California's future isn't bright

"It used to be I'd go places and people would say, 'Where are you from?' I'd say 'California' and they'd be, 'Ah gee, aren't you lucky.' Now it's ridicule."
-- MERVIN FIELD

Mervin Field has been polling Californians since shortly after World War II. In fact, there may not be anyone alive who understands Californians better than the 88-year-old Field, who was interviewed in Saturday's Los Angeles Times.

He was here during the boom after the war, when the state's population swelled to 10.6 million in the 1950 census. He was here during the can-do governorship of Pat Brown, when most of the state's infrastructure was built.

And he's been here since, through Ronald Reagan, through Proposition 13 and all the boom-and-bust times until the current time. As of last year, there were 38.3 million people in California, and only 43 percent of them were non-Hispanic whites.

As usual, California leads the way in looking like the rest of America will look in 20 or 30 years.

And what it looks like is ... ungovernable.

Whether you want to blame it on too much spending, on too little taxation because of Prop 13 or on too many illegal immigrants, the fact is we don't have the money to pay for the government we want.

So we'll hit 40 million people soon and eventually 50 million. The hillsides will be covered with houses, and people will be living farther and farther out into the desert and eventually everything will fall apart.

Too many people, not enough water.

Too many students, not enough teachers.

Too many criminals, not enough police.

Yes, we will lead the way either into anarchy or into some sort of fascist state. Those who have the money will either leave or barricade themselves into walled enclaves, and everyone else will fight over limited resources and eventually try and storm those enclaves.

Anyone who thinks the future on the present course is bright is fooling himself. By the 1950s and into the 1960s, America had built maybe the most egalitarian free society in history. The middle class was thriving and so were the wealthy.

But the super-rich never stand still very long. Enough is never enough for them. If they've got $1 million, they want $10 million. If they've got $1 billion, they want $2 billion. They're the only ones who never seem to understand that we really are all in this together.

So bad things will ultimately happen, both here and in the rest of the country. Not because we couldn't have stopped them, but because too many people had too short-sighted a view and the folks cashing in truly did think it would last forever.

But damn, this used to be such a beautiful state.