Stop punishing success, Zo’s pricey lesson in socialism and other commentary

Cali watch: Stop Punishing Success

“California needs to roll back decades of control-freakery and abandon ongoing efforts to punish success,” thunders Reason’s J.D. Tuccille.

“Ever-higher taxes and always tighter regulations” have consequences: “lost jobs and a sluggish economy.”

A new report found that Cali’s share of the national economy has plunged from its 2021 peak and “is now stagnant at around 13.8 percent.”

And now the “exodus of high-income individuals has been accelerated by proposals for a 5 percent (and potentially higher) wealth tax”; “businesses are leaving along with people,” killing job growth.

Meanwhile, states with “lighter regulations, lower taxes, and greater affordability” have “become homes to people, employers, jobs, and prosperity.” Absent reform, Cali “will continue down the road of economic stagnation.”

From the right: Zo’s Pricey Lesson in Socialism

It took “decades to conclude that Marxist economics was more Groucho than Karl,” cracks The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.

“Perhaps Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s experiment in socialism in New York City will shorten that instruction time.”

Indeed, “Groucho Marx socialism is already on display” in his plans for city-run groceries, the first to be situated in a new, $30 million space supposedly typifying what Hizzoner has called “the warmth of collectivism.”

Stores won’t have to pay taxes or rent or even make a profit. But that will let them “undercut prices” at nearby private stores.

“This kind of collectivist competition isn’t what the other store owners would call warm.”

Meanwhile, as he plans to subsidize grocery stores, Mamdani’s also demanding tax hikes. “A socialist education is expensive.”

Higher ed: Universities Must Change To Survive

A report from Yale University observes that “high prices, opaque admissions processes, and declining academic standards” have fueled a drop in “trust in higher education,” notes the Washington Examiner’s editors.

Yale also admits that universities (like it) have become “intellectual and ideological echo chambers,” leaving them “out of touch” Americans and “out of step with its political currents.”

This “ideological imbalance” has intensified, as an increasing number of faculty nationwide “identify as liberal.”

Colleges “provide less and less value at higher and higher costs,” so “people are understandably reluctant to send their children to be brainwashed.”

These schools “will have to make sweeping changes” if they “expect to survive the political, economic, and technological tumult ahead.”

Conservative: Gov’s a Prisoner of Radical Fringe

New Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger’s “net approval since October has declined significantly among voters across income groups,” though she “took office less than three months ago after a blowout 15-percentage-point victory,” marvels Tim Murtaugh at The Washington Times.

She “campaigned on a pledge to focus on ‘affordability,’” but has “locked arms with leftists in the legislature and adopted their radical agenda.”

Her support for a controversial gerrymandering measure has “exposed” her “as a lying hypocrite who masqueraded as a centrist.”

Though the “media heaped praise” on Spanberger “as a model” of moderation, she has demonstrated that “there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat,” all of whom “are prisoners of the radical fringe of their party.”

Eye on the economy: How To Keep America Rich

“As uncertainty swirls around the global economic order, mounting public debt, and the future of immigration, something remarkable has happened,” cheers City Journal’s Allison Schrager: “productivity surged.”

However it’s measured, “productivity is central to prosperity.” Today, “the challenge for rich countries, including the United States, is sustaining productivity growth once labor and capital are largely fully deployed.”

The answer may be “artificial intelligence,” which looms “as a transformative breakthrough.”

True, the effect of AI on productivity may not be known for years: It may reward “those who adapt while displacing others.”

Yet, without a doubt, “productivity is central to our economic future” and will require “pro-innovation policies that keep the economy dynamic and adaptable.”

Developing those policies “is the surest way to raise productivity — and with it, long-term prosperity.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board