Wonkette
California is the great basket case of this country’s financial collapse, with its 37 million people now suffering under a 12.5% unemployment rate. In eight of California’s counties, the jobless rate tops 20%, with one in five workers unable to find a job.
When things go rotten in California, they go rotten for a whole lot of Americans. It’s the most populous state by far, with 12 million more people than the next biggest state (Texas) and a full 12% of the U.S. population. The real-estate collapse and retail collapse have been brutal, and the tourism industry has been bleeding for two years now, and the state government is bankrupt and retarded. It’s all just wonderful.
And for metropolitan areas of more than 1 million residents, only obliterated Detroit has more unemployed than Southern California’s “Inland Empire,” where the jobless rate is 15% compared to the former Motor City’s 15.3%. Hooray for the Golden State. [Press Enterprise/LA Times]
But the tortoises are okay, aren’t they, Ken? Please tell me the tortoises are okay!
Jesus, it’s not much better anywhere else.
Looks like we’re gonna have to go FDR and declare war somewhere - that’ll get the economy going again!
Maybe Hollywood stars should host a telethon!
well first let’s ask them if they want help. Cuz they prolly don’t want no gummint help. Just move them all to texas and get rid of whatever legislative districts might be there (makes satisfied motion of wiping his hands clean of the whole teabagging mess–slap slap).
Well at least it’s room temperature and sunny. There’s snow on the ground and thunder in the sky where I live. Snow and thunder people! I’m not kidding. Unemployment is more sucky under these conditions.
“You know what would be cool, if we recalled our boring Governor and replaced him with a movie star with a funny accent.”
I thought we already had tried a New Detroit. I think this was Kwame before he got buff with Beefcake 3000 supplement from the General Nutrition Center.
But hey, at least the state can’t be able to raise taxes without a super-majority, and their Republicans have been able to block any attempt to do so! Otherwise they might waste the money on jobs and education and shit.
That picture just makes me think of Naked Bunny With A Whip waiting in Extemperanous’s lobby for a calendar photo shoot.
Yeah, but the top unemployment is in places where all the wingnutz congregate. The “get the government off my back, but first give me my free stuff” types. So yawn.
“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Look it up, thumpers.
It’s all Condit’s fault.
WarAndG: Things been wet in SoCal so far this year. It’s a pisser, but weather in the Golden State has turned to golden showers.
WarAndG: Unemployment is more sucky under these conditions.
But more *exciting* too, what with all the trying to survive, and shit.
Flanders: Makes me think of Jules’s story to Vincent about Tony Rocky Harvey.
Couldn’t this situation be somewhat alleviated if Schwarzeneggar would cash in all those stolen paintings he got from Hermann Goering and Maria Shriver would melt down all of her platinum dildos? There’s some liquidity for ya, Cali!
California could solve its unemployment problem if all those people who hate brown illegal aliens got up off their lazy whining whitey asses and took said asses out to the fields and started picking fruits and vegetables, taking the jobs away from the illegals. Two birds with one stone, people.
WarAndG: And the snow is icy, black and gross. Combine the bleak landscape with an outbreak of potholes and you’re well into “Ugly Season”.
Hey California, Mississippi gotz JERBS! The downside is, they’re in Mississippi.
On a personal note, this is bad news for Austin, which has become some sort of refugee center for condo-desiring Californians who have no idea how much real estate should fucking cost.
Who needs a job when it’s sunny?
weejee: Any place that’s been getting rain so far this year, instead of snow, has been having very pleasant weather, and people there have no right to complain about it.
Welcome to the new new economy — substistence agriculture. The good news is, it’s recession proof.
The real estate collapse is brutal because the major realtors continue to give everyone the shaft even as prices drop. Just as St. Reagan hoped would happen. You’d think that were a situation to develop that cheap real estate became suddenly available all over the state, the lot of the middle class might improve, yes? But no.
On the eastern seaboard, nearly every productive human is tithing a significant portion of their income directly to the real estate and banking industries, either in the form of mortgage payments or predatory rents. A handful of extremely aggressive business persons are determining that they have to get their cut before life in California may improve. People are so used to it they don’t even think to object, or if they do, there’s nobody to listen to their objections.
However, young women running away from abusive households to try to make a career based on their looks will still flock to California in droves, and there shall continue to be porn and cheap restaurant labor. So it’s all good. Plus, when you don’t have a job, there’s just that much more time to enjoy sexy-time and perfect your snorkeling technique. Or hatching plans to fly planes into things. There’s time for that kind of thing too.
Canmon (the Inadequate): But only if he promised to fix the budget by removing all the waste and fraud. That should fix it right? And lower taxes. Also.
Meanwhile San Francisco is doing alright, relatively.
Yay, Riverside! My old home town! Meth and orange juice for everybody!
Place is an armpit, always will be an armpit.
proudgrampa: I’ve been trying to warn people for a few months that the logical outcome of 20%+ unemployment globally over several years is world war III, but you’re the first person who has admitted to agreeing with me.
So you folks at HuffPo and DailyKos (we know you’re listening) — World War III, scheduled for 2012 (just in time for elections). You heard it here first.
queeraselvis v 2.0: yeah, that last bit’s a dealbreaker.
There will be blood.
Y’know, I’m just bouncing out ideas here, but I did hear that once, briefly, a long while ago, California allowed gay marriage to happen. Is it possible that allowing gay marriage for, like, a month some time a year and a half ago is what caused this completely unrelated economic ruin? Even if it seems like the implausible free association of a delusional mind, are we willing to take the risk that it’s not?
I’m not saying that’s what happened, I’m just asking questions.
madtowngooner: That’s pretty much how I felt about California when I was living there. Mind you, I always had a job while I was living there.
Everyone in Orange County and lower LA County knows that the most declasse people in the suburban blight that is Calexico are the 909-ers (Inland Empire area code residents). Nothing ruins a Newport Beach party like having out-of-town knuckle-draggers pretending to be local trying to convince you that they’re above their station. We should extend the Inland Empire all the way out and annex Arizona that way they have plenty of lebensraum.
mumblyjoe: I’m pretty sure things didn’t start going south until Eric Massa started groping dudes and asking if he could help masturbate them.
While the Inland Empire is gaining on Motown in unemployment it still has a ways to go on the stoic acceptance of random violence.
Long boring Detroit Free Press article: http://bit.ly/bVhOH1
The money shot quote, from a woman who put up with stray bullets flying through her home but finally decided to move after her son was shot in the face:
“It was a family on 32nd Street,” Cheryl Jackson said. “You could kick it with people. I even miss the drama. I’ll always be a Detroiter. That’s in my heart.
“Other than the gunfire, I would have stayed in the city. I just wanted some peace.”
bureaucrap: Now, the Fox News sponsors, with their Survival Seeds(TM) and gold stockpiling, have been predicting WWIII; although that’s more on the basis of having a black person in the White House.
Still, maybe it is time to put some skill points into small guns and energy weapons so we’re ready to fight the post-apocalyptic raiders and super-mutants.
queeraselvis v 2.0: Hmmm. World’s most disgusting governor Haley Barbour was proud that ole Miss beat out 300 other sites for the jobs, which pay about $32k/year.
“Rainer Floeth, Schulz’s president and CEO, said later the 500-employee number should be reached within five years, with about 180 jobs by the end of 2011. He said “all but three” of the jobs will be from the local work force.”
Which 3? The 3 janitors? The 3 office temps? (taps fingers on table) Which 3?
Anyone? Anyone?
Citizen Kang: Hot tip, 909 is OC now. 951 is Inland Empire. Thanks to the population boom (aka L.A. & O.C. exodus) through the 90’s, they ran out of phone numbers and had to add new area code to handle the load. Besides, you don’t need to know their area code to spot them. The giant, useless trucks on ginormous wheels with the smoking diesel stacks coming out of the bed are usually all the tip off anyone needs.
norbizness: When Cali gets the flu, Austin gets real estate inflation but DC gets shot to hell.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/05/pentagon.shooting/index.html
SayItWithWookies: I’ve been thinking for some time now that the best place to be in the event of a total economic collapse and subsequent period of unrest, disorder, food production and distribution failures, and ultimately, cannibal anarchy a la Road Warrior, is in the poorest and most primitive place you can find, raising potatoes in terraced slopes high in the Andes, or something like that. The best place to be is someplace which never developed or got dragged into an industrial society. These places will just continue on as before not even noticing that anything has happened.
Well, that, or on a sailboat.
Citizen Kang: I almost killed a guy from Orange County once, not just to watch him die, but because he needed killing. My pacifism shrinks with each passing day.
Maybe it’s time to give Cali back to Mexico.
Sure, the tourism industry is in the shitter, but I pricelined my 4-star hotel and got it for $90 a night. Cha-ching!
Enh, I can’t even gloat about this.
Downtheroadapiece: The legacy of that fucking accelerated depreciation deduction for trucks weighing more than 4,500 pounds that Bush fucking had. My town too, every fucking contractor has an F-350 diesel dually quad cab; never carry anything in it or tow anything, they just roar around every morning picking up the 3/4ths of the crew who can’t drive because of their DWIs.
Dear God, we’re fucked.
INLAND EMPIRE = BEST MOVIE EVER
WarAndG: Actually, the Inland Empire is hot, dusty, dry and where all of LA’s smog goes to rest….much worse air quality than downtown, say, or especially the rich beach cities.
IT IS LITERALLY THE WORST PLACE IN THE ENTIRE STATE, INCLUDING FRESNO.
assistant/atlas: Now there’s a good debate: which is the bigger crotch stain in the state?
Katydid: I’m from the San Fernando Valley. Your actions are commendable — except for the “almost” part.
Will I be able to read Wonkette while I’m out in the fields picking strawberries for the small elite of employed people?
Joshua Norton: It’s true. All the White Folks in the real “hurtin’” counties are “God, Guns, & Kill the Gays … and the Spics, too, as soon as they finish up the bell pepper harvest!!” types.
bureaucrap: I’m surprised that I’m the first to agree with you, bureau. I think all war is a matter of economics. Sure, the rhetoric is always about something else (freedom from terror, making the world safe for democracy, blah, blah), but the real underlying reasons for it always have something to do with money or resources.
So. California’s Inland Empire is so Republican its like you’re in Texas or some such Bible-thumping backwater.
american mutt: “I have a secret, that I want to tell you”
“What time is it?”
*laugh track*
SoCal turning into one giant David Lynch movie seems the best of the available outcomes.
WhatTheHeck: True. All up the 5 corridor through the center of the state, and then out to the Nevada border going east from LA, you’ll see lots of Bible Verse billboards, etc.
proudgrampa: Do you think if we went to war with China, that we would buy our ammo from them as a cost saving measure?
I sure do.
Snarkalicious: Not only that, we’d arm the Russians for free, to help us defeat the Chinese. Because that would have absolutely no long-term unforeseeable ramifications. Assuming anybody survived the war besides the roaches, I mean Congress.
Flanders: I want to say one word to you. Just one word: Plastics.
You have no idea how hard it is to scrub bunny cum off a velveteen sofa. The pile is fucked.
It’s your own fault for making me wait. I was bored, and the couch reminded me of my mother.
Prommie: you mean, living near lots of Amish? Oh, good, I’m covered.
Citizen Kang: Downtheroadapiece: Hotter tip: Inland Empire is also 760, same as much of San Diego County, and Calexico is actually in Imperial County on the Mexican border south of the Salton Sea. (Also 760, like most of the desert.) Imperial County has TWENTY-EIGHT PERCENT unemployment.
Technically, the Inland Empire goes all the way to Death Valley, because IE means “San Bernardino and Riverside counties,” which are Huge counties that stretch to both Arizona and Nevada.
And it has snowed again and again this winter, including two days ago all over the desert. It’s fucking COLD. (For California.)
proudgrampa: there is another class of wars, tho, that the dictatorial leadership start purely as a distraction, so the plebeians have something to hate on besides the real enemy who is screwing them over. true, tho, for the banana leader and his friends and family, retaining leadership is a serious economic issue. but enough about the bush regime . . .
One time, when I lived in LA, I drove my mother out to Riverside to dinner with some of her old college friends. I sat silent throughout the meal because they were so entierement self-absorbed. Really wanted to slit both wrists simultaneously. We rushed back to LA county.
The sunshine actually helps keep salaries lower. This is called the “Sun Tax” which exists because the job is in California and not some shithole like MS. The transient nature of military spouses and moonlighting service people helps keep salaries low, too. The Inland Empire is where everybody moved to in order get affordable housing while inflicting insane commute times to and from San Diego and Los Angeles on themselves. The smog is so bad you can’t find the small civil airports from the air anymore (so much for VFR).
To sum up: No local jobs, no jobs near where you used to live before you bought “an affordable house” there, house payments you can’t make, lousy air, hot temperatures (it’s like fucking Arizona), high gas prices and a machomobile you can’t afford to drive to the unemployment office, assuming you had a snowball’s chance there.
Add all that up and you get: FUCKED.
Someone said it here before but it deserves repeating.
We committed suicide when we passed Prop. 13
And by we I mean Californians. I’m proud to say I did not vote for it.
Fuck you Howard Jarvis
I’m in the 909, I know how to fix cars and equip them with spikes and miniguns. But I’m horrible at field dressing and cooking animals/people. Anyone want to team up?
twowheeljunkie: Absolutely right, Two. Prop 13 was the beginning of the end. I hope Jarvis is rotting in hell.
ExecutorElassus: Hey, Fire. Walk with me.
Prommie: When you said “accelerated depreciation deduction” I at first read “accelerator depreciation” and thought you were talking about Priuses.
Needs more caffeine, around here.
proudgrampa:
If we actually manufactured things in the United States like we did back then that might even work.
It seems to me that the good times for Detroit and California were when we listened to soul music and surf music on AM radio. Now we only get talk radio, religious programing and Spanish language stations on AM. That is why I listen to the oldies station on 950 KHZ.
Things were great in Detroit and California when soul music and surf music were popular. Maybe that is what we need. A surf and soul music revival. Or the rapture. Or for Iraq to pay us back for the war with their oil money like Dick Cheney promised.
assistant/atlas: Downtheroadapiece: I have a theory that Fresno always gets voted as worse simply because no one has actually ever been there.
Detroit has some awesome ruins leftover from the Golden Age. Aside from a handful of buildings, the Inland Empire is one big McMansion with a grid of stucco shacks out back for the prole. Cheap, ugly shit for miles and miles.
Joshua Norton: And their second mistake was giving themselves a name with the word “Empire” in it.
white_rabid: I’ve said it for years now. Everything wrong in the world is Clearchannel’s fault. They ruined music, the only thing that can make living in MUCH of America bearable.
proudgrampa: I like that idea about starting a war to boost the economy but in hindsight, maybe we should have thought of that a year and a half ago when we could have voted for the person more likely to bomb France just because they were in a bad mood.
I’m not sure about the Inland Empire, but I know up here in the North, places like Stockton are getting hit because they built up a lot of super cheap housing in order to lure people who work in the Bay Area and completely unable to afford to buy a house there. Knew somebody who was a cop in Palo Alto and lived three hours away because it was the only place he could buy a house– he spent most of the week sleeping on a friend’s couch so he wouldn’t have to commute all the time.
Prop 13 started the nation wide tax revolt movement that made otherwise reasonable people vote selfishly for Reagan and Bush which eventually screwed us all. Thank CA.
I wonder if cutting unemployment benefits would make everyone in CA look harder for jobs? But I wouldn’t have the courage to stand up for that.
StoneAge: I’m pretty good at engine repair, have a selection of guns and ammo, several horses we could use in a pinch - and am a good cook on top of that. Not bad at snorkeling, either (defition #7).
Hooray For Anything: Hooray, I used to live in Fremont. I had several friends who commuted to Palo Alto from freakin’ Modesto, fer chrissake! Hell, I thought the Fremont - Palo Alto commute was bad enough. I’m sure those jobs don’t exist anymore and the homes are worthless.
Freakin’ Modesto. Jesus H. Christ.
problemwithcaring: I have been to both. They are each resplendent in their own horribleness. Barstow is keeping the race tight in third place.
white_rabid: No, the good times for us in California and Detroit were when we were listening to “Suspense” and “Jack Benny” from the West Coast studios of CBS and “The Green Hornet” and “The Mysterious Traveler”, brought to you from Detroit on Mutual.
Of course, we all had cancer from listening to commercials for Fatima and L&M cigarettes on “Dragnet” and “Gunsmoke” and the general petulant presence of Arthur Godfrey on the air, but that’s a different story.
And by the way - get off my lawn!
Naked Bunny with a Whip: That was sofa king hawt.
problemwithcaring: “These grapes taste like fresno!“
Downtheroadapiece: In Wilmington, NC, there’s a sign at the start of I-40 that says “Barstow, CA 2554 miles”. When I’ve driven by that, the thought always crosses my mind: I’d shoot myself if I drove 2554 miles just to get to Barstow.
Citizen Kang: No way. I moved out of Cali on purpose. I’ll be at the Quartzite border with a heavily-armed group.
Joshua Tree here: Purely selfish of me, but all I can say is thank god where I live is up a couple of long windy passes (plus a straight road climb that’s hell on lousy cars) from “down below” (Coachella & Riverside) and the bust hit before a bunch of godawful developments had a chance to be built. That land is ALL in foreclosure with nary a McMansion built on it. Not that we don’t have a few smaller recent developments (ugly as shit) but the big plans have all checked out.
Of course, this may change when the nearby marine base goes through it’s plan to quadruple in size. Your federal tax dollars will make our life hell! But, that’s in the future & may not happen. Please god.
True story:
After surviving another wretched winter in the stone-cold heart of Detroit’s west side, Mom spied a feiry orb (we call it the sun) through the flannel clouds and thought it couldn’t possibly be a better time to take a stroll through the hood. She’s 84, and though college educated, not too fucking smart about this shit. Two blocks from the crib, she was attacked by a junkyard dog; bumped and bitten, she was released from the hospital later in the evening. She called me the next day. I explained that she shouldn’t be doing stupid shit like going outside for a walk. The dog was trained to attack anything perambulating on two legs, as the only creatures thusly limbed are always up to no good, on a sunny day on Detroit’s west side. I made her promise that the next time she decides to stroll through the neighborhood, she’s behind the wheel. Like the rest of the not too fucking smart Detroiters.
Sparky McGruff: I was at a soccer tournament once at the University of the Redlands and I got lost in Barstow. I would have killed myself, had I needed to stay. Redlands wasn’t anything to write home about either.
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problemwithcaring: Well, nobody goes to Fresno anymore.
Or I should say:
Fresno? Fresno! Nobody goes to Fresno anymore!
Just to make the reference explicit.
assistant/atlas: problemwithcaring: I passed through Fresno, California on the way to Yosemite as part of the US West-Coast leg of my Overseas - of all the parts of California I saw, Fresno was the absolutely bloody worst!
StoneAge: Down here, one can’t leave Uni w/o learning to field-dress ‘bushtucker’ (roos, koalas, the odd baby-fattened dingo - beauty!) - but I’m staying put, Mate!
bureaucrap: proudgrampa: I believe that your nation’s now 7-yr-old war in Iraq is all about economics. I think the goal of the Bush-gang was not to ‘get the oil’ in Iraq but to get control of the petrol-fields and production centres, and make damn sure that anyone who wants to purchase petrol on the world market (read: the Heathen Chinee ) will have to pay with US Dollars, and thus will be compelled to get some, by buying US Debt. Having the PRC buy the US debt is keeping your economy (half)alive, and should the Petro-Dollar fall and/or the Global Reserve Currency cease to be US Dollars, you Yanks are all fucked sideways , along with the rest of the ‘Western’ world…
God is punishing them for voting in Prop 8.
Downtheroadapiece: Went to college there. The year before I entered, William F. Buckley, Jr. was the commencement speaker. My freshman year, Ann Landers came to speak. Tried to get some acid to dose her but the dealer chickened out. Could of been major. Well, them’s the byutifool memories…
It’s what they get for wanting to live that close to fucking BARSTOW. Ugh.