“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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California is Leading the Nation in the Wrong Direction
There is no denying the fact that California has been the trendsetter among states since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, and it picked up a head of steam in that regard following World War II. When I was a boy growing up in South Georgia, California more than any other state captured my imagination. One of my greatest joys as a father was taking my family out West to explore California and Arizona primarily.
Since then, things have gotten so bad in California that I don’t want any part of the state. I won’t even go there anymore.
Frequently, people who know me well ask me why I am willing to spend so much time in Israel, but I refuse to even set foot in California. The answer is simple. California is a decaying state that is making its way rapidly to the gutter. To me, California is like Sodom and Gomorrah. To me, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the epitomes of degradation and depravity. They are the 800-pound gorillas in the Golden State. Their influence on the state can be felt by everyone everywhere in the state, and it’s not a good feeling.
On top of that, California isn’t safe. In the mid-1980s when I took my family to California for the first time, we got up early one morning to drive from Los Angeles to San Diego on the Pacific Coast Highway for breakfast in La Jolla. That was long before GPS navigation systems were available in the United States. I couldn’t tell what the best route for us out of LA would be, so at about 5:00 AM, I spotted a police patrol car parked beside the road. I pulled up next to the patrol car, rolled down the window, and asked for directions.
The look on the officers’ faces was sheer terror. It took the driver of the patrol car several seconds to determine that we were not threats to them. Once he knew we are okay, he gave us the help we needed, but I realized that an edgy officer might have pulled a gun on us. That speaks volumes about safety in the LA area.
By comparison, I walk around Jerusalem day and night unmolested by anyone. If I need help or advice, I don’t hesitate to ask the police or the IDF. They are always obliging.
People who don’t know anything more about Israel than what they see on television and read in the media think Israel isn’t safe, but that is not correct. According to crime index statistics, Israel is safer than the United States, Canada, Sweden, Spain, France, Norway, Ireland, Italy, Belgium, Greece, New Zealand, and Australia. Those countries are considered “safe”, but Israel isn’t. In fact, all of them are far more dangerous than Israel even with Israel’s problem with terrorist attacks.
Out of the 137 countries ranked in the index from least safe to safest, Israel ranks 105. The United States ranks 56. Where safety is concerned, Israel and the United States aren’t even in the same league. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
According to Crime Index by City 2022 from least safe to safest, Jerusalem ranks 312, Los Angeles ranks 167, and San Francisco ranks 89. Again, Israel is much safer than the U.S. As I said, it’s not even close, and I’m speaking from experience in both places.
California is one of the most dangerous places to live in the U.S. That’s not my opinion. A recent report titled “California’s Vanished Dream, By The Numbers” makes that point crystal clear. Below are a few excerpts from the report:
Despite the state’s myriad advantages, research shows it plagued by economic immobility and inequality, crushing housing and energy costs, and a failing education system.
California is descending into something resembling modern-day feudalism, with the poor and weak trapped by policies subsidized by taxes paid by the rich and powerful.
Today the state suffers the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate in the United States. The poor and near-poor constitute over one third—well over 10 million—of the state’s residents according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
Los Angeles […] has one of the highest poverty rates among major U.S. cities.
30 percent of residents lack sufficient income to cover basic living costs even after accounting for public-assistance programs.
Two-thirds of noncitizen Latinos live at or below the poverty line.
“In California, there is this idea of ‘Oh, we care about the poor,’ but on this metric, we are literally the worst,” Stanford University’s Mark Duggan, principal author of an economic comparison of California with Texas, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Beyond massive homeless camps, crime has become so bad that the LAPD has warned tourists it can no longer protect them. San Francisco, meanwhile, suffers the highest property crime rate in the country.
Homelessness and crime increasingly dominate the state’s political discourse, particularly in these two [Los Angeles and San Francisco] deep blue bastions.
California also suffers the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state.
Silicon Valley now boasts its own underclass of those who clean its buildings and provide food service. Nearly 30 percent of its residents rely on public or private financial assistance.
San Francisco, the technology industry’s most important urban center, has experienced the most rapid growth in inequality among the nation’s large cities in the last decade.
Over the past decade more than 80 percent of California jobs paid under the median income, and most under $40,000 annually, a poverty wage in California.
California lags all peer competitors—Texas, Arizona, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington, and Colorado—in creating high wage jobs in fields like business and professional services, as even tech growth begins to shift elsewhere.
The state’s climate change policies, however well-intentioned, have had a particularly devastating impact on manufacturing. California’s “renewable energy” push has generated high energy prices and the nation’s least-reliable power grid, crippling an industry reliant on fossil fuels and a stable electric supply.
Even without adjusting for costs, no California metro ranks in the U.S. top ten in terms of offering well-paying blue-collar jobs, notes The New York Times.
California is home to six of the nation’s worst markets for first-time homebuyers.
It would take more than 100 years for the median-income household to save for a mortgage on a median-priced home in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or San Jose.
The state now ranks 49th in homeownership rate.
Since 1998, California has ranked, on average, 46th in 8th-grade reading and mathematics subject-area performance on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP).
Almost three of five California high schoolers are not prepared for either college or a career; the percentages are far higher for Latinos, African Americans, and the economically disadvantaged.
San Francisco, the epicenter of California’s woke culture, and site of the recent recall of several far-left school board members, suffers the worst scores for African Americans of any county in the state.
Michael Bernick, a former director of the state’s Employment Development Department, says “The culture for much of California, driven by state politics, is one of the benefits (and now guaranteed income), not a jobs strategy or expectation.”
California is leading the nation alright, but it’s leading the nation in the wrong direction. Statistics bear out that statement, but California politicians think they are the greatest things since sliced bread. I have walked around the two major urban hubs in California, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I don’t want to go back.
You don’t have to be a software engineer to understand why people who can afford to leave California are leaving. Why take chances? I’ll take Jerusalem any day of the week and twice on Saturday.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
