I found Joel Kotkin’s critique of California in City Journal interesting:
What the state’s minorities need is not less policing, or systematic looting of upscale neighborhoods, or steps to reimpose affirmative action, or kneeling politicians; they require policies that empower working-class citizens of all races to ascend into the middle class.
The state’s leaders should prioritize improving middle-class jobs and opportunities, replacing indoctrination with skills acquisition, and encouraging local businesses. Considering the nature of California politics, this can happen only if minority Californians demand something different.
but puzzling in some respects. For example, I couldn’t reconcile this claim:
Based on cost-of-living estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, 28 percent of California’s African-Americans live in poverty, compared with 22 percent nationally. Fully one-third of Latinos, now the state’s largest ethnic group, live in poverty, compared with 21 percent outside the state.
with this table from KFF although both Mr. Kotkin and the KFF claim to be referencing the same source.
Mostly I see what has happened in California as the logical culmination of the foolish policies we’ve been following for most of the last half century. A prosperous white upper middle and upper class, impoverished mestizos and blacks. A lot like Mexico, in fact.
What struck me about the piece is that his prescription would be bitterly opposed by the “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone” (BANANA) environmentalists who appear to wield more influence in California than anywhere else in the country. The state’s zoning requirements, high energy prices, and skepticism about manufacturing work synergistically to push housing costs up and wages for most people down.
And what ‘race’ do the vast majority of greenies belong to? White, of course. Especially upper middle class and/or government-employed whites, the same ones all in favor of keeping Kung Flu Lockdowns in place indefinitely. Because they are relatively immune from the economic effects of their preferred policies, including crime.
Attempting to balance greenhouse gaseous emissions and fire safety Will send PG&E swiftly back into bankruptcy even if they convert to publicly owned. They can borrow enough to cover the Mojave in solar panels but still need transmission lines that will need to be trenched in to protect kangaroo rat habitat.
And if they put all that in place they’re going to have to provide subsidies for customers to pay electric bills.
And those will be really high if California mandates all electric homes and transportation.
Going to take a lot of creative finance.
Well, Tars said it succinctly. No doubt the electorate has a component that believes the nations social ills can be corrected. But the “social policies†Dave references never seem to do the trick. When something doesn’t work after 70 years, when the supposed beneficiaries of said policies are worse off after all this, and we are still talking the same shit, and when an entire industry rises to feed off of the money spigot, you know you have a failed policy. Democrats? Double down. It works for them. AOC is that stupid. Most Democrats are not. They are either willfully blind, or just fucks.
I’m not very interested in statistical noodling. California is a mess. WTFU. We are destroying the middle class for the benefit of a bunch of white, upper middle class, no nothing social justice warriors who won’t live by what they prescribe and will be horrified when they realize the dopes they are employing come after them.
The dopes they employ can’t even find those dead end, gated communities.
More likely, this will devolve into a crime ridden dystopian nightmare like the slums of Rio.