Experts Offer Market-Based Solutions on Issues from Health Care to the Economy
SACRAMENTO – With the September 14 recall on the horizon, the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute today released Saving California, a new book offering realistic, market-based reforms to 10 of the state’s major policy challenges.
The authors are current or former Californians, with deep experience in their respective policy areas. Saving California goes beyond documenting the state’s many problems by offering good-government policies that politicians from either party could easily embrace.
“Saving California offers policy changes to restore some of California’s lost luster – regardless of what politician runs our massive government apparatus,” says journalist and R Street Institute western region director Steven Greenhut, the book’s editor. “Although the book includes a fair share of criticism of current policy directions, it offers real world reforms that could push the state onto a better track – even advancing the goals of the most progressive legislators, such as bettering the environment and helping the poor.”
The book explores the state’s core challenges – business climate, housing, homelessness, infrastructure, water policy, education, crime, budgets and debt, wildfires, and health care – and creates a framework toward better solutions:
- Chapman University fellow Joel Kotkin writes about getting California back to business through tax and regulatory reform and job creating incentives.
- Demographia principal Wendell Cox proposes a “housing opportunity area” to boost the state’s housing affordability.
- PRI senior fellow Wayne Winegarden argues that California should embrace non-profits as a more cost-effective and humane approach to addressing homelessness.
- Reason foundation vice president Dr. Adrian Moore explores proven strategies used in other states to build and fund critical infrastructure projects.
- Greenhut writes that policymakers can navigate the state’s water wars by embracing a policy of abundance rather than managing scarcity.
- Lance Izumi, senior director of PRI’s Center for Education, shows that charters schools and school choice better improve outcomes for minority students than traditional public schools.
- Former Assemblyman turned criminal justice reform advocate Pat Nolan points to the growing crime wave but offers reform-minded solutions to create a less brutal criminal justice system.
- Capitol veteran and tax and budget expert Richard Mersereau takes a deep dive into the state budget, offering reforms to put the state on a more sustainable fiscal path.
- The Hon. Daniel Kolkey, attorney and former California Court of Appeals associate justice, takes an in-depth look at wildfire policy, discussing reforms to help rather than hinder the state’s fight against global warming.
- Sally Pipes, PRI President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy, makes the case that market-based reforms would provide Californians with more affordable health care choices.
Saving California is available for purchase at online booksellers including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
