California dreamin’ or nightmare?
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‘Thousands of Californians are moving out amid a sour economy and a housing meltdown,’ an Associated Press story at latimes.com, takes another look at the exodus of people out of California and the growing number of reasons why:
Mike Reilly spent his lifetime chasing the California dream. This year he’s going to look for it in Colorado. With a house purchase near Denver in the works, the 38-year-old engineering contractor plans to move his family 1,200 miles away from his home state’s lemon groves, sunshine and beaches. For him, years of rising taxes, dead-end schools, unchecked illegal immigration and clogged traffic have robbed the Golden State of its allure. Is there something left of the California dream? ‘If you are a Hollywood actor,’ Reilly says, ‘but not for us.’
Compounding California’s problems since L.A. Land last visited this topic are higher unemployment and state budget woes.
California’s obituary has been written before -- ‘California: The Endangered Dream’ was the title of a 1991 Time magazine cover story. The Golden State and its huge economy -- by itself, the eighth-largest in the world -- have shown resilience, weathering the aerospace bust, the dot-com crash and an energy crunch in recent years. But this time, the news just keeps getting worse. A state board halted lending for about 2,000 public works projects in California worth more than $16 billion because the state could not afford them. A report by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., last month said the state lost 100,000 jobs in the last year and the erosion of home prices eliminated over $1 trillion in wealth.
So what do you think? Is the California dream over or just hitting a bump in the road? Hat tip to commenter Renterinmidwil for suggesting the post.
-- Lauren Beale
Thoughts? Comments?
