The Myth of the California Renaissance by Ben Boychuk, City Journal 14 March 2014"It's heavy.""What is it?""The stuff that dreams are made of."
The New York Times turns a blind eye to the Golden State’s many woes.
14 March 2014
To call California a “failed state” and “ungovernable” would be hyperbolic—it is home to more millionaires than any other state. But California also has the nation’s highest poverty rate and the most food stamp recipients, and policymakers have done little to address profligate spending, unfunded pensions, and ever-growing retiree health-care obligations. So it’s equally wrong to say that the Golden State is enjoying an economic “turnaround.”
You wouldn’t know much of this from reading Timothy Egan’s recent column in the New York Times touting a “Golden State revival.” ...
About this time last year, Egan visited San Simeon, home of the glorious—if currently parched—Hearst Castle, and declared that “the Golden State is looking toward tomorrow once again.” Parts of it, anyway. The golden California dream has never been brighter for those who can afford life along the coastal strip. If you’re living in La Jolla, Newport Beach, Santa Monica, Monterey, Palo Alto, or San Francisco, you’re probably doing well. Drive an hour to the east from any of these places, and the landscape is much different physically and economically. Inland California, from Imperial in the south to Modoc in the north, remains one of the poorest regions in the nation. Though the state unemployment rate fell in February to 8.1 percent, inland unemployment ranges from 9.5 percent in Riverside to 25.9 percent in Colusa. Of the 20 counties in the United States with the largest unemployment rates, 11 are in California.
Egan returned last week to sing the praises of Jerry Brown, California’s once and future governor. “It’s unfair to give all credit for the Golden State revival to Jerry Brown,” Egan allows. Nevertheless, Brown, whoannounced last month he would seek yet another term, “deserves the lion’s share.” How so? Brown is one of the greatest cheerleaders California has ever known. He claims credit for 1 million new jobs and proudly boasts of signing legislation that will raise the state’s minimum wage (and therefore the cost of labor to employers) to $10 an hour. Egan acknowledges some lingering problems that Brown must tackle. He gives one sentence to unemployment, which remains well above the 6.7 percent national average; makes dismissive mention of the drought—a recent major rainstorm was welcome, but it’s hardly enough to end the water emergency; and briefly nods to pension reform. But Egan says nothing about poverty, welfare, or food stamps, and he flatly denies that theCalifornia exodus ever happened. He’d rather joke about the unlikely prospect of Amarillo, Texas luring Google and Facebook away from Silicon Valley, neglecting to mention how both companies—along with Apple, Cisco, Intel, IBM, and Oracle—are expanding operations around Austin and Houston. Or that Tesla, the Silicon Valley-based, federally subsidized, luxury electric-car maker, won’t be locating its new $5 billion lithium-ion battery factory in California. It’s considering Arizona, Nevada—and Texas.
Rather than confront these realities, Egan indulges in more myth making. …
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