's some state funding solution for it, well, guess what, We're not going to have that funding when we return the vile

political forces that keeps that keeps this system intact. Next on the John Girardi Show, noticing all this crazy economic disparity in Monterey, My wife Holly and I were out there with our family for a trip and just noticing again this huge divide between Tesla Tesla, Tesla Tesla Tesla and then beat up service sector car, beat up service

sector car, homeless person. And with these new reports coming out about how California when you adjust for cost of living, even if you don't when you don't adjust for the cost of living, California has the highest rate of poverty in the nation, but it's only by a little bit. When you adjust for cost of living, California blows the rest of the nation away in poverty. And especially when you look at the percentage of Californians who are at or near poverty, which is about thirty one percent of

Californians are at or near poverty. Fifteen point seven percent of Californians are in poverty when you adjust for cost of living, and you think, why do people just keep voting for this? Why do people just keep voting for this? What is the madness that we see? How this state has gotten worse and worse and worse decade after decade

after decade, the state just gets worse. Democrats have been in complete and utter control of state politics for at this point, you know, almost six years of Gavin Newsome, eight years of Jerry Brown. Before those fourteen years, they've been in complete control of the state legislature for much longer than that. Why do people just keep voting for the same people. Why do they keep voting for the

same local politics. Why do they keep voting for the same local politics in San Francisco, which leads the way in poverty and including with racial disparities of it's far worse for African Americans and unracial minorities than for white people, particularly in these liberal enclaves that purport to want to help African Americans more than anybody else. I think that if there are any powers that be disproportionately, it's wealthy people who I think control the direction of politics. And

I don't think that's a California exclusive thing. I think that's the case throughout the country. Wealthier people vote in I haven't seen the stats, but I assume this is true that wealthier people are more likely to vote than people who are living in poverty. Wealthy people are more likely to contribute to candidates than people who are living

in poverty. Duh. Wealthy people are more likely to have business interests that can have a powerful influence on the direction in shape of politics than lower income people politics. You can say it's unfortunate. You can say, well, that's just a consequence of the First Amendment and money is speech, and they have more money. Whether it's right or wrong, fortunate or unfortunate. Wealthy people have a disproportionate impact on

the direction of politics. And there's a lot of wealthy people in San Francisco, there's a lot of wealthy people all up and down the Central Coast. There's a lot of wealthy people in the various parts of LA and they I don't think they dislike it. I don't think they dislike the outcomes that we are seeing because they keep pushing the same policies, they keep voting for the same people, they keep putting the same people in power, and you can see certain ways in which yeah, it's

directly benefited them. These are the people who own all these big fancy expenses. You know, as I was saying, Holly and I took this trip to Monterey and we're driving around. We see all these houses. They're not being sold by a normal realder. They're being sold by so the Bees, which is the famous London based auction house. They've got an office in Monterey just for selling these

crazy expensive houses. You know, this little tiny house doesn't look like it's anything, and it's going for you know, five ten million Bucks. People who own real estate out here, they really don't mind the fact that housing is wildly disproportionately expensive. They don't mind the fact that housing is completely unaffordable along the Central Coast in the Bay Area. Their houses benefit, their investment in their homes benefits from

housing being wildly unaffordable. They like it it directly. There are certain people that California's completely screwed up economy massively benefits. You know, it's really hard with economic regulation, with environmental regulation, rather to build new housing, new construction, there are people who massively benefit from that, from there being a scarcity of housing, because it makes the value of their property go up. So keep voting for the liberals who are

never going to touch California's environmental policy. They'll keep voting for the politicians who keep making all these grand pledges of basically they're going to subsidize demand, they're never going to increase supply, because that allows their property values to stay super duper high. I'm convinced there are people who look at the totally screwed up nature of California where we're shoving out middle class, where everyone's going to be either poor or super rich, and the middle class is

going to shrink and shrink and shrink and shrink. And there are some people, the people who are have the most impact on guiding the course of politics locally and statewide, who not only don't care, they actually in some cases directly benefit from it. When we return, are Haitians actually eating dogs? Maybe we're asking the wrong questions here. Next on the John Girardi Show, let's get to the most important issue in election twenty twenty four? Are Haitians eating

dogs or not? Didn't think this was something I'd have to debate, but it shows how I really think we're gonna Trump's gonna lose. I really think he's gonna lose. I might be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I don't want Kamala Harris to win, but I think he's gonna lose. I think he's gonna lose because of crap like this this whole Are Haitians eating dogs? Is it bad that enormous unregulated numbers of immigrants are coming in where we've made a total mockery of the asylum system where we

can't even make legit. Basically, Biden has so radically altered the system that we can't really make as meaningful distinction between illegal alien versus legal alien anymore, because Biden basically gave all these people who are coming in claiming asylum, said, okay, well come into the country and we'll set your court date for your asylum hearing, you know, four years from now, and we'll surely never see those people again. So these

people basically have parole. So there are they technically illegal aliens? Not really, But we've added in millions and millions and millions of people, including not just people from Latin America but China, tons of Chinese nationals and people from all over the country realized that there was this free ticket into the United States as long as you came in through Mexico and did you know, X, Y and Z steps,

you could get in with no vetting whatsoever. You know, here we are, we just you know, nine to eleven was yesterday. Here we are just relatively speaking, not that far from nine to eleven. It was, you know, twenty three years ago. And again I don't mind immigration, but you know what I like with immigration is doing as much of a criminal background check on someone coming into

the country as their country's law enforcement system affords. We're not doing it, And there's no way that our immigration services have any measure of confidence that the people they're letting in don't have extensive criminal records aren't coming. And that's the thing with so much rhetorics surrounding immigrants, it's that conservatives this is probably a character of the conservative position,

but conservatives basically can get painted into a corner. Say you think all immigrants are criminals, and you think all immigrants are criminals, All immigrants are you know, eating their neighbors, cats, All immigrants are terrible. But then on the left it's these people are hard working, they're just trying to chase the American dream, just like you. They just want a better life for themselves. And this country was built on immigration. And the reality is, yeah, the people coming in are

probably a mixture of both. There are probably a lot of people coming in who want a better life and want to work and want to have better opportunity for themselves. But when you have absolutely no real being of the people coming in, you are certainly letting in at least a decent percentage of people who are here to do bad stuff, bad people who want to do bad stuff, and or who can't really meaningly contribute to our society.

I mean, if, okay, if X number of people, which is this enormous number of people worldwide, want to come and live in America, and maybe it's ten percent of X, I'll just take a random number. Point one X is what we can actually sustain as far as social services, economically, having jobs available for them, you know, having housing for them, blah blah blah blah blah. Then maybe we can be too in who constitutes that point one x? But no we're not. We are letting people in on the basis

of did you walk to a checkpoint? And this is what I hate about the way in which the debate went on Tuesday is Trump bringing up the immigrants eating cats thing, which is, first of all, the immigrants eating cats thing. You only know about it if you a listen to a ton of talk radio or are hanging out on Twitter all day, if you're not in that group.

And guess what all the undecided voters in Pennsylvania, the twenty thousand stupidest Pennsylvanians that you have to convince to vote for you, And that's how our whole democracy will swing is on the twenty thousand, the opinions of the twenty thousand stupidest Pennsylvanians, who somehow are still undecided between Donald Trump, this figure that's been in American life for like fifteen years now, I'm pretty sure we should all

know what we think about him. At this point. The twenty thousand stupidest Pennsylvanians are not listening to talk radio all day, and they're not on Twitter. They've never heard of this Haitian immigrants eating cats thing. So Trump brings it up, and then that becomes the argument that becomes the debate. Our Haitian's eating cats are not in some

town in Ohio, and jd. Van says, I've gotten a bunch of calls to my office saying they're eating These people are saying there's no evidence that Haitians have higher rates of violent crime. Bla blah blah blah, And we get into this little nitpicky debate about something totally irrelevant to the central problem. And Trump is squandering this issue where up until now he's had much better favorability ratings

than Kamala Harris, namely immigration enforcement. Whether Haitians are eating cats is totally irrelevant to this broader discussion The chief problem is the Biden administration changed the rules for how asylum seekers are being processed. He let in millions of people with basically no vetting whatsoever. Many of them are probably decent, okay people, but we have no way of knowing. And when you let people in with absolutely no vetting,

criminals aren't stupid. Criminal organizations aren't stupid. They see a weakness like that and they exploit it. Of course, it's being of course that is being used by people hostile to the American way of life. But instead, and this is what drives me craziest, I think Trump is listening to taking advice from Laura Lumer. There's a video of her walking off of Trump's airplane that he flew to the debate with. There's reports coming out that she was

helping him, coaching him up before the debate. Laura Lumer, who, for those who don't know who she is, is a total lunatic. This Twitter based Trump obsessive Trump fan girl who basically pumps out conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory, just for engagement, just for clicks. She's completely insane, And Trump is listening to people like this like this, is such a winnable election, and yet we pick these idiotic strategies of you know, we basically are able to

please nobody. We picked the stupidest way possible of engaging on the immigrant stuff, which is to make some not one hundred percent substantiated claim about Haitians eating cats, which if that's happening, I mean it's bad. I guess it's symptomatic of maybe we're letting in too many people who aren't assimilating in certain communities, certain places. But that's not the main issue. The main issue is the tens of over ten million people who were let into this country

with very little vetting. That's it. That's the beginning, middle, and end of the argument. It's indisputable. You just repeat that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris changed my administration's policies on admitting asylum seekers. They let in. I think the numbers are approximately twelve million people into this country with basically no vetting. We have story after story after story about people who are in the country unlawfully committing all kinds

of crimes. This is unacceptable, This is a national security risk, and it needs to stop. Vote for me. That's it. That's all you got to say. But no, we turn it into some ven some like bizarre like some bizarre contest about whether or not Haitians ate a duck or ate somebody's cat in Ohio. I don't care, it's not real. I knew a grad student at Notre Dame who ate a goose. Like, yeah, it's bad, it's antisocial. But that's

not the main problem with the immigration system. It's not with people eating cats, which, as weird as it is, as bad as it is, and maybe as criminal as it is, is not the main thing we're concerned about. What we're concerned about is maybe they're Chinese communist spies were let into this country. Maybe they're terrorists from al Qaeda or from the Taliban who waltzed into this country and are getting ready to set up the next nine to eleven. That's the thing we should be worried about,

not Haitian immigrants eating cats. It's the stupidest news cycle ever, and the liberals want it to be the news cycle. They are loving the debate over Haitian cats. Why because it makes Trump look like a total lunatic eating cats? What are you talking about? And then and that's it. They won't report on it, they won't dig into it. They're not gonna do any journalistic work to show that Trump is right. If he is right, No, Trump's gonna look like a lunatic if he keeps talking about this crap.

And again, he's taking advice during this campaign from total morons like Laura Lumer. Will compromise on all the pro life stuff because oh, those pro lifers, they're political dunces. They're such political, so politically naive, they don't realize their issues unpopular. Let me talk about eating cats like right,

for God's sake, it's the stupidest jeez. Louise and I have to temper all of this by saying, again, Donald Trump has won one more presidential election than I have, and I recognize I can kind of see his attitude as like I I gotta as me, I gotta run as me. Okay, I get it, but just get rid of loser idiots like Laura Lumer from your circle. Gosh, it just drives me nuts that because I see like he's making it more possible for Kamala Harris to be president.

This feels more and more like the twenty twenty election. I don't know it completely frustrates me that whether or not Haitian immigrants ate a cat, that's a bigger issue in America now than twelve million people who got let into the country with no vetting. When we return, Fresno State is added to the PAC twelve starting in twenty twenty six. That is next on the John Girardi Show. So good news, bad news are into different news. We'll

figure it out. In this segment, Fresno State is officially going to join the PAC twelve conference starting in twenty twenty six. The conference announced Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, and Fresno State are all going to join. So is this a good thing? I mean, obviously it's not as good a thing as it would have been. You know, three years ago, when the PAC twelve still had members like USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, et cetera. They all fled to the big ten. So I mean, what

is the PAC twelve. I mean it's not I mean, it's not your grandfather's PAC twelve, is not your dad's Pack twelve. It's not the PAC twelve of last year. So is it a good thing? I mean, I guess it's a good thing. You know, certainly conferences are realigning a lot right now. The Mountain West was going to eventually, you know, I think this was inevitably going to happen. But I guess my thought is that this is much more a lateral move than a move up. The Mountain

West conference. Basically, it's best teams, it's best programs, which are Fresno, Presno State, San Diego State, Boise State. They get added in, you know, so, and the PAC twelve is basically now all the worst teams that used to be in the PAC twelve's a couple of other people. And I think it's now at a point where there's the Big ten, the SEC, kind of the ACC and then everybody else and kind of the Big twelve and

everybody else. So I don't know, I think the PAC twelve becomes a mid major conference basically, and so I think this is a bit more of a lateral move from frisenes State. But you know, good for them. I think this will be a slightly better conference than the Mountain West. So good for Fresen State. They're moving on up. That'll do it for John g already show see you next time on Power Talk.