Governor Newsom announces California will make its own insulin

High speed rail involve lots more private land use and local regulations.

I assume you are referring to property taxes, but undoubtedly any “dynastic” family is going to have more tax liability from income than from property value.

Despite adding an additional 1.0% tax to fund mental health, homelessness has only increased in California. Efforts to reduce prop 13 inflated property values are feeble at best. Senior and junior water rights, where senior land holders can extract as much water as they want over juniors, based on an arbitrary date chosen in law, have not been reformed. CalPers is very poorly funded compared to other states.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of California's success is due to government. Banning non-competes and funding a strong system of community colleges and state universities for example. But other states are 'kinda' adopting non-compete bans and the state has cut funding years ago to those institutions, which makes me question the value of my tax dollars when a house built just after WW2 costs over a million dollars, K-12 is below the national average, and the public universities here cost much more than well regarded ones in other states. The state is not dealing with it's problems.

I left a while ago and I feel better for it.

Edit: grammar and a few words.

Indeed, it is literally “incredible”. What passes for corruption in California wouldn’t even be worth noticing on the older states of the east coast, especially the north east. I’ve lived in both.

I believe the greatest risk to California’s continued prosperity is the lack of affordable housing (which I would associate partly with Prop 13, but also just general NIMBYism). There have been a lot of efforts in the past few years to move towards higher density but I think we’ll need to wait until the next administration to see if this pro-housing approach is going to stick.

A single doctor at a single hospital developed this theory and then tested it. There is a foundation which is partly funded by the state, but they just promulgate the ideas... it's up to the hospitals to do the mortality review and apply what they've learned there. There's really no fingerprint of recent government efficiency to be found here.

What connection is there between government efficiency and life span of citizens? This is a minefield of variables.

Aren't minimum wages significantly different between California and Texas? Wasn't this phased in around that time? How much of this increase is due to this?

We can contrast California to states like Idaho, which spend 2/3 of what California spends per student and yet gets far better outcomes than California does. California has the lowest rate of education attainment out of any state in the country.

The infrastructure is crumbling. New projects are consumed by consultant driven graft. Sacramento is generally paralyzed by special interests. The complete lack of action on homelessness is tragic for the absolute volume of human life just discarded on the side of the road. Gas prices are absolutely ridiculous and the state is hoarding tax dollars during grotesque inflation.

8 years ago.. I would have agreed, California may have been a little shabby, but it was still on a great track. Today I have far less faith in the state, particularly considering the Governor appears to be desirous of a presidential campaign and the state is about to be used as a prop in his endeavors.

Reddit user lists all the reasons why California policies lead to the best health and life expectancy outcomes in the United States: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/up7wei/uinconvenien...

> If I was to sum up my position here, it's this. You get what you pay for.

I lived in California for years before I moved to London 3 years ago. I agree that California does a lot of things better than some states and there's an element of "you get what you pay for." But I think that doesn't let California off the hook for the value they return on the money they collect.

Between federal tax, state tax, social security and all the zany other taxes (CA SDI, etc), the tax rate you pay in California is very close to what you pay in the UK or a lot of other European countries. If you own a home, add in yearly property tax which is similar to what you'd pay in UK council tax.

But in London, you get 100% free healthcare (including all medications at a nominal fee), fantastic public transit, weekly trash/recycling pick-up from your local council, extensive council housing to actually house low-income people, etc. The same money is getting more done. I'm not claiming it's perfect or can't be improved, but the services you get for paying roughly the same tax rate are significantly higher (and the same applies in many other cities in Europe).

I think a lot of people in the US don't realize that CA taxes are essentially at the same level as many countries in Europe. So I have at least a little sympathy for people who throw their hands up and move to a low tax, low service state like Texas when they feel like they aren't getting a European level of services for a European level of taxes.

I think some of the inefficiency in California stems from the proposition system where large pots of money are allocated to seemingly good causes but it ties the hands of government who are trying to manage the overall budget efficiently. The amount of propositions included in every voting cycle is comical and in my opinion it is just shifting the work of detailed governance onto the general public who has neither the time nor the expertise to decide on a lot of the issues presented at the level of detail required.

"Black Lives Matter but not if they have to build housing next to me" is a California meme.

See also Prop 13, a tax revolt, being the crux of a lot of California issues.

While government services can certainly be more efficient and cost disease is rampant, we first have to agree that the government should be providing the service in the first place (which we don't, countrywide)

SF spends more on homelessness than any other municipality, but still has rampant homelessness.

SF’s muni is one of the worst in the country in terms of reliability and speed but we have a muni budget that is equal to London per capita.

Most complaints in California isn’t on its ideology, but rather its incompetence at executing its ideology

It seems to me that California does both more economic redistribution via higher taxes and is more open in terms of accepting a wide variety of foreign immigrants, cultures and religions.

ftfy

There is some leftists in the US, i found them. Old hippies or young actives doing a lot of hiking/rock climbing/kayaking and playing music. They mostly don't engage in the two-party politics.

Regardless, the cost of living is the cost of living.

https://twitter.com/oboylemm/status/1541472199235710976?t=bD...

Regardless of what you think about how to manage going forward, it's hard to argue that current policies are working well. PG&E sells electricity to residential customers in Northern California at approximately 3x the national average price. By comparison, if you're in Oregon (right next door with similar climate, resources, and topography) your power is typically right around (or even slightly cheaper) than the national average. And it's less likely to go out in windy weather. As far as I can tell, PG&E is precisely the company you would expect to get out of the regulatory environment in which it operates (e.g., you guarantee fixed margin on opex and a larger fixed margin on capex, obviously the power company is driven to maximize costs and minimize maintenance). So I blame the regulators more than PG&E.

There is a product that can be made for $1 that is being sold for $100. They are going to make it and sell it for $2 and you can chose to buy it from their "startup" calinsulin inc for $2 or pay megacorp inc $100 for their one.

Shockingly megacrop inc. are crying that it is socialism to make only $1 and that noble capitalists like them are doing it right and making $99.

Now, if you closed the loop and used older insulins, you'd have good control and less issues since a computer would bear the cognitive load, but glucose control, especially in the outpatient setting, is ridiculously hard. If you think you can solve it though, give it a shot. It's a multi billion dollar market and a lot of lives you can improve.

However, many patents that are issued in association with a research grant include a clause that allows the government to use the patent without charge. I have no idea if any/many insulin patents are included in such clauses.

Medical devices are frankly a lot simpler than making new drugs. (I know they are still exceptionally challenging)

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

Whether or not it works remains to be seen. But driving down the price, both for the end consumers and California state insurance providers is the goal.

California has enough diabetics on Medicaid, etc that they can make a capital investment and lock in a less steep cost curve. They don’t need to pay taxes, can borrow at lower rates, and don’t need to make money.

Big players always do stuff like this when constraints exist. Walmart, Apple, Amazon are buying up ocean and air freight assets to skip the lines, for example.