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How to end California’s cost-of-living craziness

To put a modern California twist on the old Bill Clinton line about the U.S. economy: “It’s the cost of living, stupid.”

As masseuse Liz Angeles wrote in The California Post on Wednesday, residents of LA work twice as hard for half as much.

Life in Los Angeles, and indeed in California, is a constant financial trial for millions of residents.

The high cost of living is perhaps the defining issue here.

So: How did we get to this point? And what can be done?

To start, elected officials in LA and Sacramento, starting with Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, need a reality check — as do state legislators and members of the city council and board of supervisors.

Bottom line: At all levels of California government, public officials need to reverse course on taxing, spending and regulating.

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We got here in large part because our “public servants” tax, spend and regulate with abandon — driving up the cost of nearly everything we do, buy, or consume.

Consider their current practice:

Rather than economizing and saving taxpayers money, they constantly ratchet up spending, in part to benefit their union and nonprofit cronies.

Rather than stretching existing tax dollars, they are ever-eager to slap new taxes on hard-working Californians. (Exhibits A and B: Los Angeles County has a sales tax hike in the works, and Sacramento stands by as SEIU-United Health Care Workers pushes a billionaire tax that has already pushed an estimated $1 trillion in wealth out of state.)

Rather than adopting sensible energy policy, they pump up gas taxes and peddle climate restrictions that do next to zero to slow global warming — while causing Californians’ gas and energy bills to soar.

Rather than crack down on fraud, they shrug it off — or worse, enable it — to the point where the federal government has to come in and clean up the most blatant abuses of public programs.

Rather than letting markets work and consumers choose, they clap restrictions on everything from homes to toilets to vehicles, driving up costs and forcing all of us to pay more for less.

And the list goes on.

Beleaguered Californians everywhere — much like our guest columnist Liz Angeles — are fed up.

Public officials at all levels of government need to get the message: We can’t take anymore.

So please, stop layering on new taxes. Peel back regulations. End the energy fantasies. Cut the pork to unions, nonprofits and climate opportunists.

It was a good slogan then, and its a good (adapted) slogan now: “It’s the cost of living, stupid.”

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