![]() ![]() Ron DeSantis, a Republican, never tires of making. Unemployment is currently higher in California (8.3 percent in April, the last month with available data) than in Florida (4.8 percent) - a point that Florida Gov. Yet unfortunately for Newsom, these aren’t the only economic indicators worth considering. Winkler recently explained, “The Golden State has no peers among developed economies for expanding GDP, creating jobs, raising household income, manufacturing growth, investment in innovation, producing clean energy and unprecedented wealth through its stocks and bonds.” In part as a result, Sacramento now boasts a record $80 billion surplus, and Newsom last month was able to announce the biggest state tax rebate in U.S. states with more than 5 million residents, they found that the ones with more “stringent” COVID rules tended to have “both better health outcomes as measured by infection rates and better economic outcomes as measured by GDP growth.” When the authors of the UCLA report examined all 24 U.S. “Florida actually had worse economic outcomes over the last year than the state of California.”Īnd it wasn’t just California. “California’s economy outperformed those other states’ because of health policies,” Newsom said Monday. According to a new report from economists at the University of California, Los Angeles, for instance, California’s gross domestic product, or GDP - the standard measure of economic growth - actually shrank by less than Florida's or Texas’s in 2020. ![]() ![]() (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)īusiness trends are encouraging. People wearing protective masks in San Francisco on Thursday. Soon private businesses will be able to require Californians to show their vaccine cards - digital or physical - to prove they don’t need a mask.īut while the public health benefits of California’s more gradual approach to reopening are clear, the economic picture is more muddled - at least so far. In Florida, each of these numbers is lower: 89 percent, 61 percent and 51 percent, respectively. A full 92 percent of California seniors have received at least one vaccine dose, as have 72 percent of adults and 59 percent of the state’s total population. Higher vaccination rates are also likely to leave California better prepared than Florida to weather a future spread of the dangerous Delta variant. Similarly, the current per capita COVID hospitalization and death rates in California are just a third of their corresponding rates in Florida. For California, this translates into a per capita average of 2 cases for every 100,000 residents, one of the lowest rates in the nation Florida’s case rate is four times as high. In comparison, Florida - a fellow large warm-weather state that opened indoor bars and restaurants at full capacity over the winter and effectively banned mask mandates in May - is averaging nearly twice as many daily cases. Today, California is averaging fewer than 1,000 new daily COVID cases for the first time since April 2020, down 98 percent from the state’s winter peak. The strategy has already paid off in terms of public health. Gavin Newsom during a news conference in San Francisco on June 10. “It is poised to come roaring back.”Ĭalifornia Gov. “It is because of our health-first focus that this state is not just poised to recover,” Democratic Gov. In other words, California has pursued a more measured approach to reopening than conservative critics would have it - one that sought to balance the need to get businesses back on their feet after last spring’s global collapse while also recognizing that the most effective way to lure customers and workers out of hibernation is by ensuring they feel safe from the virus itself.Īnd now state leaders and experts expect this approach to pay off. (Unvaccinated residents are still supposed to cover their faces indoors.) What changed on June 15 is that more Californians can now frequent these establishments at the same time - farewell, capacity limits - and vaccinated patrons will no longer be required by the government to keep their masks on. Indoor bars have been open since May so have amusement parks. Outdoor dining opened last summer, then closed during America’s holiday surge, then reopened in January 2021. Yes, California may have been the first state to lock down at the start of the pandemic - but it hasn’t been locked down in any real sense since May 2020. This mellow, you-can-go-your-own-way response to the official removal of pandemic restrictions stood in stark contrast to months of right-wing media distortions portraying California as a draconian police state where “lockdown” never ended. Signs at a mall in Monterey Park, Calif., on Monday. ![]()
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