Re: that's NOT totalitarianism

To begin with, the government creates and maintains a currency and provides a court system to solve business disputes.

A currency that constantly depreciates to the government's advantage, of course. There were, in fact, several currencies extant in the United States before the U.S. government decided to establish a currency.

A court system I'll grant you, though a government is not absolutely required for this.

The public sector allows women to become more productive in the economy by guaranteeing access to child care

I'm certainly in favor of a woman's right to work, but I have my doubts about productivity gains. Many families have found that having a stay-at-home mother is more economical than paying a third party for child care and other domestic services.

offers a basic level of education to children whose families otherwise wouldn't have the means to provide it.

Do you realize that the literacy rate was over 90% in every U.S. state in 1850, prior to moves towards compulsory education? (Excluding slaves forbidden literacy, of course.) Can you find even one state with a literacy rate that high now?

the government has the resources to create entire new industries in which wealth can be created. The Internet, nuclear energy, and all the spinoff technologies of the space program

Point partly granted, though nuclear energy is still not cost effective when all costs are taken into account, and most of the infrastructure of the internet and much of the R&D was funded by private corporations.

When I say they've fought hard for these salaries and benefits, I'm referring the labor movement in this country, in which some people actually died trying to create conditions that were fairer than the libertarian Gilded Age/Victorian England societies they found themselves in.

Granted that the early labor movement was necessary to hold employers accountable for the contracts they made with their employees, but let's not forget that the Gilded Age and the Victorian era oversaw technical progress and economic development that benefited everyone, on a scale never before seen. They must have been doing something right.

I'm still not sure which current government employees were involved in the labor movement a century ago. Would you care to enlighten me?

American workers haven't been undermined by their own laziness or reluctance to compete, as you seem to suggest. They've been undermined by corporatist trade policy that under the guise of "free trade" has forced them to compete with more easily exploitable workers from countries with no environmental standards (as well as with easily exploitable undocumented immigrant labor).

I didn't say that American workers were lazy or uncompetitive (though some, naturally, are). I said that the 1950s and 1960s provided a false baseline for understanding the American economy, because American industry was effectively a monopoly at the time and could charge accordingly overseas.

Meanwhile, foreign workers are now competing on their strength (frequently, their willingness to accept low wages) and American workers are competing on their strength (usually, a better educated and more capable workforce). Americans benefit by being able to buy lower tech products at prices much less than they would pay if these items were made in the USA which in turn can mean greater productivity when these products are used in business; and these foreign workers benefit from a job that is safer and pays them more than any of the alternatives available to them, while allowing them to develop the expertise to earn even more for their labor in future.

I think qtns2di4 does a good job of pointing out some of the reasons for California's particular mess

Agreed.