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Gov. Gavin Newsom has embraced the “affordability” talking point in the wake of socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race — yet California lags the nation on that front, with inflation well above the national average.
Inflation is the result of real-world policies that drive up costs — and Golden State policies are toxic.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics collects consumer price index (CPI) measurements in 23 regions, reporting the info in staggered fashion every few months.
Of the five worst regions, three are in California:
- The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim region had year-over-year inflation of 3.3% in August.
- Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario had 3.5% inflation in July.
- And San Diego-Carlsbad had a whopping 4.0% inflation rate that same month.
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward had 2.5% inflation — lower, but still above the US median.
Contrast those figures with inflation in red states like Texas: The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington region had inflation of just 0.9%; Houston-Woodlands-Sugar Land was only slightly higher, at 1.1%.Inflation is a blue-state problem (New York-Newark-Jersey City suffered a 3.2% annual rate as of August) — and especially a California problem.
Localized price hikes are the result of local factors: regulations that make housing more expensive; taxes that drive up gas prices; green energy mandates that raise utility bills; and state grants that spread cash without solving the problem of poverty — where California is also first in the nation.
Making everything “free” or heavily subsidized doesn’t solve the problem, but rather makes it worse:
Newsom this year had to stop admitting illegal migrants into Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, because it was driving the whole system toward insolvency.
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Liberal columnist Joe Garofoli, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, warned that the Democrats’ new focus on “affordability” could “doom” Newsom’s presidential ambitions, since “California is 13% more expensive than the country overall as of 2023.”
Newsom’s only hope, he argued, is that “Democratic voters starving for a leader” overlook the gov’s record in office and buy his “promises about the future.”
Belatedly, state and local California officials are enacting laws that make it easier to build housing — usually, high-rises near transit hubs. Even the feared Coastal Commission, under withering public criticism, is starting to relax its restrictions.
But that doesn’t reduce the expense of “green” construction mandates or local transfer taxes. And dense development creates its own new costs.
Inflation is the result of high-tax, high-regulation policies the governor has championed. That’s why California, the bluest of blue states, is losing more people than any other — and why “affordability” looks like a losing issue for Newsom.