It is difficult, given what Silicon Valley has become, to convey exactly what it was like in the 1970s and ‘80s. It was a remarkable center of technology, but also the embodiment of the spirit of capitalism at its very best, as epitomized by garage start-ups like Apple. Greed, of course, is always a human motivation, but the early Valley culture was created by entrepreneurial outsiders who genuinely wanted to make the world better.
By: Brendan O’Neill
On: Brendan O’Neill Show on spiked
Joel Kotkin – spiked columnist and author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism – returns to The Brendan O’Neill Show. Joel and Brendan discuss the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank, the emergence of the new tech oligarchy and how the virtue-signalling elites could be digging their own graves.
Listen to the interview:
By: Craig Melvin
On: Today Show
Joel Kotkin talks about reparations on The Today Show. California is undertaking the nation’s most ambitious effort so far to compensate for the economic legacy of racism and the legacy of one former slave, Daniel Blue, is at the center of the conversation.
Watch this interview: Joel starts at 3:19 Read more
Just a year ago California Governor Gavin Newsom could, and did, brag about the state’s estimated $100 billion surplus. Flush with cash, the preening presidential hopeful was able to hand out thousands of dollars of goodies to households while financing an elaborate multi-billion dollar climate change agenda. Read more
“From the Beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”
— Kevin Starr, “Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915” (1973)
On the surface, California’s job story seems positive. The “headline” unemployment number for December 2022 is low (4.1%). Payroll jobs continue to bounce back to close to pre-pandemic levels. https://edd.ca.gov/en/about_edd/news_releases_and_announcements/unemployment-november-2022/. As Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman would say, “What? Me worry?”
But a closer look at the longer-term, 20-year statistics shows a state with some very worrisome issues related to jobs, some of which are unique to California’s set of past policy choices. Read more
For Americans, California once looked like the future. It was a state defined by risk-taking and utopian dreaming. Yet for most Californians today, the upward mobility so central to the state’s ethos is rapidly disappearing. For decades, California was the primary destination for both other Americans and for foreign immigrants. Now, this trend has gone into reverse Read more
The much-celebrated California boom is facing a harsh reality.
Everything was looking good, based on enormous growth in capital gains in tech stocks and property, and some in Sacramento assumed the bounty would last — until it didn’t. The latest bad news is the evaporation of the state budget surplus that is now rapidly turning into a deficit that could run as high as $22 billion to $40 billion, particularly if there’s a recession. Read more
The “left coast” mostly lived up to its name during the midterms, though occasional signs of dissent could be seen. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom won big, and the GOP saw no major statewide successes. California controller candidate Lanhee Chen, the rare Republican endorsed by virtually every major newspaper, barely did better than his hapless GOP running mates in a loss. In Oregon, Christine Drazan failed to make it to the governor’s mansion, despite Portland’s ongoing meltdown and a spirited race. And in Washington, speculation about a closer-than-expected Senate race proved wrong. Read more
Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has been adamantine in its progressivism. Republicans haven’t won statewide office in California in years; in Oregon, it’s decades. Washington has elected a Republican secretary of state, but she now serves in the Biden administration. And the region’s major cities are overwhelmingly blue.
On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky talk with author Dan Walters, and professor Lori Cox Han, about the possibility of and the implications of a Gavin Newsom presidential run.
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