Steve Malanga wrote a thought-provoking opinion piece in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal entitled How California Drives Away Jobs and Business.  It includes some pretty discouraging statistics:

  • In a 2011 poll of business executives and owners, 84% said they wouldn’t consider starting a business in California if they weren’t already there.
     
  • For several years, California has ranked last in Chief Executive Magazine’s poll about states’ business environments.
     
  • From 1994 to 2008, California ranked 47th in net jobs created according to data from National Establishment Time Series.
     
  • Two Cal State University Finance professors, Sanjay Varshney and Dennis Tootelian, concluded in a 2009 study that the state’s regulatory climate costs California $493 billion per year and drives down  overall employment by 3.8 million jobs.

No reasonable person is suggesting that the state do away with its regulations so as to allow corporations to pollute or abuse employees.  But do politicians understand the costs in terms of jobs, tax revenue, etc. to having a regulatory environment that’s viewed as exceedingly antagonistic to businesses?