California, like Russia, is a place which has been blessed with natural resources galore (and California, unlike Russia, has great weather to boot). It took California much longer to get there and yet Californians can now say, with the Russians, that they’ve managed to make nothing out of everything. (In contrast to Singapore and Hong Kong, which made everything out of nothing.)
A young woman I know is a native San Francisian and yet when she graduated from the UW system a couple of years ago she opted to stay in icy Wisconsin rather than return to sunny California. She tells me she just can’t afford to live in her hometown. I have mixed feelings about that, because although she is a nice, rather naive young person, she is California nutty when it comes to politics. California has long been known as the state America’s fruits and nuts roll to; we in the other states really would prefer if they stayed there rather than rolling to other parts of the country. We have enough native leftists around her without having to import the Left Coast variety.
Interesting – SF has become a city for the rich and the the poor, while the middle class can’t afford the place anymore. And yet none of the middle class liberal Californians I’ve ever met make the connection between their crappy politics and why they can’t afford to live there any more.
