To many, this future is the biggest disaster of all. This is why they just voted in the nation's first modern immigrant exclusionary law. In 10 years, the middle-class dream of Southern California has devoured itself. There are just too many people for everyone to own a palm-shaded home in the suburbs. Lockheed ended March with thousands of layoffs preceding its post-merger move east.
Homes sell for two-thirds peak values.
To nearby states, California means unsought immigration. The problems migrants sometimes have in Seattle or Santa Fe make one wonder whether, as sci-fi writer R.A. Lafferty once speculated, Angelenos might become the automotive gypsies of the 21st Century. But Los Angeles County has more than 40,000 pending downward property reassessments. The multibillion-dollar bankruptcy of adjacent Orange County, the bastion of Republican prosperity, stuck another spoke in recovery's wheel. That particular bankruptcy was more than an effect of the recession.