Are you arguing that Alabama would be better off imitating California's policies? Has it occurred to you that California has some natural advantages, none of which are attributable to its governance, that don't generalize to other states?

I'm arguing that if those policies were as awful as economic conservatives continually say, the West Coast and Northeast wouldn't be the best economies in the world.

There's clearly something positive to be gotten from investments in infrastructure and education.

You do realize that the economies in all of those places pre-date the policies they have now by a large margin, right?

California has, and always will be the gold rush state... taxes aren't going to change that.

Those policies have been in place since at least the New Deal, longer depending on how you want to quantify them.

If empiricism can't convince you, nothing can. Why even read my posts?

And the gold rush started in the 1840's, the NYSE was founded in the late 1700's.

What was that about empiricism?

Empiricism is believing the data.

The west coast and northeast have had a hundred years to fall apart because of their terrible liberal policies. They're doing great. The south and mountain west are much less economically impressive, despite their 'business friendly' policies.

So you've explained away 2 with anecdotes superior to data. 48 to go. Get started.

Also, by crediting the gold rush 150 years ago as being more relevant to California's current-day economy than it's horrible liberal policies, you're essentially saying that the actual policies don't matter.

The point of the article is that California's government is wasteful and the state horribly mismanaged. That people still find a way to make successful businesses here doesn't refute that point.

I've been using Straight Talk for a few months now with no regrets. The Nexus 4 is a good match for Straight Talk since LTE isn't available on the network (ST only provides HSPA+).

Note, the data plan isn't truly unlimited. AFAICT the company will simply terminate your account if you regularly exceed 2GB/month.

I disagree. If you don't like the external costs of a particular form of energy you can tax it directly. Taxing things you don't want is different than subsidizing particular companies offering particular alternatives (i.e. picking winners and losers) since it does not favor one solution over another. Government should act as referee, not venture capitalist.

One irony to Tesla is that while they do benefit from loan programs they would have been much better off if GM and Chrysler had been allowed to fail. As it is now Tesla has to compete with companies with strong government support.

I said the market fails to pick the efficient winners and losers. I wasn't advocating for a particular form of addressing that problem.

Also, I'd arguing that taxing a particular form of energy is equivalent to picking a loser.

Taxing something in proportion to its external costs isn't picking a loser, it's levelling the playing field. OTOH, subsidizing particular manufacturers of solar panels or electric cars puts all other alternatives at a disadvantage.

BTW, you've failed to substantiate your claim that the market fails to pick efficient winners and losers. How would you even define "efficient" without appealing to the marketplace?

> Taxing something in proportion to its external costs isn't picking a loser, it's levelling the playing field

Clever rhetorical trick.

> BTW, you've failed to substantiate your claim that the market fails to pick efficient winners and losers. How would you even define "efficient" without appealing to the marketplace?

It's not a claim that requires substantiation, it's common knowledge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure#Externalities

It's also common knowledge that govts don't actually handle exernalities all that well. In fact, they often make things worse.

And then there's the whole "regulatory capture" thing.

Govts fail all the time.

I don't disagree with those things, but the meme "government shouldn't pick winners and losers" doesn't capture any of those points. In the debate, Romney said in the same spiel that the free market always works better.

> Romney said in the same spiel that the free market always works better.

And he's right because the free market has far more diversity. To put it another way, govt is pretty much the definition of systemic risk.

The free market has folks doing lots of different things. Some think that electric cars are the way to go while others stick with gas. Still others go with compressed air.

Govts don't make diverse bets and they're a lot slower to change course when things don't work (because the folks benefiting from the current plan aren't paying its costs).

Yes, "all the wood behind one arrow" can be more efficient, but only when everything works out, which is not all that often.

"Let 1000 flowers bloom" works much better in the real world.