The blue state blues

 PJ Media:

The late, great conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke said of socialism, "To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze."

P.J. hated socialism because no one was in charge of anything. The "government" rarely "governed" anything except that which could be manipulated into benefitting the governing elite. The rest was farmed out to the "non-profit/industrial complex," which doesn't care about maintaining what it's managing because there's no incentive to do so.

Think about Zohran Mamnani's "government-run grocery stores." Chicago "studied" the matter, paying a non-profit group that paid a for-profit consultant company, which determined it wouldn't work. 

The only "city-run" grocery store in the country is in Kansas City. The problem is that it's not run by the city. It's run by a for-profit subsidiary that needs gobs of cash from the city to stay open.

Writing in Persuasion, Jacob Savage relates a trip he took to Salt Lake City, where he took his kids to Wheeler Farm in Murray, Utah. The 75-acre farm was originally homesteaded in the late 1800s and turned over to Salt Lake County in the 1970s.  

It was jarring, in the best way, to see a public space so well-run. Admission is free. Kids walk right up to cows, goats, sheep, and chickens. They climb on old tractors, go on wagon rides, race through open fields.

After a busy morning, we bought $2 Uncrustables and $1.50 popsicles from the gift shop and sat for lunch. At one point, my 3-year-old wandered over to a chicken coop that had been converted into a playhouse. He was inside when a mom rushed over—her son was bleeding. He’d been nicked by a loose plank that had come down in the coop.

The mostly college-aged staff ushered the kids out and surveyed the damage. Coming from Los Angeles, I expected some level of generalized freaking out: yellow tape, an incident report, something. Instead, what happened was even stranger: one of the employees wandered out to find a nail gun and returned to fix the problem plank on the spot.

 A week later, Savage took his kids to the city-owned Los Angeles Zoo. The contrast was beyond shocking.

Admission for the family of four was $98. "Exhibits that are supposed to be open are inexplicably closed. Every fifty feet there’s another kiosk that’s boarded up, another sign for something that’s been “coming soon” for years," writes Savage.

...

Indeed, blue cities create a culture in which public employees are not directly responsible for "solving problems" or managing entities. That's not in their job description.

"And until Blue State governance takes joy in providing things for its citizens—until every opportunity to demonstrate competence isn’t understood primarily as something to be triaged, or outsourced—regulatory reform will be just another band-aid," writes Savage.

...

Liberals are not good at running anything, including cities.  That is one of the reasons many blue cities are losing population and red states are growing their population.

Outmigration Is Killing Illinois, and Democrats Can't Fix It

...

This is an eloquent portrayal of a state that is failing. They have driven the productive away, and a society can not survive without the productive, despite what Democrats say. And the very notion that things like horrendous taxation don't matter is laughable. People vote with their wallets, and when necessary, they vote with their feet.

“Some of our friends on the left and some of our Democratic friends like to say, ‘Well, taxes don’t matter that much. They don’t really have an impact.’ You’re looking at the impact of taxes right here,” Moore said.

Illinois has among the highest property taxes in the country. The state also has the the second highest gas tax in the country. Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Illinois’ record-high $55.2 billion spending plan for the current fiscal year was the state’s seventh straight balanced budget. The spending increase included several tax increases and changes in corporate taxes.

On a call with members of the media about the Unleash Prosperity report, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said outmigration means fewer customers.

“And when those people take their money with them and that money represents a disproportionate amount of your state’s economic activity, you’ve got a major challenge,” Youngkin said.

... 

 At some point, the officials of these states should realize that their confiscatory taxes are counterproductive.