Who Will Protect the Global Economy From California?

The Urge to Get Rich Quick Makes the Golden State a Threat to the World

Don’t bank on California, especially when banks are involved.

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is widely discussed as a harbinger of the future, a sign of problems and disruptions in the technology businesses that were its best customers. But this bank failure, the second largest in U.S. history, actually fits a very old pattern—of California and its industries putting the economies of the nation and the world at risk.

Our state’s history of precipitating economic crisis is singular, and rooted in the same California characteristic that so often makes us successful. We aren’t …

A granny flat in Sacramento

Will Granny Flats Replace Green Lawns in California’s Backyards?

Historic Deregulation Is Freeing Homeowners to Build in Hopes of Easing the Growing Housing Crisis

A snarky reader, annoyed at some praise of California’s governor in this space, recently asked: Where exactly do I keep my shrine to Gavin Newsom?

My answer: In the same place …

Deuel Vocational Institution

Out With Mass Incarceration and in With Mass Commerce

Can California Call It Progress When Rural Prisons Are Replaced With Retail Warehouses?

As California starts closing prisons, what might open in their place?

I glimpsed one answer to that question while driving to Deuel Vocational Institution, between the San Joaquin County cities of …

Aggressive State Meddling Could Fix California’s Housing Crisis

With Local Governments Crying "NIMBY," Sacramento Must Empower Developers and Home-Seekers

All the debate about how to address California’s massive housing shortage is obscuring the big picture: a state takeover of local housing policy has begun.

That’s the real import of the …

Welcome to the Affluent Central Coast, California’s Child Poverty Capital

How the Rising Cost of Living and, Paradoxically, the Availability of Jobs Are Tough on Families

Californians used to envy residents of our beautiful, wine-and-wealth-drenched Central Coast. Now we have reason to pity them.

And not just because Nicole Kidman has thrown her star power into producing …

What’s Behind California’s Sudden Urge to Help the Homeless?

It’s the Rich, Now Crowded Next to the Destitute in the Housing-Crunched State, Who Are Driving Politicians’ Newfound Attentiveness

How did homelessness suddenly become such a hot issue across California? There are many reasons, and few of them have anything to do with people who are homeless.

Those reasons—economic anxiety, …