California: Will it become a failed state?
“Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth-largest economy in the world, but its state government is issuing ious, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?”, an article in the Observer asks.
TheTrumpet.com has kept a relatively close watch on California over recent years due, in part, to its significance as a lead indicator of the direction of the rest of the country. As goes California, so goes the United States.
And the indicator that is California is becoming increasingly negative. As the Observer writes:
[T]he state that was once held up as the epitome of the boundless opportunities of America has collapsed. From its politics to its economy to its environment and way of life, California is like a patient on life support. At the start of summer the state government was so deeply in debt that it began to issue ious instead of wages. Its unemployment rate has soared to more than 12 percent, the highest figure in 70 years. Desperate to pay off a crippling budget deficit, California is slashing spending in education and healthcare, laying off vast numbers of workers and forcing others to take unpaid leave. In a state made up of sprawling suburbs the collapse of the housing bubble has impoverished millions and kicked tens of thousands of families out of their homes. Its political system is locked in paralysis and the two-term rule of former movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger is seen as a disaster—his approval ratings having sunk to levels that would make George W. Bush blush. The crisis is so deep that Prof. Kevin Starr, who has written an acclaimed history of the state, recently declared: “California is on the verge of becoming the first failed state in America.”
Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20 percent, the Observer reports. California’s schools are ranked 47th out of the nation’s 50 states. Its government-issued bonds are rated just above “junk” status.
Economically, the article goes on,
Much has been made globally of the problems of Ireland and Iceland. Yet California dwarfs both. It is the eighth-largest economy in the world, with a population of 37 million. If it was an independent country it would be in the G-8. And if it were a company, it would likely be declared bankrupt.
California is home to one in four of the nation’s mortgages that are “under water”—where the homes are worth less than the mortgage. In the Central Valley town of Merced, houses have lost 70 percent of their value. Two politicians have requested that their districts be labeled disaster zones because of the economic impact of the housing crisis.
Despite the dreadful state that California is in today, there are those who hold out hope that the state, once again, will become a beacon of hope for the rest of the country. For example, Anthony “Van” Jones, who is pushing a transition to a “green economy,” says, “This is a new time for a new direction to grow a new society and a new economy.”
Such aspirations, however, are in vain. There is in fact a very real reason why California is in the state it is. God’s blessings on the United States—and California in particular—have been removed. Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy details why California, and the rest of America, was so blessed to start with—and why those blessings have been taken away.
