The Bad News Behind California’s Good Times
Economic Busts Are Bad in the Golden State, but Booms Can Be Even Worse
Californians, being tougher than we look, have always found ways to survive our economic busts.
It’s the booms that bring us to our breaking point.
This essential truth is being missed in the way we talk about life in today’s California.
Right now, politicians and media alike are juxtaposing the hallmarks of California’s current boom with our deep problems—as if they represented a contradiction, and a puzzle. How can a place be so wealthy and innovative and progressive, they ask, and yet so poor and calamitous and ungenerous at the same time?
“California …
