The Screwed Millennial Generation Gets Smart

It’s been seven years since I wrote about “the screwed generation.” The story told has since become familiar: Millennials, then largely in their twenties, faced a future of limited economic opportunity, lower incomes, and too few permanent, high-paying jobs.

California Housing Shortage

Housing and the California Dream are at a Crossroads

For generations, California has offered its people an opportunity to own a home, start a business, and move up, whether someone came from Brooklyn, east Texas, Morelos or Taipei. That deal is still desired by most, but is being legislated out of existence for all but the very rich…

Photo credit: Ryan J. Quick

The Cities Where African Americans are Doing the Best Economically 2018

by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — To determine where African-Americans are doing the best economically, we evaluated America’s 53 largest metropolitan statistical areas…

Photo credit: magoda.com

Can the Trump Economy Trump Trump?

by Joel Kotkin — President Trump’s critics find it hard to give him credit for anything, especially given his extraordinary boastfulness. Yet Trump’s economic policies seem to be working. New job numbers are robust and wages continue to rise.

Photo credit: Jae C. Hong

A New Vision for Southern California

by Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Since the start of the last century, Southern California has been a pioneer in building ways of living, and an economy, that broke with normal convention. Our region created a new paradigm, one both defining suburbanism and friendly to middle class aspirations, that attracted millions here.

Tech’s New Hotbeds: Cities With Fastest Growth in STEM Jobs Are Far From Silicon Valley

The conventional wisdom sees tech concentrating in a handful of places. To a considerable extent, that was true – until it wasn’t. The most recent data on STEM jobs suggests tech jobs are shifting to more affordable places…

photo credit: Gage Skidmore

Is There a Niche for Sensible Politics in America?

Given the current state of American politics, and those of our state of California, our founding fathers might well consider not just turning over in their graves but boring deeper towards the earth’s core. Yet amidst the almost unceasing signs of discord and hyperbolic confrontation, there exists a more sensible approach which could help rescue our wobbling Republic.

Photo credit: Daniel Schwen

In the New Year, Worry-Free California Has a Lot to Worry About

Wishful thinking and noble intentions ignore California’s slowing state economy, and a structural deficit —keyed largely to state worker pensions— a looming fiscal crisis.

Photo credit: Rmichaelrugg via Wikimedia

What’s Red, Blue, and Broke All Over? America

Beneath the sex scandals, moronic tweets, ridiculous characters, and massive incompetence that dominate Washington in this mean period of our history lie more fundamental geopolitical realities. Increasingly it is economics—how people make money—rather than culture that drives the country into perpetual conflict.

Christmas Eve Mass

Is the End Near for Religion?

Even at this season that should be about spiritual re-awakening, it is hard to deny that we live in an increasingly post-religious civilization. Virtually everywhere in the high-income world, faith, particularly tied close to institutionalized religion, has been dropping for a decade.