It's not hard to understand why people live in California, nor why it boomed in the decades after World War II. There are few places more blessed by God than California, even with its mudslides, wildfires, and earthquakes, which deterred not a single person from moving there. It is, in most ways, a paradise. If there was anyplace that could be said to embody the American Dream, or at least the postwar American Dream in which anybody could aspire to be middle class, it was California. New York City may be where people went to strike it big, but California...