While I respect where you are coming from, the data doesn't match your perceptions. California's governance is exceptional despite the corruption. Here's some data,

- One of the best ways to match models to reality is to see if they have predictive power, for some time now people have predicted that California is doomed, see, “California doom: Staggering $54 billion deficit looms,” https://apnews.com/article/48a9ce5ad7494d22ec0c42ac46ae9baf , but the surplus that year was a $75 B.

- Since 2006, California has cut the rate maternal mortality and women dying in childbirth by 65%, the national maternal mortality rate has increased by 50% to 70%. The impact this one data point has on people's lives cannot be overstated. More women are dying in the States at a rate 6x that of Nordic states and 3x that of Canada, and it's a trend that's increasing for most of the US. Except California. This data is from 2018, but the graph is simply staggering, https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2017/05/propublica-mortali... and https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/220510134152-hponly20...

- Despite the reduction due to the pandemic, California has the longest lifespan in the US for men. If you are born in California, as a man, you will live to 78.4 years on average as compared to 71.7 years (and falling) in West Virginia, 76 years in Texas, 72.6 years in Kentucky, and 75.7 years in Texas.

On average, you will live 6+ to 3+ years longer than most US States if you're born in California. The same is true for women. Data, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-1-508.pdf

This is roughly the same amount you would get from an intervention such as lifelong/prolonged caloric restriction, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014770/

- Between 2015 and 2019, California's economy grew at a rate of 22%. For comparison, China was 26%. Germany, 15%. Japan, 16%. In December of 2021, California added 42% of all jobs in the US. Nearly half of all new jobs in the country for that month were created in California. Alone. https://mehabe.com/2021/06/14/among-the-five-largest-economi... | https://www.gov.ca.gov/2022/03/11/californias-economic-recov...

- California has the highest rate of income growth in all of the US. Even when compared to Texas. Here's a comparison of the two states,

Despite a slight decline in population, California's per capita income grew at a significantly greater rate than Texas,

"Between 2000 and 2020, California’s PCI was significantly greater than both Texas and the U.S. as a whole (BEA, 2021). Both disparities grew substantially from 2015 to 2020. For example, while California’s per capita income was 20 percent higher than Texas’ in 2015, this gap surged to 30 percent just 5 years later. And this was not simply a COVID-induced phenomenon, as the rising disparity was apparent in 2019 even before the pandemic."

Between the two states, the government invests substantially more on the public in California, even when adjusting for state revenue,

"A large part of this difference between California and Texas, however, is driven by differences between the two states in GDP per capita, which is 22 percent higher in California ($79,405) than in Texas ($65,077) (BEA, 2020). Even adjusting for this, state and local governments loom much larger in California, with their spending representing 20.3 percent of the state’s GDP versus just 15.4 percent in Texas. By this metric California’s public sector is about one-third larger than in Texas, implying that the greater per capita GDP in California explains almost half of its higher state and local spending."

From the data the study concludes that this spending leads to, "it appears higher government spending in California leads to stronger student performance, better environmental and health outcomes, and safer neighborhoods than in a small government state such as Texas"

Full study, https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/tale-tw...

- We can contrast California against states like Kansas, where they've implemented low taxes and cut public spending as a part of the "Kansas Experiment", the state has gone almost bankrupt and there has been no subsequent increase in GDP growth. The experiment is widely regarded as a failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment

There are areas where California doesn't do well, such as homelessness, but by every conceivably metric, California has exceeded other US states. Surely some of this has to do with governance.

If I was to sum up my position here, it's this. You get what you pay for.