By Joel Kotkin - newgeography
The recent announcement that Californias unemployment again nudged up to 12 percentsecond worst in the nation behind its evil twin Nevadashould have come as a surprise but frankly did not. From the beginning of the recession the Golden
State has been stuck bringing up a humbled nations rear and seems mired in that less-than-illustrious position.
What has happened to my adopted home state of over last decade is a tragedy both for Californians and for America. For most of the past century California has been golden not only in name but in every kind of superlativea global leader in agriculture energy entertainment technology and most important of all human aspiration.
In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872 the second president of the University of California Daniel Coit Gilman said science was the mother of California. Today California may worship at the altar of science but increasingly in the most regressive hysterical and reactionary way.
Californias dominant ruling classconsisting of public-employee unions green jihadis and Democratic machine politicianshas no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.
Nowhere was Californias old technological ethos more pronounced than in agriculture where great Californians such as William Mulholland creator of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and Pat Brown who forged the state water project created the greatest water-delivery system since the Roman Empire. Their effort brought water from the ice-bound Sierra Nevada mountains down to the states dry but fertile valleys and to the great desert metropolis of Southern California.
Now largely at the behest of greens California agriculture is being systematically cut down by regulation. In an attempt to protect a small fish called the Delta smelt upward of 200000 acres of prime farmland have been idled according to the states Department of Conservation. Even in the current wet cycle Californias agricultural industry which exports roughly $14 billion annually is slowly being decimated. Unemployment in some Central Valley towns tops 30 percent and in cases even 40 percent.
And now notes my friend Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue green regulators are imposing new groundwater regulations that may force the shutdown of production even in areas like his that have their own ample water supplies.
Salinas was the home town of John Steinbeck author of The Grapes of Wrath and great chronicler of Depression-era California. Today for many in hardscrabble majority-Latino Salinas home to 150000 people The Grapes of Wrath is less lyrical than real. California notes Donohue a lifelong Democrat remains intent on job destruction and continued hyper-regulation.
Californias pain is not restricted to farming towns. The states regulatory vigilantes have erected a labyrinth of rules that increasingly makes doing almost anything that might contribute to increased carbon emissionsmanufacturing conventional energy home constructionextraordinarily onerous. Not surprisingly the state has not gained middle-skilled jobs (those requiring two years of college or more) for a decade while the nation boosted them by 5 percent and archrival Texas by a stunning 16 percent over the same time period.
There is little chance that the jobs lost in these fields will ever be recovered under the current regime. As decent blue-collar and midlevel jobs disappear California has gone from a rate of inequality about the national average in 1970 to among the most unequal in terms of income. The supposed solution to thisGov. Jerry Browns promise of 500000 green jobsis being shown for what it really is the kind of fantasy you tell young children so they will go to sleep.
Many Californians who arent slumbering are moving out of the stateand not only the pathetic remains of the old Reaganite majority. According to the most recent census those leaving the state include old boomers middle-aged families and increasingly many Latinos as well. Outmigration rates from places like Los Angeles and the Bay Area now rival those of such cities as Detroit. In the last decade Californias population grew only 10 percent about the national average largely due to immigrants and their offspring. Population increases in the Bay Area were less than half that rate while the City of Los Angeles gained fewer new residentsless than 100000than in any decade since the turn of the last century!
Increasingly California no longer beckons ambitious newcomers except for a handful of the most affluent best educated and well connected. Through the 1980s and even through the late 90s the aspirational classes came to California. Now they head to other more opportunity-friendly places like Austin Houston Dallas Raleigh-Durham even former dust bowl" burghs like Des Moines Omaha and Oklahoma City. Meanwhile Golden California particularly its expensive ultragreen coast gets older and older. Marin County the onetime home of the Grateful Dead and countless former hippies is now one of the grayest urban counties in the country with a median age of 44.
Of course the self-described progressive mafia that runs California will point to Silicon Valley and its impressive array of startups. But for the most part firms like Google Twitter and Facebook employ only a small cadre of highly educated workers. Overall during the past decade the states high-tech employment fell by almost 4 percent while Texass science-based employment grew by a healthy 11 percent. The sad reality is that turning T-shirt-wearing kids like Mark Zuckerberg into multibillionaires doesnt do much to reduce unemployment which even in San Josethe largely blue-collar capital of Silicon Valleynow hovers around 10 percent.
Magazine cover stories and movies cannot obscure the fact that entrepreneurial growththe states most critical economic assethas now stalled. In fact according to a study by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc. last year the Golden State ranked 50th among the states in creating new businesses.
California remains rich in promise home to spectacular scenery; a great Pacific location; leading firms like Apple and Disney; and a still-impressive residue of talented diverse entrepreneurial and ingenious people. But the state will never return until the success of the current crop of puerile billionaires can be extended to enrich the wider citizenry. Until the current regime is toppled Californias declinein moral as well as economic termswill continue to the consternation of those of us who embraced it as our home for so many years.
This piece originally appeared at The Daily Beast.
Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com and is a distinguished presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and an adjunct fellow of the Legatum Institute in London. He is author of The City: A Global History. His newest book is The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 released in February 2010.
