Who Killed the California Economy?

We live in Central California, a "red" part of a very "blue" state. All is not well in the Blue States.

On the surface this should be the moment the Blue Man basks in glory. The most urbane president since John Kennedy sits in the White House. A San Francisco liberal runs the House of Representatives while the key committees are controlled by representatives of Boston, Manhattan, Beverly Hills, and the Bay Area—bastions of the gentry.

Despite his famous no-blue-states-no-red-states-just-the-United-States statement, more than 90 percent of the top 300 administration officials come from states carried last year by President Obama. The inner cabinet—the key officials—hail almost entirely from a handful of cities, starting with Chicago but also including New York, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco area. . .

Yet despite all this, the blue states appear to be continuing their decades-long meltdown. “Hope” may still sell among media pundits and café society, but the bad economy, increasingly now Obama’s, is causing serious pain to millions of ordinary people who happen to live in the left-leaning part of America. . . . .

. . . hopes that Obama would emphasize . . . basic infrastructure now have been dashed. Instead, the stimulus has been largely steered to social service providers, “green” industries, and academic research. One reason, as we now know, is that feminists saw such an approach as too favorable to “burly men” who might not have been among the president’s core fan base.

Sadly, many of those “burly men,” particularly the unemployed, still reside in the blue states. They might not be in the places inhabited by the post-industrial elites but they do live in the hardscrabble neighborhoods, industrial suburbs, and small towns from Michigan and upstate New York to California’s vast interior. . . .

Here, Joel Kotkin gets more specific, talking with Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) about what happened to California's economy, and what California's experience means for the rest of the nation. Registration for PJTV is free.

Mr. Kotkin wrote a book years ago correctly predicting the prospects for American resurgence at a time when Asia was moving forward quickly. He was once on the staff of the Washington Post. His primary emphasis in writing now appears to be economic and political geography. His viewpoint is intriguing.

He has also written a short list of 5 answers to the question, Who Killed California's Economy. You may be able to guess a few of them:

Right now California's economy is moribund, and the prospects for a quick turnaround are not good. Unable to pay its bills, the state is issuing IOUs; its once strong credit rating has collapsed. The state that once boasted the seventh-largest gross domestic product in the world is looking less like a celebrated global innovator and more like a fiscal basket case along the lines of Argentina or Latvia.

It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. . . .

Worth your time, whether you read his articles, watch the video, or both.

Update: To add insult to injury, looks like lots of California's stimulus money went to Texas.