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Can Los Angeles Be Saved?

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Last March, a makeshift drug factory exploded next to Los Angeles resident Juan Galicia’s craftsman-style home, built in 1910. The flames spread to his gas line, setting off a fire that destroyed the house and killed his three dogs — he tearfully shows me their picture. Had the accident happened an hour earlier, it would have killed one of his sons, as well. “I lived here 18 years and now it’s gone,” the 55-year-old father, an immigrant from El Salvador, tells me. The empty lot next door, he says, was occupied by homeless squatters who cooked methamphetamine there. “People occupy a place and the city does nothing,” he says.

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Look Past Partisanship and Celebrate 250 Years of Freedom

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It’s tragic that the country’s 250th anniversary is coming at a time of profoundly performative division.

In one part of America, and among certain classes, the very idea of patriotism is off limits. Once there was little difference between the parties in patriotic sentiment, but more recently — even before President Donald Trump — the gap has expanded dramatically. In Gallup’s most recent survey, 93% of Republicans call themselves very or extremely proud to be an American, versus just 27% of Democrats.

The rising class of anti-American Americans is concentrated in our cities and college towns, most notably among younger, educated people. One recent survey of young Americans concluded that most thought they were living in what surveyors described as “a dying empire led by bad people.”

Many who declared Trump “not my president” now increasingly feel that America is not their country, either. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tried to restrict some celebrations, including public events at Times Square. The traditional Fourth of July fireworks show in Long Beach has been canceled. San Marcos, an affluent San Diego County community that leans Democratic, has even banned hanging flags on the street.

Hollywood, now largely a bastion of the progressive left, is not likely to celebrate our semiquincentennial, either. Not with stars like Billie Eilish claiming that “no one is illegal on stolen land.” I doubt she plans to hand back her manse to the Tongva, the original inhabitants of Los Angeles, or to move somewhere that has no history of taking land from someone else (if she can find such a place).

Some leftist politicians, notably from the ascendant Democratic Socialists of America, see the autocracies of the Third World as their preferred role model. Some politicians, particularly on the left, even get away with saying they favor other countries over their own. The two Democrats in one of the recent New York congressional primaries said they were cheering for Senegal or Mexico, rather than the US, in the Word Cup, a position that once would have been disqualifying.

Many would say that President Trump is not helping to bring Americans together, either. Critics say that he has attempted to turn the 250th anniversary into what the National Review labeled “another Trump campaign rally.” The leftist New Republic called the celebration “Donald Trump’s lost cause.”

Read the rest of this piece at California Post.

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, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Anthony Quintano via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Zohran Mamdani’s Socialist New York Dream is About to Turn Sour

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There’s nothing that the rising progressive movement hates more than billionaires. But there’s nothing they love more than their money.

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani may bask in his new status as a “Congressional kingmaker”, with candidates he backed in recent primary elections winning against three liberal Democrats. But the essence of his politics, and that of his California mini-mes, attacks the very source that keeps the government budget from collapse.

Like contemporary London, New York City and California depend on the rich, both the billionaires as well as the larger, also much despised top 1 per cent. New York City is essentially a financial ward of Wall Street and the rich who serve them, like lawyers, accountants, marketers, and PR agencies.

The top 1 per cent pay about 40 per cent of all the city’s income taxes, higher than their overall share of city income. But the number of people paying these taxes has dropped, making getting more from those who remain a priority. Between 2010 and 2022, New York City’s share of all Americans earning over a million annually dropped from 6.5 to 4.2 per cent.

New York’s dependence on the rich few will likely grow as employers head to more accommodating places like Miami and Dallas Ft Worth. Meanwhile, California, notes economist Gad Levanon, is losing high-end business service jobs faster than anywhere else in the country.

All this makes the neo-socialists all that more dependent on upper-class money, particularly from the stock market. California’s top 1 per cent pays 40 per cent of the state’s income tax revenues, much of it from capital gains proceeds.

This money has allowed both New York and California to indulge in expanding their welfare states. New York’s state budget has grown significantly since 2020, even as the population has dropped. California has accelerated its spending by a remarkable 60 per cent over that period, even as its once burgeoning population has stagnated.

But socialists like Mamdani seem to have given little thought to broad-based wealth creation, preferring to focus mostly on redistribution. The mayor has seen fit to fill 40 positions at the Bolshevik-style office of “mass engagement” but has yet to appoint an economic development director.

Growth is not popular among neo-socialists. The very people who have advanced California’s controversial wealth tax have also partnered with European intellectuals, such as France’s Thomas Piketty, to create an agenda that effectively seeks no growth in the industrialised countries, to protect the environment while transferring wealth to poorer nations.

Yet eschewing broad-based growth means an unhealthy addiction to asset inflation. California’s tax revenues tumble with stock market corrections, as occurred in 2000, 2008, and in 2022. New York is, if anything, more vulnerable.

Outside asset inflation, the job markets in both places are fundamentally compromised as companies and entrepreneurs flee. New York and California are among the states with the largest surplus of workers. California alone has a surplus of nearly 500,000 employable people.

In New York, high-wage employment, including finance, is stagnating. Firms are moving their operations to places like Texas and Florida, and their employees are taking their money with them. New York and California have been leading in the race to lose taxpayers, particularly the affluent.

In the short run, this set the stage for the socialists. The campaigns that are electing people like Mamdani, after all, are no rebellion of the working class, or racial minorities, but one of the downwardly mobile children of the bourgeois. According to the New York Fed, 42 per cent of recent graduates are underemployed .

Along with welfare recipients and government workers, the socialists’ drive is underpinned by a vast class of largely childless, overeducated and often underpaid young people. The “yuppie dream” of yesterday has faded, as the New Republic snidely reported recently, as young urbanites embrace Mamdani’s warm “collectivism” in lieu of making their own way.

As a result, policies linked to past failures, such as expanding public housing, rent control and reducing police ranks, suddenly are back in favour. There’s something child-like about this new socialist drive. Perhaps, like Mamdani, many are nepo-babies who may be slow to realise that you have to pay for things yourself. There’s little thought, particularly as the affluent leave, about who is going to fund the free buses, state-owned food stores, care for undocumented migrants, or the salaries, much less the pensions, of the state apparat.

Yet economic logic means little in modern America. Mass discontent allows the Democratic Socialists of America to win, particularly in low-turnout elections, aided by a well-developed turnout the vote operation. This pattern is being replicated across the country, not only in New York, but Seattle, Washington DC and, quite possibly, Los Angeles this fall.

For those parts of the Democratic Party long aligned with Wall Street and the tech oligarchs, this is a bitter pill indeed. But many Democratic leaders seem unwilling to take on the “hot” winners in deepest blue America even, as their establishment incumbents lose safe seats to more radical candidates.

But if there’s a sustained decline in the markets, the socialists may find themselves forced to operate in a cash-short environment. At the same time, their calls for such things as the ownership of the means of production, open borders, kneecapping police, abolishing the Senate, and emasculating the independence of the Supreme Court may not sell in the rest of a country; in America, people still favour capitalism over socialism by a four to one margin.

The next big battleground for the socialist-establishment fight will be in California. Governor Newsom and his possible successor, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, have rejected a proposed state wealth tax on billionaire assets, although the governor recently embraced a national wealth tax. Unlike the socialists, they know the tech oligarchs and the rich have funded not only their expanding welfare state, but also their campaigns. Socialist ambitions to ban data centres are a direct attack on the tech elite’s AI plans.

Increasingly unpopular in deep blue states, the rich and their companies keep leaving, taking their money with them, and making places like Miami their new Valhalla. The growing power of the socialists will not slow this trend.

Such realities are not something many progressives even think about. But someday, perhaps sooner rather than later, they will feel the consequences of their actions, as will the rest of us.

This piece first appeared at Telegraph UK.

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, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Retiring the Nutty Professor

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The movie The Nutty Professor, both the original 1963 version starring Jerry Lewis and the successful remake by Eddie Murphy in 1996, is about a genius professor, obese but kind, who develops a potion that turns him into a handsome, manipulative womanizer.

Today, the education industry is no longer marginal and the university faculty no longer fits the awkward-brainiac stereotype. Professors have become powerful politically — they are the core of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and they predictably hold Leftist views, treating us to spectacles such as the University of Michigan faculty senate accusing Secretary of War Pete Hegseth of “war crimes.” Much of the Leftist elite, in fact, comes from academia — for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren taught at Harvard Law School for 20 years, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the son of a famous radical academic, who teaches at Columbia University. Read more

The American Revolution at 250: a Legacy to Fulfill

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The American revolution and the constitution have left us a legacy that it is up to us to fulfill.

Two central ideas made the revolution and the constitution important: that government power is limited and that the true mission of our society lies in that wonderful phrase, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

What does that mean? It depends on the person, the community, one’s view of the world. It allows for more excess in terms of free speech, free association and, yes, capitalist activity than most countries. And for all its many downsides, it also has been an enormous success.

To foreigners, America may look foolish given that it has been governed by fools, knaves and mental mediocrities for many years, particularly in the last decade. But our founding documents remains critical and have helped curb the idiocies of our leaders.

Individual striving and constitutional limits make America so different. Unlike the revolution in France and even less so that which occurred in Russia, ours was not about unleashing social forces in ways that led predictably to tyrannical rule. It was about allowing individuals, families, companies and communities to seek their own ways to achieve ‘happiness” along with the blessings of life and liberty.

Right now, our national politics works against this, on both sides of the spectrum. Many people on the left think that it would be better to be ruled in the manner of third world ‘people’s democracies’ ­– for example Cuba under Castro or Venezuela under Chavez. Perhaps they prefer to live under regimes in Russia or China that, in many ways, increasingly reprise not Marxism but fascist ideas of state control with allowances for vast private greed.

Then there’s the call on the left for global governance and no growth, at least in the west. This is a form of justice that works for well-paid academics, bureaucrats and professionals but not for most people no longer capable of achieving a better life, a house, raise a family or build a business. No happiness is allowed to the masses.

The right, as Rodney Dangerfield, they are no bargain either. Many see the pursuit of happiness as a license for unlimited greed. These attitudes are common on Wall Street and the tech elite. Sadly, their personal pursuit of happiness means unhappiness for the vast majority. Their vision for the public seems to have us transformed into subsidized mindless consumers to be replaced by algorithms, robots or cheap foreign labor.

Yet despite our political failing left and right, our republic remains strong because both individual or communal striving is allowed and protected. It is that striving, as much as anything, that makes us uniquely great country.

I don’t pretend we are a model for the world, but we should remain a model for ourselves. It’s been attractive enough to lure millions of people and investors from around the world here.

‘Pursuit of happiness’ defines America and reflects views rarely found in Europe. The continent that we sprang from may be more civilized in some respects, but at the cost of its animal spirits. This difference does much to explain the vast differences in the two economies. Europe is fine for vacations but not in terms of economic growth, technological and cultural innovation.

In our embrace of striving, we still honor the farmers, mechanics and merchants who created the revolution. The declaration is in essence a rejection of autocracy — whether in the hands of kings, technocrats or tech oligarchs, and a recognition of the ability of people to govern themselves.

Fortunately, as I travel and report across the breadth of the country, I see much that is encouraging, and reflective of our historic ideals. I see it in the growing class of artisans and innovators, often in their 20s, who are looking to create a better tangible future, whether in food or fashion, new materials, space travel, or medical advances.

Our founders would be amazed if they went to a place like El Segundo, a small city next to LAX. Although much of the economy around the region, my home for over a half century, is moribund, El Segundo, where SpaceX originated, is brimming with young innovative companies. One hundred of them. Six billion in venture funds. And these people are not just expanding the digital universe — they are building things, employing skilled labor, and looking for to build space stations, develop mines in space or build more energy efficient aircraft.

The great thing is that many of these people are young. One, a 22-year-old who never attended college, has moved to a bigger space in Torrance and plans to build a million drones a year — he was a drone racing champ — that will go to both the US and to Ukraine.

These new innovators are not cut from the same cloth as our silicon valley overlords, with their head in sky ideas of replacing humanity or turning us into passive consumers of the metaverse.

I also see our basic principles reflected in efforts in small blue-collar communities to improve themselves. I have spent time in small, predominately Latino cities south of the city of LA, which do what the big city can’t — eliminate graffiti, reduce crime, keep businesses, and improve local schools. I also see it also in school programs that seek to return education back to the basics. Some of these are state sponsored and others by religious groups.

I see the republic’s great value in the successful integration of so many immigrants, and how ‘the pursuit of happiness’ lives among them. At the University of Texas, we asked Latinos, our largest ethnic minority and shapers of our future, about what they want: at the university of Texas, we surveyed them.

Their goal was not to be victims or part of a revolution led by academics and trustfunders, but to start a business, give a good education to their kids, buy a single-family house. They cared little if their neighbors looked like them or spoke Spanish. They want to become something other than permanent labor and rental serfs. They want their happiness too, and many of them, despite the odds, are achieving it.

I see republican virtue in the new cities being built, mostly in the exurbs, that house families in a nature-friendly environment. Most New Yorkers will never see places like The Woodlands, Irvine, or New Albany (that’s in Ohio, folks) or the success working class people have when they move from an economy that does not work for them to one that does. I see this every time I go to Texas, and increasingly places in places like the Carolinas, Florida, even Arkansas and Alabama.

Americans have always moved in the pursuit of happiness. It is intrinsic to our revolutionary tradition and the survival of a liberal republic.

Of course, America is far from perfect but the legacy of the founders persists. Much needs to change but the basic form of a decentralized republic, with protections for basic rights, has no equal anywhere.

I can imagine that Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, the Roosevelts, and Norman Thomas would all be bewildered by our contemporary republic but they would also see much to admire as well.

America may have a sick political system and an economy that does not work well for many, but it is distinctly different, and in many ways better than its prime competitors. Our legacy, and our future, lies in large part in preserving that system without falling into the trap of centralized autocracy.

I have ideas about how to preserve our strength and expand the pursuit of happiness — which is different that assuring happiness. We need to drill down into the essence of what our system provides, which is to give communities, families, churches, neighborhoods more control over their own lives.

This need not be seen as a conservative idea. William Appleman Williams, a self-described radical, recognized that “mass democracy” which seems to thrill many DSA radicals usually ends up as “little democracy.” Instead, he suggested that radicals “devise workable plans and procedures that will enable us to realize and richer and more creative conception of freedom.”

To save the republic, we must stay true to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” We are not China, Russia, France or even the UK. We are heirs of a republic that redefined society as built around individuals and voluntary associations, and not designed to worship a single church, potentate or technocracy.

This is our inheritance. Now how do we maintain it?

This article is a transcript from the second of Joel’s speaker panels at The American Revolution at 250, an event held in New York City on June 21, 2026, sponsored by Sublation Media.

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, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage graphic: from the event.

Left-wing Civil War Threatens LA’s Future

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Nithya Raman’s come-from-behind victory represents a challenge from the Left to an LA establishment that also regards itself as progressive.

Such conflicts are becoming more common as coastal cities evolve into de facto one-party systems, split between establishment Democrats and a newer, generally younger cohort of socialists. Even moderate Democrats — and Republicans, including Spencer Pratt, whose much-hyped effort ultimately failed — are increasingly outliers in their own cities.

Raman, a council member representing a diverse district with a large middle-class electorate, could benefit from the shortcomings of her fellow progressives. Angelenos across political lines are increasingly frustrated with the condition of the city; public services are strained while concerns persist over crime and homelessness.

As one campaign adviser to Raman tells me, Mayor Karen Bass is not widely popular, with nearly two-thirds of Angelenos voting for other candidates. This allows Raman to position herself as a “change candidate” against Bass, who is more closely associated with the city’s status quo power structures, particularly municipal unions.

Raman’s most significant challenge is likely to come from those same unions, which dominate fundraising and ground operations in city politics. She also carries the baggage of her earlier progressive positions on policing, Israel, and particularly homelessness, which opponents may seek to use against her.

According to Tim Campbell, a longtime Angeleno and former government auditor, Raman’s record on homelessness is “worse than Bass — if that is possible”. She has opposed encampment clearing and has been accused of being linked to dodgy NGOs. “She’s incompetent and arrogant, which is a fatal combination,” he concludes.

To be sure, the progressive label may thrill Raman’s core supporters in LA’s version of New York’s “commie corridor” — progressive communities such as Echo Park, Silver Lake, parts of Hollywood, and less affluent areas of the Westside form her natural base. But it may not be the hipster Left that ultimately decides the race; instead, it could be Pratt voters — around 25% of the electorate — who prove pivotal.

Winning over voters who did not participate or who previously supported Pratt will be central to Raman’s prospects. However, the Pratt constituency, already suspicious of what it sees as machine influence over electoral processes, is unlikely to respond positively to her characterization of Pratt as a fascist. The prospect of an LA version of New York’s Zohran Mamdani may also sit uneasily with parts of the electorate, including segments of the city’s large Jewish community.

Raman, a close adviser suggests, can emphasize her efforts to rein in what she sees as excessive public-sector pay increases, as well as large allocations to projects such as the city’s Convention Center, which critics have long described as inefficient or wasteful. In this framing, her lack of backing from the unions and from the three other DSA members — widely seen as aligned with Bass and their union backers — on the council gives her room to present herself as a steward of a strained municipal budget. “The most important issue is the budget,” one of her top aides tells me. “If the focus is on competence, Karen becomes the defender of a failed status quo.”

Given the internecine nature of the race, much may come down to the ground game. Raman has built a strong grassroots organization and brings an energy that reflects her age and political style. Bass, while far from doddering, is 72 and appears to belong to an earlier political era.

All of this suggests that, even without the media-savvy Pratt in the race, Angelenos can expect plenty of fireworks in this Left versus Left contest. With relatively little disagreement on issues such as Trump and ICE, the candidates are likely to compete instead on personal attributes, which are always fertile ground for a hard-fought and often acrimonious campaign season.

“It’s going to be one of the ugliest campaigns ever,” says Dave Gershwin, a longtime city council aide and now a Democratic political consultant. “It’s Karen’s race to lose but Raman is not to be underestimated.”

This piece first appeared at UnHerd.

Joel in the Media

 

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, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage image: Nithya Raman, via Wikimedia in public domain composite with Los Angeles skyline.

I’d Like to Believe California Can Be Saved from the Left

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In the coming weeks, the conservative media will have a field day thanks to the seemingly strong primary election performances of Republican Steve Hilton in the race to become the next governor of California and of Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s contest.

Hilton, a former advisor to David Cameron in the UK, as well as a Fox News commentator, is certainly a brainy candidate, with personal appeal and a constructive platform. Pratt, a former reality-TV star, has run an eye-catching campaign.

But however much the Right will enjoy the notion of a Californian rebellion against its entrenched establishment, it very much remains a one-party state. Conservatives may party during the so-called “Pratt Summer” or tout “the revenge of the bourgeoisie” but the Republicans’ chances are between middling to non-existent.

It’s not even certain that either of them will reach the general election. California’s insanely slow-moving vote count leaves the possibility that one or another will fall behind once the union-led “ballot harvesting” of late ballots alters the result. This has become increasingly common, with conservative candidates often eliminated weeks after election day.

Indeed, political, demographic, and economic trends are against the Republicans’ chances. The state that spawned Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now reliably Democratic. Overall registration in the state is almost two to one Democratic over Republican. There has not been a Republican elected statewide for two decades.

California’s demographic profile is increasingly bad for Republicans. The state has been consistently losing its Anglo population, as well as the middle class, particularly families of all ethnicities, to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Those most likely to stay, notes the Public Policy Institute, tend to be young and often underpaid professionals, the very class that elected New York mayor Mamdani, public workers and their wards.

Long gone are the days when California was a job-producing machine in everything from manufacturing to logistics as well as tech. These constituencies were the ones who cared most about brutal income taxes, the nation’s highest unemployment (as well as youth unemployment), unaffordable housing, poor roads, mediocre schools and ever fewer good jobs. Increasingly, these constituencies and the companies they work for are just choosing to leave.

In the governor’s race, Hilton will also be up against the full power of current governor Gavin Newsom’s political machine, largely financed by public unions and Left-leaning oligarchs. Shawn Steel, the state’s irrepressible GOP National Committeeman, told me that Hilton’s financial resources are paltry compared to what his thoroughly mediocre opponent, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, will be able to draw on.

Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.
The piece first appeared on Telegraph.

Joel in the Media: Is Fascism the Wave of the Future?

RealClearInvestigations Podcast hosts, J. Peder Zane and James Varney speak with Joel Kotkin about his recent article for RCI exploring how and why fascism hasbecome a buzzword of American politics.

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, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Homepage image: composite of election results from Wikimedia data accessed June 7.

Socialism Once Again Rears its Ugly Head

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Could Canada someday become a thoroughly red country? This may not be as absurd as it seems.

Although by American standards Canada is already socialist, given its strong social safety net, the country has a market-based economy, with residual commitment to property rights and basic civil liberties. Yet underneath this comforting picture, the emerging reality is frightening. Read more

Tech Bros Are Getting What They Deserve

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California’s tech oligarchs are portraying themselves as victims, as the left clamors to tax their wealth away.

Perhaps they should take some responsibility.

Once widely admired as feisty disrupters, these super-rich moguls now define the establishment in California, a state with more billionaires than any other. And it is an establishment under threat. Read more

Iranian Americans Want IRGC Regime Gone

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The Trump administration has been cracking down on a handful of Iranian residents who have ties to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and have even allegedly been involved in gun-running while living lavish lifestyles in LA. That may leave the impression that this community might not support attempts to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Read more