California’s Vanished Dream, by the Numbers | RealClearInvestigations
In California, there is this idea of Oh, we care about the poor, but on this metric, we are literally the worst, Stanford s University s Mark Duggan, principal author of an economic comparison of California with Texas, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
The state s poverty and associated dysfunction are on full display in leading cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where a large underclass now inhabits the streets the once-iconic locales having become poster children for urban dysfunction. Beyond massive homeless camps, crime has become so bad that the LAPD has warned tourists it can no longer protect them. San Francisco, meanwhile, suffers the highest property crime rate in the country. Businesses like Walgreens have shut down numerous Bay Area locations due to rampant burglaries. Homelessness and crime increasingly dominate the state s political discourse, particularly in these two deep blue bastions.
California also faces growing inequality. By the Gini index, a measure of the distribution of income across a population, California has the third-highest inequality behind New York and Louisiana, and has experienced the fifth largest expansion of inequality since 2010, according to American Community Survey data. California also suffers the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state.