Posted on 06/10/2014 7:43:22 AM PDT by amnestynone
California’s dream is shrinking inexorably, and only radical steps can prevent the condition from becoming permanent. Compared with previous economic expansions, fewer state residents and communities are benefiting from this recovery, which has largely been restricted to the small coastal zone surrounding the Bay Area, as well as certain parts of western Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.
As the economy has strengthened, what is called a “boom” in the mainstream media is really a story of one region. Some 300,000 jobs have been created as the recovery has strengthened over the past 15 months,but three-quarters of them have been concentrated along the coast, mostly in the San Francisco-San Jose corridor.
In contrast, much of the interior of the state, from the Inland Empire, where the poverty rate has doubled since 1990, to the Central Valley, is doing far less well. Unemployment has dropped to near 5 percent in the Bay Area, but remains above 8 percent in the Inland Empire, and above 10 percent in many interior communities, from Fresno and Modesto to Bakersfield. Viewed in the national media as some sort of permanent basket case, the inland region, booming a decade ago, was recently compared by a UCLA economist to Appalachia.
Get in the ‘zone
California’s interior clearly needs a form of new deal that will allow it to participate in the state’s recovery. This plan starts with declaring the entire area an “enterprise zone” that allows communities to opt out from some of the harshest, coastally driven regulations.
Enterprise zones typically refer to economically ailing portions of cities where policies to encourage economic growth and development are implemented for businesses in the designated area. Such policies, on a regional scale, are needed in inland California.
Extraordinary controls on development, expensive “green energy” policies and high taxes on small enterprises may seem reasonable, or at least bearable, in a coastal economy fueled by soaring capital gains, with the prospect that the gentry rich can supply trickle-down service jobs to the hoi polloi.
But such policies are often disastrous for the state’s interior, which lacks the resources or appeal of the coastal havens. Take the issue of electricity prices, which have soared, in large part, because of the green-energy policies favored by influential residents along the coast. Energy costs for many California businesses are roughly twice those for consumers in the Pacific Northwest, Salt Lake City or Denver. Yet here’s the rub: The climate along the coastal strip requires less air conditioning or heating, unlike that of the interior regions, where temperatures rise and fall more severely.
Worse yet, there’s more pain to come: California’s recently enacted carbon “cap and trade” system could boost gasoline prices, already 55 cents per gallon above the national average, another dollar.
Unaffordable Coast
Many wealthier coastal residents can afford housing close to major job centers and, for that matter, more expensive gasoline. But the same pump prices are a dagger aimed at the finances of many middle- and working-class people who live in the interior and have to commute to employment. The gentry retort – that such people should move to the city – ignores the fact that most middle- and working-class people can’t afford to live decently in places like Los Angeles, much less San Francisco, given current prices.
People in recent decades have moved to the interior largely to improve conditions for their families, not to lower their quality of life. Rising gas prices won’t lead them “back to the city” but, more likely, will force many to cut back further, or consider moving elsewhere. There’s no discernible movement of people to the coastal counties from the interior; if anything, the pattern, although less marked than a decade ago, remains quite the opposite.
Despite a growing population, the long-term sustainability of the interior’s economy
Turn the water back on.
Imagine the vast wealth that could be created in CA’s interior if the state would free up its vast oil and water resources.
“Imagine the vast wealth that could be created in CA’s interior if the state would free up its vast oil and water resources.”
Imagine the vast cultural/societal improvement that could be created in CA’s interior if the state would deport its vast criminal/illegal class of ‘wetbacks’ back to Messico and Latin America.
That’s “California Dreamin’”, alas.
Imagine the vast wealth the state could create for its entire population if it did away with its notoriously high state income tax and anti-business policies.
There are millions of 'low income' people that seem to get by in LA. Oh, the author wrote decently.
LA and California is full of 3rd World people that have 3rd world ways, 3rd world problems, and are only capable of creating 3rd world conditions. Even 1st World poor people don't want to live around them and will pay a premium in time or money to live somewhere else.
California is the green utopia of the elites. Green, in the sense that you must be wealthy to live in that utopia. The lower and middle classes can not afford to live in that utopia.
“Above 10% in areas like Fresno”?????
Try 40%. WAAAAAY above 10%.
Take away the water & there are no more crops.
Looks like these guys are cheerleading a crooked real estate scam that has been building for fifty years.
It started with the California Water Project, a huge subsidy to "farmers" sheltering their water rights and land investments under the Williamson Act waiting for the residential construction demand to come. But the big players in real estate were only using them as bag holders. Listing the delta smelt to put the farmers out of business and make the land cheap to buy was just the first step. Then there's the "high speed rail" corridor to focus the coming development. My guess is that the whistle-stop locations are already long bought up. Next we'll have a "conservancy" to lock up ag land around the towns to come to focus demand only on those locations the big guys bought. Then it will be construction of what I call insta-cities. They might as well be prisons.
This is the face of Sustainable Development. It's just like what's going on in China, just as stupid, just as corrupt, and just as dangerous.
I wade thru the comments section because occasionlly I find an informed, insightful comment such as yours. Thanks.
That comment was the product of sifting through 14,000 real estate transactions in my county asking why the laws worked the way they have over the last half-century. I was writing a book on the mechanics of the use of environmental laws to manipulate asset value and, more importantly, what to do about it. You can learn more about that here.
There is much subtext and meaning between lines in any article like this, but I think you’ve pointed out the significant missing factor which explains it. Someone who grew up in America is bound to be surprised by looking out his window and seeing his neighborhood somehow became a foreign country.
Thanks, very interesting.
His study is more on the angle of big corruption in huge projects like the bullet train. Mine is much more systemic in nature, but we both focus on the same group of RINOcrat thieves.
Documenting the rapine of those brigands is an endless task, I reckon.
It's only worth doing it a few times for example purposes. After all, what DA in this State is going to take down Richard Blum? My purpose is to document sufficiently to convince people that it is worth limited experiments to develop an alternative to regulatory government. Having the examples of superior work, particularly in the environmental realm, is especially important. So is developing the means to communicate it, both at depth and at the popular level.
That is what I do.
I admire your zeal and dedication.
Imho California is over populated and unsustainable
There is a cultural issue. Can a sustained development exist based on the Hispanic influx and white exit
Thank you. 'Lives, fortunes, and Sacred honor' still mean something if we let it.
Ping and leaving a trail for later comment...
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