California is a mess, but I love it all the same--especially the Bay Area, where I lived for 15 years. I went to Berkeley in 1962--a refugee from Amherst College, which at that time was dominated by frat boys with high SAT scores. I didn't go to Berkeley to go to school, but to be a bus ride away from North Beach and the Jazz Workshop. In a broader sense, I went to California for the same reason that other émigrés had been going since the 1840s. I was knocking on the Golden Door.
Immigrants from Europe had come to America seeking happiness and a break with their unhappy pasts. But many Americans--from the '49ers of the Gold Rush to Mark Twain to a young Ronald Reagan--had gone to California to find renewal. California was part of the American frontier, but, as Carey McWilliams points out in California: The Great Exception, it developed outside the framework of the American frontier. It was not an extension of the East or Midwest, but became a state in 1850 before other Western states. It was an island in the sun without Pilgrim winters or windswept prairies. It nourished its own dream of wealth and well-being. It was the American dream all over again, but dreamt within America.
California has fulfilled many of those dreams. It has extended and enhanced the promise of America--from the discovery of gold to the introduction of the movies and television, the aerospace industry, Silicon Valley, and the Central Valley's giant farms that supply a quarter of America's food. It has also been a political and cultural vanguard--from John C. Fremont, the first presidential candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party, to Progressive Governor Hiram Johnson, Socialist Upton Sinclair, old-age-pension agitator Francis Townsend, and down to Richard Nixon, Earl Warren, and Reagan. The New Left staged its first mass protests in Berkeley. Gay rights came out of Los Angeles and San Francisco. And the New Right was spurred by California's tax revolt and by the backlash against illegal immigration.
I was drawn to California by Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but, by the time I arrived, the era of the beatniks was over. The Caffé Trieste had become a tourist hangout. Still, within a few years, I was trekking to the Fillmore to hear the Grateful Dead, living in sin, smoking pot, and marching against racial discrimination and the Vietnam war. That heady period, marked by the Free Speech Movement and Haight-Ashbury, faded by the early 1970s, but it helped inspire the rise of Apple, the personal computer, the movement for open-source software, and, later, the virtual community of the Internet and the dot-coms. (This is not some oddball observation of mine: It's documented in Steven Levy's book Hackers and in John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer.)
But could California's days as a politico-cultural vanguard and economic bellwether be coming to an end? The state has endured swings and has come back better than ever. Writing in 1949, with unemployment at 14 percent, McWilliams questioned whether California exceptionalism had finally come to an end, but, with the onset of the cold war, Southern California benefited from an aerospace boom. Again, in the early 1990s, California seemed to be falling into a black hole: Cutbacks in military spending decimated the state's defense industries, and, by the end of 1992, unemployment was 9.9 percent, 2.5 points higher than the national rate; that year, Kemper Securities rated California's economy fifty-first in investment prospects among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But the growth of dot-coms, a global entertainment industry, and biotech led its rebound.
Last month, California's unemployment rate hit 12.2 percent, a 70-year high. Its bond rating is the lowest of the 50 states. Earlier, the state government had to issue IOUs. Its political system--once the envy of other states--has become dysfunctional. And its educational system, which former University of California president Clark Kerr described as "bait to be dangled in front of industry," is riven by conflict and reeling from budget cuts. Is this déjà vu all over again, or has the California dream finally become a nightmare? There are troubling signs.
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COMMENTS (11)
Judis:
Paradise Lost: Is California Finished?
Time Magazine cover story:
Why California is still America's Future
I'll take a stab in the dark here:
The, uh, truth is somewhere in the middle?
gw
Judis:
Paradise Lost: Is California Finished?
Time Magazine cover story:
Why California is still America's Future
I'll take a stab in the dark here:
The, uh, truth is somewhere in the middle?
gw
Differences. That is the source of the difficulty, not only in California, but in most every state. The states with the fewest problems? The states with the fewest differences. I grew up in a period (1950s) when the children had few differences, including academic differences. Most kids fit in the middle, with few at the bottom and few at the top. Today there is no middle, as kids are either at the bottom or at the top. How times have changed. And as long as there are differences, solving social problems will be elusive. And not only in public education. A major reason that health care reform has been so elusive, is because different groups have different health care systems. And ... view full comment
Differences. That is the source of the difficulty, not only in California, but in most every state. The states with the fewest problems? The states with the fewest differences. I grew up in a period (1950s) when the children had few differences, including academic differences. Most kids fit in the middle, with few at the bottom and few at the top. Today there is no middle, as kids are either at the bottom or at the top. How times have changed. And as long as there are differences, solving social problems will be elusive. And not only in public education. A major reason that health care reform has been so elusive, is because different groups have different health care systems. And that will not change with the "reform" being considered. With differences come differences in perception, as each different group worries that "reform" (whether in education, health care, whatever), will benefit the "other" group. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration appears content picking winners and losers. So don't expect our problems, which are based on differences, to go away. As Judis points out in the California experience, Gov Pat Brown understood this, so his education reform created one system for one group, namely everybody who wanted an education. No differences.
California is one great big experiment in direct democracy. It's failure to govern itself is a product of its own demographic problems to be sure. But other states in similar situations do a better job...Arizona for example. The problem in California is the initiative referendum system that allows voters to override their representatives. Madison, in Federalist #10, warned against just this sort of thing in preferring a republican (representative) government over a democracy (a direct democracy). His only real life reference in this regard was the trial of Socrates in the Athenian forum. Direct democracy was a failure in ancient Greece, Madison thought it was a bad idea in post-Colonia ... view full comment
California is one great big experiment in direct democracy. It's failure to govern itself is a product of its own demographic problems to be sure. But other states in similar situations do a better job...Arizona for example. The problem in California is the initiative referendum system that allows voters to override their representatives. Madison, in Federalist #10, warned against just this sort of thing in preferring a republican (representative) government over a democracy (a direct democracy). His only real life reference in this regard was the trial of Socrates in the Athenian forum. Direct democracy was a failure in ancient Greece, Madison thought it was a bad idea in post-Colonial America and it's a bad idea in California.
California's gerrymandered legislative districts are also a problem. There are few competitive races. Until this is dealt with you will continue to have a very polarized legislative branch in California.
California's gerrymandered legislative districts are also a problem. There are few competitive races. Until this is dealt with you will continue to have a very polarized legislative branch in California.
As I drove over the Bay Bridge this morning the gorgeous October sun half-heartedly attempted to climb the sky, surfing its wave of time. Below me down there, in the Financial District, the stock market is up of late, leading to the usual short-term memory loss. So, far away, are the Yanks, among whom A-Rod has found an October stroke. You are all coming through in waves; California in decline isn't finished, even if it wanted to be. Just surfing a disturbance in spacetime.
Although I'm in biotech (part of the "good" economy), I'm around many on the downside of their personal waves. We hired a vet tech to help out part-time around our ranch; she needs the money: she may lose the house. My inb ... view full comment
As I drove over the Bay Bridge this morning the gorgeous October sun half-heartedly attempted to climb the sky, surfing its wave of time. Below me down there, in the Financial District, the stock market is up of late, leading to the usual short-term memory loss. So, far away, are the Yanks, among whom A-Rod has found an October stroke. You are all coming through in waves; California in decline isn't finished, even if it wanted to be. Just surfing a disturbance in spacetime.
Although I'm in biotech (part of the "good" economy), I'm around many on the downside of their personal waves. We hired a vet tech to help out part-time around our ranch; she needs the money: she may lose the house. My inbox this morning has three queries from unemployed friends about the resumes they sent.
During my 40 years in the work force I was unemployed for one long stretch, during the Carter years. There are worse places to be unemployed than San Francisco. There are cafes, parks, saloons, beaches, libraries, pretty girls passing by the bench where one sips one's house coffee, riding waves of idle speculation.
A broke California is an honest California--we lead the country in revealing the future. That Californians can only look to low-paying service jobs tells you something about what more and more of your children are looking at, regardless of the state in which they live.
We will lead the nation in recycling and illiteracy, solar power and poverty. Play catch up if you dare.
If CA's unemployement rate was 14% in 1949 and 12.2% today, that makes today's rate the highest in 60, not 70 years.
If CA's unemployement rate was 14% in 1949 and 12.2% today, that makes today's rate the highest in 60, not 70 years.
I’m a third generation Californian (my great grandparents arrived on a wagon in the late 1800’s). Your comments about the initiative and referendum system (and the follow up comments by other readers) are spot on.
However, leaving politics aside, I only wanted to comment on your memory trip back to the 60’s (“trekking to the Fillmore to hear the Grateful Dead, living in sin, smoking pot, and marching against racial discrimination and the Vietnam war.”) I too, lived through the 60’s as a University student in the SF Bay area. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the same place at the same time on more than one occasion. I’ll just add the Rolling Stones Altamont concert to ... view full comment
I’m a third generation Californian (my great grandparents arrived on a wagon in the late 1800’s). Your comments about the initiative and referendum system (and the follow up comments by other readers) are spot on.
However, leaving politics aside, I only wanted to comment on your memory trip back to the 60’s (“trekking to the Fillmore to hear the Grateful Dead, living in sin, smoking pot, and marching against racial discrimination and the Vietnam war.”) I too, lived through the 60’s as a University student in the SF Bay area. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were in the same place at the same time on more than one occasion. I’ll just add the Rolling Stones Altamont concert to my list of all time 60’s experiences. (At least what I remember of it.) There is an old saying about those times that you may have heard; “If you can remember the 60’s, you weren’t really there." You seem to remember a great deal about those times. Are you sure you were really there?
(1) Yard!
(2) What we do know is that experience is the greatest vehicle for learning. And maybe the only way to begin to bridge the inequality gap in an ecology like California's--and by extension, America's--is to regulate large paychecks with community service expectations. For the only way to make global insurance stock-derivators care about libraries and schools and service jobs is to make them work for libraries and schools and hotels. Then they might see with their own goddamn eyes the dilapidation of the infrastructure the next generations will assume is normal. You want a $700 million bonus and a tax holiday on that bonus? Fine. But you can only have it after you've shoveled ... view full comment
(1) Yard!
(2) What we do know is that experience is the greatest vehicle for learning. And maybe the only way to begin to bridge the inequality gap in an ecology like California's--and by extension, America's--is to regulate large paychecks with community service expectations. For the only way to make global insurance stock-derivators care about libraries and schools and service jobs is to make them work for libraries and schools and hotels. Then they might see with their own goddamn eyes the dilapidation of the infrastructure the next generations will assume is normal. You want a $700 million bonus and a tax holiday on that bonus? Fine. But you can only have it after you've shoveled the ditches on which we will lay new tracks for High Speed Rail, after you've mopped the floors and scrubbed the urinals at Waffle House, and after you've catalogued the increasingly thin collection of books available to children at their school library. Log enough hours every month and then, and only then, can you can have your money.
YARD! Welcome back!
Judis article leaves out the effects of illegal immigration and the power of the public employee unions. Both explain a great deal about CA's curent predicament.
That Godawful political system isn't helping, either.
YARD! Welcome back!
Judis article leaves out the effects of illegal immigration and the power of the public employee unions. Both explain a great deal about CA's curent predicament.
That Godawful political system isn't helping, either.
I just hope the rest of the nation will not be forced to "bail" California out. For years Californians have been swilling programs and services only to turn around and vote against the very taxes necessary to pay for them.
I just hope the rest of the nation will not be forced to "bail" California out. For years Californians have been swilling programs and services only to turn around and vote against the very taxes necessary to pay for them.
Mr. Judis:
Next time you are in Oakland, feel free to visit my classroom at Oakland High School, where you can meet a large number of bright, hard working 1st and 2nd generation immigrant students in an AP World History class. It is hard to feel TOO pessimistic about California after spending time with them
Mr. Judis:
Next time you are in Oakland, feel free to visit my classroom at Oakland High School, where you can meet a large number of bright, hard working 1st and 2nd generation immigrant students in an AP World History class. It is hard to feel TOO pessimistic about California after spending time with them