California is notorious for its burdensome regulations and difficult business climate, and its treatment of the insurance industry is no different. The state earned a D+ grade (ranked 44th among the states) in the R Street Institute’s 2024 Insurance Regulation Report Card, including placing dead last in the Underwriting Freedom category.

The root of the problem goes back nearly 50 years. In 1979, the California Supreme Court found in its Royal Globe Insurance Co. v. Superior Court ruling that a person injured due to negligence could sue not only the other party but also that other party’s insurance company. As a result, auto liability claims exploded and, not surprisingly, the costly litigation and increased settlements resulted in a substantial increase in auto insurance premiums.

In an attempt to combat the auto insurance cost increases, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 103, with just 51 percent of the vote, in 1988. The measure mandated a 20 percent rate cut and required future rate increases to first be approved by the insurance commissioner. California is one of just six states to maintain such a “prior approval” requirement. Prop. 103 also provided that “public intervenors” could file objections to proposed rate increases on behalf of consumers (and recover fees from the applicant insurance company for their efforts).

But, as is invariably the case when government intervenes in markets and imposes price controls, the cure was worse than the disease. Losses have increased substantially in recent years, particularly due to a number of severe wildfires and significant increases in residential construction costs, yet the state has prevented rates from rising enough to reflect actual risk, prompting numerous insurers—even some of the largest insurers in the state, such as State Farm, Allstate, Farmers, AIG and USAA—to cease or limit writing new policies, or refuse to renew existing policies, in California.

In many areas, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to obtain home insurance on the regular private market, prompting many to resort to California’s Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, an insurer of last resort that offers less coverage and higher premiums than other plans. Now that plan is becoming overwhelmed and is in dire financial straits.

Then there is the inevitable bureaucratic inefficiency. Delays in rate increase decisions are substantial and have risen markedly in recent years. The average approval time for homeowners insurance filings increased from a little over 100 days in 2012 to about a year in 2023. 

As a newly released report from the Independent Institute observes, “When regulations restrict the consideration of relevant information, some risk classes end up subsidizing others, distorting prices and creating inefficiencies and perverse incentives in the insurance market.” By keeping rates artificially low and encouraging insurers to insure more properties in high-risk areas, California is only setting itself up for repeated disasters and more tragic losses. 

Californians might be surprised to learn that homeowners insurance rates in the Golden State are actually less than the national average. Given that just about everything else is more expensive in California, this offers additional evidence that the state has suppressed home insurance rates well below free market rates.

If California is really so concerned with affordability for homeowners, it should start by getting rid of all the laws and regulations that restrict housing supply, drive up prices, and push people to move into high-risk areas on the periphery of development (i.e., the wildland-urban interface) in the first place. These include restrictive zoning laws, prevailing wage (union pay scale) laws, affordable housing mandates, California Environmental Quality Act abuses and excessive environmental and building code regulations.

To truly fix the mess that all this regulation and government intervention has created, California must eliminate rate approval requirements and repeal Proposition 103, which would require another ballot measure. By restoring a free and competitive market, insurers would have the confidence to start writing policies again, and price signals and risk models would more accurately tell us where we should build—and where we should not.

No one likes paying more for insurance, especially in a state that already demands such a high cost of living, but many Californians are coming to realize that higher-priced insurance is better than a broken system with no insurance at all.

Adam B. Summers is a columnist, economist, and public policy analyst, and a former editorial writer for the Orange County Register/Southern California News Group.

For starters, if you want more properties for housing, you need strong property rights protections. But that has not been the case in California, particularly in recent years. Extended eviction moratoriums are a case in point.

State and local prohibitions on evictions were rationalized largely due to other harmful government policies: the lockdowns and other stringent economic regulations imposed during the coronavirus pandemic. These laws, which contravened prior public health standards and responses to outbreaks, proved to be wholly ineffective, but they did succeed in destroying countless people’s livelihoods, stunting children’s educational growth and preventing people from visiting dying loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes. California’s COVID-19 laws were notoriously among the strictest in the nation.

After eliminating millions of people’s incomes unnecessarily, governments compounded the error by enacting eviction moratoriums so that people could not be evicted for failing to pay rent due to economic hardships experienced during the pandemic. Taxpayers were further sapped to pay for rental assistance programs to cover some of this lost income (which, again, government policies were largely responsible for creating).

But many landlords never received what they were owed, particularly since the programs generally required the cooperation of deadbeat tenants. In major metropolitan areas like Los Angeles County, San Francisco and Oakland, eviction moratoriums persisted three years after the onset of the pandemic, long after the vast majority of people returned to work. There are now billions of dollars in unpaid rent in California, and many landlords, who still must pay mortgages and property taxes even as their own incomes have disappeared, have lost their properties as a result, some of which also served as their personal homes.

It is hardly the only insidious policy that the state and local governments have adopted, however. In 2019, Assembly Bill 1482 limited rent increases to five percent plus inflation, up to a maximum of 10 percent; made it more difficult to evict tenants from certain types of properties; and required landlords to provide relocation assistance equal to one-month’s rent to tenants in “no fault” evictions.

A current proposal, Senate Bill 567, by state Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, sought to further restrict landlords’ control over their own properties by lowering the rent cap to 5 percent (even less than inflation the past two years); eliminating the existing exemption for single-family houses and condominiums; prohibiting eviction if the property owner or their relative wants to move into the unit and if the tenant is aged 60 years or older, disabled, or terminally ill; require that if there is an eviction to enable the owner or their relative to occupy the residence, the owner or relative must use the unit as their primary residence for at least three years; and mandate that if a tenant is evicted because the owner is withdrawing the property from the rental market, the property must remain off the market for at least 10 years. In addition to the obvious violations of private property rights and the right of contract, it should be noted that this would have led to discrimination against the elderly and disabled, as property owners would fear renting to them because then they may not be able to move back into their own properties in the future!

While the most radical provisions of SB 567 were ultimately stripped out this time, there is a strong likelihood that they will be pushed—and possibly adopted—next year or the year after that. The prospect hangs like the sword of Damocles over the heads of property owners in California.

It is no wonder then why, despite a significant housing shortage, developers and landlords are reluctant to provide more housing. If the state and local governments continue to demonize landlords, allow tenants to steal from them through unpaid rent and force them to endure costly and lengthy legal processes to get rid of nightmare tenants, more and more current and potential landlords and developers will rationally conclude that it just is not worth the hassle and risk—and the housing supply will shrink further, making the affordability crisis worse.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow with the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute. He is editor and coauthor of the policy report “Beyond Homeless: Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes, Transformative Solutions.”

Prop. 26 would allow sports betting but only in-person at Indian casinos and racetracks. It would also allow roulette and craps at Indian casinos. Curiously, betting on college teams would be allowed except for games involving California schools. So don’t expect to bet on the Bruins versus the Trojans, and that Cal-Stanford game would still be strictly verboten, too.

Prop. 27 would allow online sports betting but gambling businesses would have to partner with federally recognized Indian tribes, and those making wagers could not be located on tribal lands. Moreover, it would require sports betting companies to pay an initial fee of $100 million for a license, plus $10 million for renewal every five years. That would allow large online sports betting companies with deep pockets like DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM to operate but it would effectively shut out any smaller competitors.

Though sports betting has virtually no nexus to homelessness, Prop. 27 would require a portion of tax and license revenues, estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars, to be dedicated to state homelessness programs. That may sound like a lot, until you consider that there are an estimated 174,000 people experiencing homelessness in California and the average “affordable housing” unit costs $500,000 or more to build in the major cities—and construction projects in the Bay Area can average more than $1 million per unit.

Given the billions of dollars spent on homelessness at the state and local levels, the problem is not a lack of money but rather how that money is spent. California has put all its eggs in the “Housing First” basket. This approach seeks to get people off the streets immediately and place them in “permanent” housing (though many people end up cycling in and out of housing programs). It is coupled with a “harm reduction” approach that allows those who are suffering from substance abuse to continue using drugs.

But Housing First has been harshly criticized for enabling destructive behavior and failing to address the underlying reasons many people experience homelessness in the first place. Under a 2016 law, California state government only funds organizations that follow the Housing First doctrine, completely shutting out successful organizations that offer transitional housing or have the audacity to require program participants to be sober, hold a job or participate in services intended to treat drug and alcohol addiction, address mental illness or teach job and life skills that may be needed to escape homelessness.

In any case, Prop. 27’s homelessness funding provision smacks of a cynical attempt to buy votes based on an issue that the proponents know is at the top of many voters’ minds.

Many analyses of these ballot measures focus on whether sports betting is a “good” or a “bad” thing. But this ignores a more fundamental question: Should the government prohibit this voluntary behavior by consenting adults? After all, there are many things not banned by the state that are potentially harmful to us: consuming alcohol or marijuana, driving, having unprotected sex (and, given the outcomes of recent elections, one might even be tempted to include voting).

The state long ago ceded any moral argument against gambling when it allowed the practice for the California Lottery, which it enthusiastically encourages people to participate in through numerous advertisements, and on horse racing and at card rooms, not to mention the compacts allowing gambling at Indian casinos. The details of how and on what people gamble are almost immaterial (with the exception of the cruelty of animal fighting), and any restrictions that remain are logically inconsistent, if not outright hypocritical.

As 19th-century libertarian philosopher, writer and abolitionist Lysander Spooner observed, there is a big difference between vices and crimes. “Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property,” Spooner asserted in his 1875 essay “Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty.”

Given the voluntary nature of this form of entertainment and the state’s history of endorsing many other types of gambling, sports betting should absolutely be permitted in California. But the market should be open to all entrepreneurs who wish to establish such businesses—not just a select few. And the manner of how that should take place, whether in-person, online or both, is a decision best left to businesses and consumers—not dictated by politicians and special interests. Californians would be better served by ditching Propositions 26 and 27 and pressuring lawmakers to remove existing restrictions on gambling.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Oakland, Calif.-based Independent Institute.

Prop. 29 is yet another measure being pushed by Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. It would require a doctor, nurse practitioner or physician assistant to be on site at kidney dialysis clinics at all times and require reporting of dialysis-related infection information to the state every three months. Yet, federal regulations already require each clinic to have a board-certified physician serve as medical director, and infection information is already reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to qualify for Medicare reimbursement.

Prop. 29 would also require clinics to report to the state, and disclose to patients, if a physician owns at least a five percent stake in a clinic and would prohibit clinics from refusing to treat patients based on who pays for the services.

These provisions are unwarranted and largely redundant, but this is all a secondary concern to SEIU-UHW West anyway. While cloaked in language about patient safety, Prop. 29 is yet another cynical attempt by the union to impose financial pain on an industry that it has been trying for years to unionize. This initiative, like Prop. 23 in 2020 and Prop. 8 in 2018, would harm patients by raising dialysis costs and forcing many clinics to close. But the union does not care about patient welfare if it can score some additional members and union dues in the process.

The dialysis industry, sensing an existential threat, has spent more than $250 million fighting these three measures, according to Ballotpedia. This is a win for the union regardless of the election’s outcome, since it knows that a $10 million or $20 million investment can force the industry to fork out five or 10 times that amount to defend itself. That is $250 million that the industry had to waste on protection money due to thuggish union tactics—money that it otherwise could have invested in opening new clinics, adding staff, paying for equipment, or improving services for patients.

In their rebuttal to the argument against Prop. 29, the measure’s proponents decry the industry’s “massive” $561 million in profits earned in California in 2020. But with about 650 licensed clinics in the state, that works out to a mere $863,000 average profit per facility. Moreover, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the requirement to maintain a physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant on site would cost each clinic an average of “several hundred thousand dollars” per year—roughly 35 or 45 percent of its profits!

Sadly, it gets even worse. After driving some facilities to insolvency with pointless and costly mandates, Prop. 29 would force dialysis clinics to seek the government’s permission before closing or substantially reducing services. Should such a request be denied, facilities would apparently be forced to operate at a loss like some sort of indentured servant to the state.

As the Los Angeles Times editorial board observed, “The proponents says [sic] the proposition is intended to improve patient care. It’s an assertion they can’t back up with evidence. No other state requires a doctor on-site…. Nor is there evidence that the current arrangement has harmed patients.”

The initiative process was designed so that citizens can weigh in on important matters, not so that special interests can use it to extort concessions from their opponents. Californians should consider amending the initiative process along the lines of “vexatious litigant” laws that prevent people from repeatedly filing lawsuits in bad faith. The content of Prop. 29 is bad enough and would harm dialysis patients, the industry and taxpayers alike, but California voters should also vote against it to send a message that they are tired of this abuse of the initiative process and render an overwhelming defeat for Prop. 29.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Oakland, California-based Independent Institute.

Californians make up 12 percent of the nation’s population but account for 27 percent of the country’s homeless, 41 percent of those experiencing chronic homelessness, and 53 percent of the unsheltered homeless. In fact, 72 percent of those experiencing homelessness in California are unsheltered—the highest rate in the nation.

Given these sobering statistics, Californians may be surprised to learn that while homelessness has increased by more than 30 percent in the Golden State over the past decade, it has actually decreased by nearly 9 percent nationwide.

Something is amiss with California’s approach, but it certainly isn’t a lack of money. Billions of dollars are being spent on homelessness. More is being spent than ever before, but the number of those experiencing homelessness continues to climb.

The predominant approach favored by the federal government, California, and many other state and local governments is called Housing First. This emphasizes immediately placing those experiencing homelessness in “permanent” housing, with the idea that access to supportive services will follow. It also includes a harm reduction philosophy, which allows people to continue to abuse substances. In practice, however, oftentimes services are either not provided to or utilized by residents. As a result, the underlying traumas and issues that led to residents’ homelessness remain unaddressed and many return to the streets.

This is in stark contrast to the transitional housing approach, under which temporary housing is provided and residents are expected to stay sober or employed and participate in certain support services until they are ready to obtain permanent housing.

People become homeless for many reasons and respond to different approaches to resolve their situations. While Housing First may work for some, it is certainly not a one-size-fits-all solution. Yet, that is the approach California has taken. In 2016 the state made it official policy to only fund Housing First programs. Now, for example, a program that requires residents to remain drug-free is ineligible for state grants and put at a competitive disadvantage.

This permanent supportive housing is correlated with only a very small immediate reduction in the homeless population, however, and even this effect disappears after one year.

Using this approach, the state would have to add at least 12.6 beds to reduce the homeless population by one person in the long run. And because “affordable” housing in California is difficult to develop and can cost $500,000, $700,000, or even close to $1 million per unit, Housing First is unable to scale to the level needed to house all of those experiencing homelessness.

Even at the average going rate of $500,000 per unit for government-subsidized, low-income housing, providing new housing for the estimated 161,000 Californians currently experiencing homelessness would carry a price tag of more than $80 billion.

From a policy perspective, the relatively easy fixes should be correcting housing policies that reduce supply and drive up prices, making homes unaffordable for so many people and driving many into homelessness. These include relaxing zoning restrictions, eliminating urban growth boundaries, and getting rid of inclusionary zoning (affordable housing) requirements and rent controls.

In addition, development impact fees, which average about three and a half times the national average, should be minimized; the California Environmental Quality Act and other unnecessarily burdensome environmental regulations (like the solar roof mandate, which adds $10,000 to $20,000 to the cost of a new home) should be streamlined or eliminated; and prevailing wage (union pay scale) laws, which increase average construction costs for affordable housing by 10-25 percent, should be abolished.

Addressing homelessness for those with substance abuse or mental health issues is much more difficult, particularly for those who refuse help. Eliminating the Housing-First-for-all mandate would be a good start, though. California should be more open to alternative approaches to help the greatest number of people get off the streets and achieve their full potential.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is editor and co-author of the new report “Beyond Homeless: Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes, Transformative Solutions.”

Though not as sweeping as a similar measure (Proposition 10) which failed by about 19 points just two years ago, Prop. 21 would amend California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act to give local governments more freedom to impose rent control. Costa-Hawkins prevents local governments from applying rent caps on single-family homes and any housing built after January 31, 1995. It also allows landlords to increase rents to market rates once a tenant moves out of a rent-controlled unit.

Prop. 21 would allow cities and counties to establish rent control on residential properties more than 15 years old, though single-family homes owned by people with just one or two properties would be exempted. It would also allow local governments to prevent rent-controlled units from rising to market rates once a tenant moves out, but in such cases it would allow landlords to increase rents by a maximum of 15 percent during the first three years after a new tenant moves in.

Among economists—who have trouble agreeing that the sky is blue—there is virtual unanimity that rent control leads to both a lower quantity and a lower quality of housing. From Nobel laureates on the free-market conservative and libertarian sides like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek to liberal standard-bearer Paul Krugman, economists are in startling agreement that rent control is bad policy. Unfortunately, bad policy can still be good politics, particularly since there are many more renters than landlords available to cast ballots.

By placing a cap on rents below market rates, you create a condition where the demand for housing is greater than landlords and rental housing builders are willing to supply. The lower revenues available under rent control will force some rental housing suppliers to exit the business and dissuade future investment. In short, making rental housing less profitable will result in fewer housing units. So it is ridiculous for proponents of Prop. 21 to claim in their ballot argument that the measure “encourages the construction of new homes.”

Moreover, the housing that remains under rent control will be of lower quality. Due to the housing shortages created by rent control, landlords will have less incentive to invest in property maintenance and desirable amenities, since someone will always be clamoring for below-market-rate units and the reduced revenues under rent control will prevent property managers from benefiting from their investments. Renters could also expect landlords to try to recoup some lost revenue through new or increased security and pet deposits or various fees for rental applications, administration, keys, move-in/lock changing, amenities, parking, storage, and the like.

A lucky few will benefit from paying lower rent than they would in the absence of rent control but only by subjecting themselves to lower-quality housing and doing so at the expense of many others who will no longer be able to get rental housing at all.

Government regulations account for roughly one-third of the cost of a multifamily development, according to a June 2018 report from the National Association of Home Builders and the National Multifamily Housing Council. If Prop. 21’s proponents truly want to improve housing affordability, there are a number of things they could advocate:

• Eliminating or relaxing zoning laws and urban growth boundaries which limit the supply of developable land.
• Getting rid of project labor agreements and prevailing (union) wage laws that significantly increase the cost of building.
• Reducing high development impact fees, which can be as high as roughly $150,000 per single-family home, and exceed $60,000 per multifamily unit, in cities like Irvine and Fremont.
• Eliminate unnecessary building codes and environmental regulations—from the state’s solar roof mandate, which will increase the cost of new housing units by $10,000 to $20,000, to the California Environmental Quality Act, which encourages costly and lengthy lawsuits that kill housing projects and often have nothing to do with legitimate environmental concerns.

But it’s much easier to scapegoat “greedy landlords” and make a futile attempt to replace the law of supply and demand with a law based on wishful thinking that will spawn damaging unintended consequences.

By allowing local governments the ability to dictate the prices that landlords may charge in rent, Prop. 21 would violate the contract rights of willing tenants and willing landlords to agree to rent above the price cap, infringe upon the property rights of landlords and the builders of rental units by devaluing their investments, and ultimately make the housing crisis worse by creating a shortage of “affordable” rental units and spurring even greater price increases in non-rent-controlled units.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Oakland-based Independent Institute.

But even for a cynic like me, who has covered California politics for about 20 years, Proposition 23 is among the worst examples I have seen of putting politics over people’s very lives. In an attempt to financially hurt an industry it has tried unsuccessfully to unionize for years, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West has put forward yet another measure that would unnecessarily raise dialysis centers’ costs so much that a number of clinics would be forced to cut back services or close, disrupting the treatment of thousands of vulnerable patients suffering from kidney failure. In doing so, it is trying to use voters to do its dirty work and making a mockery of the initiative process.

If a ballot measure proposing mandates to micromanage dialysis clinic operations sounds familiar, it is because SEIU-UHW West put a similar measure (Proposition 8) on the ballot just two years ago. Voters recognized that, despite the union’s rhetoric about patient care, Prop. 8 was self-serving and would actually harm patients—and they soundly rejected it by a 60-40 margin.

And, just like Prop. 8 in 2018, every major newspaper in the state—from the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle to the Orange County Register and the San Diego Union-Tribune—has come out against Prop. 23, along with the California Medical Association, American Nurses AssociationCalifornia, Renal Physicians Association, and a wide variety of other physicians, nurses, patient advocacy and taxpayer groups (plus, of course, the dialysis companies that would be negatively affected).

The most significant provision of Prop. 23 is a mandate that a doctor be on site at all times, even though federal regulations already require each clinic to have a medical director who is a board-certified physician, and ensure that patients’ doctors visit them during treatment at least once a month. As the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office noted in its analysis of the measure (included in the Official Voter Information Guide), this provision “would increase each [chronic dialysis clinic’s] costs by several hundred thousand dollars on average.” Given that there are approximately 600 licensed dialysis clinics in California, this translates to hundreds of millions of dollars total. The LAO, further, notes that this will likely force some dialysis clinics to close and lead to higher health care costs—as dialysis clinics will be pressured to negotiate higher rates with insurance companies and Medi-Cal managed plans and the reduced access to care from clinic closures will force some patients to seek care at more expensive facilities, such as hospitals. This will add tens of millions of dollars of costs to state and local governments.

It is not as if there is some fundamental quality of care problem that Prop. 23 is trying to solve. In fact, dialysis centers in California receive more four-star and five-star marks for the quality of patient care from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services than the national average. They also score very well in patient surveys, with approximately 65 percent of clinics receiving four or five stars (and a mere 6 percent receiving one or two stars).

The state’s 80,000 dialysis patients, who, by all measures, receive better care, on average, here in California than in most of the rest of the country, should not be pawns to be sacrificed by union gamesmanship.

Proponents of Prop. 23 try to cloak their proposal in terms of aiding patient welfare, but it is really just a form of extortion and a disgusting abuse of the initiative process that would needlessly raise health care costs and harm thousands of dialysis patients across the state.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Oakland-based Independent Institute and a former editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register/Southern California News Group.

A silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic is that it has starkly demonstrated the errors in centralizing the power to make sweeping health and economic decisions that affect the lives of millions. The COVID-19 catastrophe has laid bare how these government diktats, oftentimes the result of bureaucratic inertia and naked special-interest lobbying, not only do not genuinely serve a public purpose but actually endanger our physical and economic health.

This can perhaps be most easily seen in the way federal, state and local governments have so quickly abandoned numerous laws and regulations that we good citizens were previously told were so important to our well-being. But if they are not necessary during such a crisis, when public health is the primary concern, then they certainly cannot be justified – and should not be allowed to persist – during normal times.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration initially prohibited any private laboratories, universities or other public agencies from developing COVID-19 diagnostic tests. They were forced to relent after the CDC’s own tests proved unreliable, but not before the virus had had weeks to continue spreading.

Moreover, Congress had to pass a law in mid-March to allow hospitals to purchase industrial N95 protective masks (which are essentially identical to medical masks) – though it can still take up to three months to certify new suppliers – and regulations on the manufacture and use of ventilators were eventually eased to address supply shortages.

These are prime examples, however, of how errors are compounded by centralization, compared to the more nimble and innovative reactions of numerous providers in a free market.

In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services waived restrictions on Medicare providers’ use of telemedicine, which will provide patients with more convenience and help prevent further spread of the disease that would otherwise occur during in-person doctor visits. They are also waiving certain paperwork requirements, allowing hospitals to prescreen patients at offsite locations and permitting them to increase capacity by utilizing other healthcare facilities and remote sites, and suspending rules that limit rural “critical access hospitals” to 25 beds and 96-hour stays for patients.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and a number of states have streamlined or waived occupational licensing laws that prevent doctors and nurses from working across state lines (not to mention restricting supply and consumer choice while raising prices without improving the quality of service).

Similarly, a number of states have suddenly realized that “scope of practice” laws that require doctors to perform certain services that nurses are perfectly qualified to do are unnecessary, and suspended them.

Many of the 35 states that have “certificate of need” laws have also been forced to waive them in light of the harm they were causing.

These laws require those wishing to open a new hospital or other healthcare facility, increase the number of hospital beds, purchase certain medical equipment, or operate an ambulance service to prove to the government that there is an adequate need for their services. Worse still, any potential negative effects from the new competition on existing providers are considered sufficient grounds for rejection, effectively giving incumbent operators veto power over the decision to allow new competitors. Can you imagine a law that would allow McDonald’s to say whether a new Burger king or In-n-Out Burger restaurant should be allowed to open? Or give Walgreens the ability to veto a new CVS store? And we wonder why access to health care is limited and costs are out of control.

Superfluous and harmful regulations are hardly limited to the health industry, however. Federal and state rules have also been relaxed, albeit temporarily, to allow the delivery of alcohol and marijuana, lift the cap on truckers’ hours and permit food trucks at freeway rest stops, and suspend restaurant inspections and certain food labeling requirements. Maine and New York have postponed the implementation of their single-use plastic bag bans, in light of research showing that reusable bags can harbor and spread diseases. And California recently eased child care regulations to allow more flexibility in hours of operation, the ages of children under care and the ability to prioritize the kids of essential workers. Now, if we could only get rid of Assembly Bill 5, which has destroyed the livelihoods of numerous independent contractors throughout the state.

By making these temporary regulatory waivers permanent and rooting out similarly harmful and unnecessary regulations in other industries we will enhance our health and prosperity while protecting our cherished freedoms.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Oakland-based Independent Institute and a former editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register/Southern California News Group.

From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution to modern times, poverty has been most radically and rapidly alleviated whenever people are free to work in an occupation of their choosing, keep the fruits of their labors, acquire and maintain private property, and rely on a stable legal system to protect their personal and economic freedoms.

In recent decades, this age of relatively free enterprise and global trade has resulted in an unprecedented reduction in poverty.

This may come as a surprise to many who have heard the narrative, popular in the media and certain circles of academia, which claims that not only are the rich getting richer, but the poor are getting poorer.

Indeed, when a survey by Hans Rosling for Gapminder asked people whether the portion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty had a) almost doubled, b) stayed about the same, or c) almost halved over the last 20 years, only 5 percent of Americans correctly answered that it had been virtually cut in half.

According to World Bank estimates, the portion of those living in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1.90 a day, has steadily declined from 36 percent in 1990 to 10 percent by 2015 (and an estimated 8.6 percent in 2018) – the lowest level in recorded history.

In all, 1.1 billion people rose out of extreme poverty in just a quarter-century – a tremendous achievement!

Moreover, 80 percent of those who remain in extreme poverty are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, primarily in countries typified by war, corruption and a lack of economic liberty.

These results are bolstered by various freedom indexes, such as the Fraser Institute’s annual Economic Freedom of the World (or its Human Freedom Index, which includes measures of personal freedom in addition to economic freedom).

So while many focus on the next government program that they are sure will be the silver bullet to alleviate poverty, the best solution is to simply create the conditions that allow people to thrive by eliminating government laws and regulations that exacerbate poverty by restricting economic and personal liberties.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a former editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group.

California’s state government, and many of its local governments, particularly in its largest metropolitan areas, have largely failed to learn the lesson that economic freedom leads to economic prosperity – for all income brackets.

While many have been able to generate a great deal of wealth in spite of California’s relatively strict regulation of economic and personal liberties, particularly in the Silicon Valley/Bay Area and Southern California coastal enclaves, the state also suffers from a great deal of poverty.

In fact, California has the highest poverty rate of any state (about 18 percent, versus a national average of around 13 percent), according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure, which incorporates cost of living and income from government assistance programs.

The state and local governments make poverty worse by enacting numerous policies that increase the cost of living and reduce the amount of earnings California workers can keep and save, invest or spend on their families.

Perhaps the most obvious examples are tax policies. California has not only the highest personal income tax rate in the country, but the highest three brackets (and five of the top 10 rates), the Tax Foundation reports. It also has the highest state sales tax rate in the country (and the ninth-highest rate when average local sales tax rates are included), and the eighth-highest corporate tax rate. And, despite all the hand-wringing among Democratic legislators about Proposition 13, California still has the 14th-highest property tax rate in the nation.

While California’s income tax structure is very progressive – the top 1 percent of earners pay nearly half of all income taxes – numerous other taxes are quite regressive, taking up a larger share of the poorest residents’ incomes, and thus hitting them the hardest.

The recent increase in gas taxes has made California the highest-taxed state in the nation, adding more than 62 cents per gallon to the price of gas, not to mention an additional estimated 10 to 12 cents per gallon attributed to the state’s cap-and-trade program and a recent increase in vehicle registration fees. This makes it especially difficult for lower- and middle-income workers who have long commutes because they cannot afford to live closer to work.

Regressive environmental regulations favoring more expensive forms of “clean” energy and state-protected regional utility monopolies have also caused California to have some of the highest energy prices in the nation, which, once again, hurt poorer families the most. Similarly, “sin taxes,” like those imposed on cigarettes, marijuana and even soda, tend to squeeze lower-income families more.

The state and local governments have done much to drive up the cost of housing, the largest asset most people will ever own. This has been one of the primary reasons so many people have fled to lower-cost states with greater economic opportunity, such as Arizona, Nevada, Texas and Florida.

According to a March 2015 report from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, California’s housing costs have risen dramatically from about 30 percent above the national average in 1970 to two-and-a-half times the national average today.

It also noted that development fees charged to builders (and passed on in housing prices) are three-and-a-half times the national average, costing tens of thousands of dollars more. Excessive building standards and regulations like the solar roof mandate, which could add $10,000 to $20,000 to the cost of a new home starting next year, hike costs even further. A 2016 National Association of Home Builders study estimated that government regulations account for about a quarter of the price of a new single-family home.

Housing costs are increased through a number of other ways as well. Local zoning laws restrict the amount of land that can be developed, driving up prices for housing elsewhere; arduous local planning processes and environmental regulations such as the California Environmental Quality Act make it more costly and difficult to build, similarly restricting supply and increasing prices; affordable housing mandates and rent control laws oftentimes make building unprofitable, further reducing supply or ensuring that only luxury housing is built; prevailing wage laws that mandate union wage scales significantly drive up building costs; and the list goes on.

California also makes it very difficult to earn a living. It routinely places at or near the bottom of multiple surveys of state business climates. Occupational licenses are one way governments reduce job growth and economic opportunity by requiring fees and arbitrary standards that may not even relate well to job performance. In a 2007 study I did for the Reason Foundation, I found that California required licenses for the most job categories of any state (177), nearly double the national average (92).

State and local minimum wage laws similarly cut the bottom rungs off the economic ladder for many people. While they are typically sold as a means of alleviating poverty, this is not supported by the economic literature. Though some who experience a minimum wage boost and keep their jobs may be lifted out of poverty, at least as many will fall into poverty because they lose their jobs or see their hours cut as a result.

Still others will never be hired in the first place because they cannot compete with higher-skilled job applicants for the higher wage rate. Moreover, as San Diego State University economics professor Joseph Sabia explains, increasing the minimum wage is a poor way to address poverty simply because so few minimum wage workers are poor.

The above is just a small sampling of the ways the state and local governments in California make it more expensive and more difficult to live. It should come as little surprise, then, that the state struggles with such high rates of poverty and net migration to lower-cost states offering more economic freedom.

Simply removing these barriers to economic liberty would unleash a wave of economic growth that would raise incomes and reduce poverty greater than any government program could hope to achieve.

Adam B. Summers is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and a former editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group.