This is the first of two essays on issues facing California.

“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”

California’s economic, academic, media, and political establishment still embraces the notion of the state’s inevitable supremacy. “The future depends on us,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said at his first inauguration, “and we will seize this moment.” Others see California as deserving and capable of nationhood, a topic that has resurfaced with Trump’s presidency as it reflects, as a New York Times column put it, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.”

Critics say this vision is at odds with the facts on the ground. Rather than the exemplar of a new “progressive capitalism” and a model for social justice, California both accommodates the highest number of billionaires and the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate. It has the third highest gap, behind just Washington, D.C., and Louisiana, between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state. Nearly one in five Californians – many working – lives in poverty (using a cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate); the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) estimates another one-fifth live in near-poverty – roughly 15 million people in total.

“California” is a model that no longer delivers. To be sure, California has a huge GDP, paced largely by high real estate prices and the stock value of a handful of huge tech firms. It retains the inertia from its glory days, particularly in technology and entertainment, but that edge is evaporating as tech firms flee the state and Hollywood productions are shot around the world. For all its strengths, California has the nation’s second-highest rate of unemployment with lagging job growth, particularly in comparison to its neighbors and chief rivals, notably Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.

The signs of failure are evident on the streets. Roughly half the nation’s homeless population lives in the Golden State, many concentrated in disease- and crime-ridden tent cities in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Barely one in three state residents – and only one in four younger voters – now considers California a good place to achieve the American dream. Increasingly, California is where this dream goes to die.

‘San Francisco Gentry Liberalism’

The roots of California are long and deep. In August, for example, the New York Times reported how its development into a one-party state controlled by progressive Democrats has made it the country’s center of political corruption. “Over the last 10 years,” the Times reported, “576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey and Illinois.”

Read the rest of this piece at: Real Clear Investigations.

---

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Jill Siegrist via Flickr under CC 2.0 License

Donald Trump is unlikely to win a popularity contest or an election in America’s deepest blue states. But, ironically, his administration could prove a long term boon to these places, where self-imposed policies are turning them into the caboose of American progress.

To be sure, politicians in declining states like New York, California and Illinois will lament anything Trump does, including many needlessly stupid and cruel acts. But on many levels the Trump regime offers the blue states a way out of their own destructive approach which has chased away businesses and individuals at a staggering rate. No wonder, then, that even some blue state Democrats are questioning their own party’s #Resistance tactics.

Even DOGE and Trump’s assault on the feds is less a problem for blue states than many red ones. Local and state governments in New York, California, Massachusetts and Colorado are far less dependent on transfers from Washington than deep red Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and Alaska. The pain may be greater in the Appalachian hollows than in the urban centres.

Perhaps the biggest Trump influence, though, will be on issues like climate change — a major factor in blue state decline. Wherever Net Zero has been adopted, it has raised energy, housing and building costs. We already see some backtracking in California, where nuclear and natural gas plants are being kept past their supposed termination. At the same time, Trump’s removal of EPA regulations may also help relieve cost pressures too.

There are some potential opportunities for Massachusetts, New York and particularly California in the space and high-tech defence sector, where the Trump administration has encouraged investment. California retains the strongest array of space, aerospace, missile, and drone companies, which should thrive under Trump. Meanwhile, the “defence bros” may be powerful in Texas, but leading edge firms, such as Anduril in Orange County and Palantir in blueish Colorado, also could be big beneficiaries of a shift to tech-based warfare.

Another key Trump break could come in housing. Trump officials are looking at allowing leases for housing on federal lands. The federal government is the nation’s biggest landowner, holding a third of all property — an area six times that of California. In Las Vegas, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and other metro areas, federal lands brush up against the suburban periphery. In California, the federal government owns roughly half of all state land, including properties on flat land near cities. Considering that urbanisation covers only 5.3% of the state’s land, Newsom could make inroads here — with federal assistance.

Read the rest of this piece: UnHerd.

---

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: California Governor’s office, Public Domain.