You’ve mixed up economic failure with political, bureaucratic and social one. I didn’t move out of California because of bad economy. Though California could be even better off economically without high taxes and governmental waste.
While economically - my family is renting houses in LA to people who move in family of 10 into a house meant for 4, even secretly occupying garages. And they’re often each working couple jobs to support themselves. Some figure out how to live off of the system, though mostly rich people because my rich cousins underreport their income and pay less taxes, then ask for government subsidies for their kids - because it’s easy. So they contribute to the economy business-wise, but then pay less taxes and suck more social services for themselves than their own employees would. Hard-working people, say one of my friends, works at two hospitals in LA to support his family, 80 hours/week, though complains that most of his co-workers are lazy bums who don’t want to work and suck the money off of the system (and hospital patients), some also “working” two jobs but not always actually working - basically the money flows to people who figure out how to cheat the system, but not necessarily the ones who need it - though that may be another story.
The main issue though is that the rich California locust feels more intelligent than everyone else (and many are) and this makes them feel entitled to tell everyone else how they must live their lives. They literally say that uneducated people do this wrong or that wrong, and they need this or need that, or need to be prohibited from doing one thing or another. It’s like a huge home association run by jerks who feel all too powerful, but of course will treat each other well and spend money on themselves while pretending to help others.
And really, California and the US are examples of economic wealth created not by leftists. And we may never see how much better off it could be, just like Europeans don’t see how much better they could do - until they look at America and all the innovation that happens there, not in countries fully run by leftists.
Once America turns all left, there will be no reference point.
