Oh, please.
Up till about 1975, Los Angeles was the greatest city in the United States. By any measure — income, manufacturing, growth, public school system, rate of home ownership, medicine, science, and resident life satisfaction.
Those stats are indisputable.
We’ve been invaded and occupied by a foreign country, (thanks for nothing, the other 49 states), which destroyed us.
But it was great ride for a great — greatest — city.
If you watch some of those early 1970s TV shows based in LA like Adam-12 and Emergency!, you can see the mostly clean streets and nice tree-lined neighborhoods. Most of LA actually looked like that at one time.