Amidst his cacophony of bad takes, CNN host Fareed Zakaria somehow manages to illustrate the “broken clock is right twice a day” idiom at times when lefty politicos display an illusory sense of economics too asinine to ignore. Enter, California.
Zakaria argued that the near-successful Los Angeles mayoral campaign of TV personality Spencer Pratt and former Fox News host Steve Hilton’s rise to legitimate contention for California’s gubernatorial race were emblematic of the boiling, “justified” frustrations of the state electorate. Despite the state’s bona fides in academia, cinema, art and agriculture, the CNN personality conceded during the June 14 edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS that California “is a case study in how a rich society can spend more and more while producing less and less of what its ordinary citizens need.”
The paradox, argued Zakaria, “is a successful economy attached to a failing model of governance.” He continued: “Consider the fiscal record: Since 2000, California’s population has grown by roughly 15 percent, but the state’s general expenditures have grown more than 200 percent, from $78 billion to about $248 billion.”
In January, CalMatters columnist Dan Walters reported that there has been “zero net job growth” since the 2020 pandemic in the state under leftist governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) leadership, and “[m]ore than a million Californians in the labor force are jobless.”
California is one of the most dynamic places on the planet.
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) June 14, 2026
But it is a case study in how a rich society can spend more and more while producing less and less of what its ordinary citizens need.
My take: pic.twitter.com/a8LGEhWCdd
If that wasn’t bad enough, the state’s unemployment rate currently sits at a pathetic 5.3 percent, tied for second with two other Democratic states, behind only the District of Columbia (6.1 percent) — which is not even a state — for worst in the country as of April 2026. Zakaria didn’t mince words about how California’s left-wing politicians are experts in the art of empty rhetoric:
Does anyone think that California government and its benefits have gotten 200 percent better in the last 25 years? Housing is the central failure. California has long spoken the language of compassion while building a system of exclusion.
This is not the first time that Zakaria red-pilled himself on the economics front. In February, Zakaria skewered communist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s unaffordable “freebie” agenda. Zakaria analyzed that the Big Apple had already been “fiscally profligate” for so long, and Mamdani’s scheme was “similar to the annual expenditures of a mid-sized nation” like Greece or Thailand.
Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day.
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) February 22, 2026
Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work.
My take: pic.twitter.com/kwYkA4XEjx
In the end, as Zakaria seems to be realizing, it’s all megaphones, campaigns, and cocktail parties for socialism until it comes time to actually pay the piper.
