California's Middle Class Under Siege

By: Jon Slavet
On: State of Gold Podcast

California once embodied the apex of economic mobility.

Americans went West in droves to the Golden State to build careers, buy homes, raise families, and establish prosperous, middle-class lives. No other region on Earth combined opportunity, innovation, and quality of life at the same scale.

That California no longer exists.

This week on State of Gold, urban theorist and Chapman University professor Joel Kotkin, the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, explains how California’s middle class was dismantled — and what replaced it.

Watch this episode:

Once powered by industries like aerospace and manufacturing, California’s economy formerly supported the world’s largest, most prosperous middle class. But as environmental mandates pushed energy costs sharply higher, and public-sector unions consolidated political power, that reality disappeared.

A new economic order then took hold. The ultra-wealthy grew wealthier while subsidizing an expanding welfare state, and the middle class steadily disappeared. Large, bread-and-butter employers that once anchored middle-class life relocated east – taking high-paying jobs with them. Silicon Valley remains insulated and affluent, while industries that built California’s middle class have vanished.

Now, young families realize they can no longer afford the lives their parents built. Those who most need effective governance — the shrinking middle class — are pushed out of the state, leaving California further entrenched in one-party dominance and deeper economic inequality.

Because of this reality, Kotkin proclaims that though California remains the place with the most potential on the planet – it now does the best job of squandering it.

Watch this week’s episode to uncover the rotten architecture behind California’s status quo, and what it takes to reverse the current trajectory.

-The State of Gold Team

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