Tag Archive for: california feudalism

How to Shrink a Fortune

For generations, millions have come to California to make their fortunes, relying on the state’s own seemingly limitless fortune of natural resources, favorable climate, and economic opportunity. But now California’s longstanding identity as the nation’s leading innovator, wealth-builder, and aspirational locale is threatened. Read more

The End of the Silicon Valley Dream

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.

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How the California Dream Became a Nightmare

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

California’s Budget Surplus Has Vanished; Its Economy Faces a Harsh Reality

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

What the New York Times Won’t Admit About California

Even the New York Times has to admit unpleasant realities, like the departure of people from California and other deep blue states. But one thing the paper, and other similarly-minded reporters based here, will never admit: the connection between the California economy and regulation and the rising out-migrations.

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California is a Bastion of Innovation Marred by Deep Inequality. Is That America’s Future?

Everyone seems to be California dreaming these days. Much of America, particularly its red parts, see California as a hopeless dystopia best understood as everything the nation should avoid. Meanwhile, for the progressive Left and many around Joe Biden, California is the Mecca, a great role model being attacked by jealous reactionaries.

As in so many cases, both sides have a piece of the truth.

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Trouble in Paradise: The Crumbling California Model

Some horrified conservatives dismiss California as the progressive dystopia, bound for bankruptcy and, let’s hope, growing irrelevance. Progressives, for their part, hail the Golden State as the avatar of a better future, the role model for a new, more environmentally friendly and socially just economic order. They often dismiss critiques as conservative misinformation.

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Feudal Future Podcast – Is There Hope? The Future of California Politics

On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Tom Campbell and Shawn Steel to discuss the future of California politics.

Gavin Newsom Won His Recall. What’s Next for California?

What started as a lark, then became an impossible dream—a conservative resurgence, starting in California—ended, like many past efforts, in electoral defeat. With his overwhelming victory in the recall election, California governor Gavin Newsom and his backers have consolidated their hold on the state for the foreseeable future.

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Gavin Newsom’s White Privilege

By: William McGurn
On: Wall Street Journal

If the polls going into Tuesday’s recall election in California hold up, Gavin Newsom will keep his job as governor. But if he does, no one should ever again take seriously progressive complaints about white privilege.

Because if white privilege is a thing, Mr. Newsom is drenched in it. Mr. Newsom’s father was a well-connected state judge who once managed one of the trusts for the family of oil magnate J. Paul Getty.

As for his son, the Los Angeles Times says that “a coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families has backed him at every step of his rise.” This privilege is reflected in the $70 million Mr. Newsom raised to fight the recall—more than five times the $13 million raised by his leading challenger, Republican Larry Elder.

“California has become the epicenter of neo-feudalism, and Newsom symbolizes this new autocracy,” says Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in Orange County. “The irony is that Elder is attacked as the candidate of the rich and greedy by this new elite—high tech, teachers unions, the media and some of the state’s wealthiest citizens.”

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