A Sliver of Hope for California Details
NEW GEOGRAPHY-In the minds of most progressives, as well as some horrified conservatives, California is the harbinger of America’s future.
Governor Gavin Newsom sees his state as a model, claiming California is “the envy of the world” and
the great bastion of social justice. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” he boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.”
Yet it is ever more clear to ever more Californians that our state is becoming exactly the vast gated community Newsom warns about. As Ali Modarres showed in “The Demographic Transformation of California” (2003), the “shared prosperity” of the Pat Brown years were based on a broad-based economy spanning the gamut from agriculture and oil to aerospace and finance, software, and basic manufacturing. In contrast, the Newsom progressive model is built largely around one industry