Los Angeles

California was an 'Earthly Paradise' for Jews. Is it Still?

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 19:18:28 -0500

California, described by one observer in the late 19th century as “the Jews’ earthly paradise” for the economic and social promise it held, seems to have become newly hostile to Jewish people in recent years. More than any other place on Earth, Jews have shaped much of California’s progress, from Levi Strauss and the founders of the entertainment industry to numerous other leaders in culture, science, real estate and finance.

The current assault expresses itself in politics, in schools from elementaries to universities, on the streets, in literary circles and in anti-Zionist graffiti.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley Law School (and my fellow contributing writer in the L.A. Times opinion section), expressed two years ago that “nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now.” The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness have filed a lawsuit against Berkeley, alleging “longstanding, unchecked” antisemitism.

This is not just a local issue. California’s population of 1.2 million Jews is roughly three times the size of each of the three largest Jewish diaspora communities outside the U.S. — in France, England and Canada. Los Angeles itself is the world’s third-largest Jewish city. Demographer Ira Sheskin noted recently that unlike New York City, which has lost roughly half its Jewish population since 1950, California’s Jewish populace has continued to grow, albeit more slowly in recent years.

Despite their relative demographic vitality, many California Jews feel increasingly isolated. Even in Hollywood, the Writers Guild, long a bastion of fashionable progressivism, suddenly decided to be neutral rather than making a statement on the Israel-Hamas war. Some leading figures, like Maha Dakhil, co-head of motion pictures at CAA, accused Israel of “genocide,” and others now refuse to work with Israeli film companies. Two thousand actors signed a statement outlining Israel’s “war crimes” with no mention of Hamas’ atrocities.

The political fallout has been considerable, and may become more so. Most California Jews are Democrats, according to the Pat Brown Institute; 20-30% tilt to the GOP. But the anti-Israel caucus, both here and nationally, is almost entirely made up of Democratic progressives. In a show of power, these activists even succeeded in disrupting California’s 2023 state Democratic Party convention. Many are justifiably uncomfortable with the GOP, citing the influence of antisemitism from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, and some critics of Israel have found the Democratic Party too cozy with Jerusalem and its supporters, but generally the Republicans, including MAGA young people, are clearly more philosemitic than the Democrats.

At a local level, politics in many cities have sent a message to the Jews of California. Anti-Israel resolutions have passed in Oakland, Stanton, Burbank and Richmond, where the progressive-controlled City Council accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” Oakland called for an immediate ceasefire without mentioning Hamas’ atrocities. Demonstrators there even suggested that Israel murdered its own people as a pretext to attack Gaza.

And California’s youth are being groomed to hate Israel with hostile curriculums, setting up a whole new generation of antisemitism in the future and in the meantime putting Jewish teachers at risk. San Francisco has experienced anti-Israel walkouts in 10 high schools, organized by an advocacy group with access to student addresses.

At the same time, the drive to “globalize the intifada” affects California’s Jewish community directly. It has forced at least one L.A. synagogue to relocate its services; others have been vandalized. The Brentwood home owned by the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was attacked in 2023 with smoke bombs and red paint. More recently, two years after the bloody Hamas attack on Israel, supporters of Palestinians disrupted a commemoration at Pomona College, warning that “Zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly.”

These assaults make Jews more concerned about their safety and perhaps more likely to turn inward in their communities. Far less alluring under these circumstances is the Jewish notion of tikkun olam, or repairing the world. Although it is the driving force in many congregations, particularly Reform synagogues, in troubled times it can be eclipsed by concerns about safety.

This new environment favors the Orthodox, pioneers of a kind of “self-segregation,” notes writer Joseph Epstein in the Wall Street Journal. And because of their higher birth rates and the below-replacement birth rates among non-Orthodox American Jews, the Orthodox could triple their share of the U.S. Jewish population by 2060. This trend plays out in California’s Jewish communities such as L.A.’s Pico-Robertson — epicenter of California orthodoxy.

The resurgence of California Jewry matters more today, given that voters in the traditional center of Jewish life, New York, have been supporting a mayoral candidate who was at least at one time sympathetic to “globalizing the intifada.” Many suspect that the once well-connected Jewish community in New York will likely face indifference, if not open hostility, from City Hall if Zohran Mamdani is elected.

Fortunately, the sun has not yet set on California’s Jews. The Golden State can still remain our “paradise” — true to its past. But this will work only by learning how to protect ourselves and make the case to our gentile neighbors so that we can continue to contribute mightily to the future of our common home.

This piece first appeared at: Los Angeles Times.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo credit: Tomás Del Coro via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

LA Failures Are Killing Its Tourism Industry

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 12:12:21 -0400

For much of the past century, Los Angeles has been a magnet for migrants seeking a better life and tourists eager to see Hollywood up close. Yet the picture now looks very different. Since the pandemic, record numbers of residents have moved either to elsewhere in California or to the Sun Belt states. By 2060, according to the state’s Department of Finance, LA, whose current population is a little under 4 million, is expected to shed well over a million people.

Now, even the star-gazing tourists are opting out. Long among the nation’s three most-visited cities, according to reporting from this week Los Angeles has suffered an 8% annual fall in international tourism, while overall tourism revenue has dropped from $30 billion to $15 billion. The reasons for this downward trend are clear: repeated incidents of random violence and vandalism, fear of fires in a city ill-equipped to prevent them, and an urban environment that is increasingly shoddy and ill-kept.

The city’s most enviable asset, Hollywood, now appears to be in inexorable decline, with an estimated 42,000 job losses over the past two years. Particularly hard hit are the craft guilds, the largely unionised workers who proliferated in the Valley Village neighbourhood. More work headed overseas and to lower-cost domestic locales such as New Orleans and Atlanta. The spectre of artificial intelligence looms over the crafts, and potentially even the movies, if the example of Tilly Norwood is anything to go by.

In the context of falling tourism, the loss of over 10,000 hospitality jobs in 2024 could be devastating. To make matters even more challenging, the city has passed a $30 minimum wage for hospitality workers, prompting hoteliers to consider offloading their properties.

City leaders, meanwhile, feel they can lure back tourists by investing in projects such as a new $2.6 billion expansion of the Convention Center and an elaborate transit system, yet LA’s yawning budget deficit leaves it ill-equipped for pointless largesse. Downtown areas are littered with homeless encampments, as well as buildings abandoned because of arson. Empty and uncompleted luxury high-rises in the city have become notorious for their extensive graffiti, while tourist boards have failed to harness the potential of vibrant neighbourhoods such as Boyle Heights and Silver Lake

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Photo: Soly Moses, via Pexels.

DC and LA Failures Play Into Trump's Hands

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Donald Trump’s reviled takeover of the DC police and his earlier deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles serve as a direct challenge to the power of America’s big cities. To the Democrats who run these cities, this all seems part of an authoritarian plot. But it also may be one of Trump’s traps.

Although clearly violating America’s long-standing federalist principles, Trump’s incursions are being justified by the incompetence of most blue-city leaders. There is evident disorder in major cities, particularly those controlled by the Democrats’ progressive wing: quasi-socialist mayors in Chicago and Los Angeles may soon be joined by comrades elsewhere in the country. The explicitly socialist Zohran Mamdani is the Democratic candidate for New York mayor, while Omar Fateh and Katie Wilson could also win in Minneapolis and Seattle. All three elections take place on 4 November.

Big-city mayors see Trump’s antics as a get-out-of-jail-free card for their failures. But this won’t work. Americans know that these cities have severe problems which are driving people out. The demographer Wendell Cox notes that Americans are increasingly moving to suburban areas, despite consistent attempts from planners to encourage urbanisation. Even with a surge of illegal immigration, Chicago’s population has shrunk to its lowest level since 1920. Meanwhile, the California Department of Finance predicts a reduction of more than a million people in LA County by 2060.

Clearly, we are a long way from dense urbanity dominating the future, as the media and academics have repeatedly predicted. “Mayors should rule the world,” suggested political theorist Benjamin Barber in 2013. No one in their right mind would suggest this now. However, cities could make a decent comeback — if governed correctly.

Attempts to distract from DC’s horrendous public safety record reveal how clueless most progressives can be. To deflect Trump, Democrats need to show an ability to address urban problems. There are some promising new approaches in places such as Houston and San Francisco, where voters have embraced moderate, pro-business candidates. With their ties to sectors including energy or tech, these politicians could prove the ideal model for Democrats as they look to return to power.

Sadly, most of America’s big cities seem determined to prove Trump correct. Chicago’s Brandon Johnson epitomises progressive failure, having managed to turn “the city that works” into a dystopian failure with high crime rates, a severe budget deficit, exiting companies, and failing schools. Johnson’s ally, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, wants to be president, but he will have to carry Chicago’s decline with him.

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Photo: Virginia Guard Public Affairs via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

ICE Raids are Cruel, But So is an Economy Built on Undocumented Labor

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Even as Californians protest the crude and often brutal deportation tactics employed by President Trump’s ICE and Homeland Security agents, we’re giving too little thought to how our state, and the nation, is failing the very immigrant community we want to protect.

In the past, particularly in the last century, when the U.S. economy, and California’s, was growing at a fast rate, loosely controlled immigration filled critical needs and, over time, moved many immigrants into an increasingly diverse middle class. But now newcomers are getting stuck. According to new findings from USC and University of California researchers, immigrants account for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population living in poverty, up from 14% three decades ago.

The immigrant poverty rate fluctuates, but it has been rising in recent years, especially since the pandemic. In 2024, 22.4% of all immigrants and 28.4% of non-citizen immigrants, including the undocumented, were poor, the highest rates since 2008.

As well, welfare dependency is more pronounced among immigrants than the native born. A 2023 analysis of census data showed that 54% of households headed by naturalized citizens, legal residents and the undocumented use one or more welfare programs versus 39% of U.S.-born households.

In California, the overall situation is only slightly better. A 2023 report from the Public Policy Institute of California put the poverty rate for all foreign-born residents at 17.6%, compared to 11.5% for those born here. For unauthorized immigrants, however, the rate was even higher than the national figure: 29.6%. Undocumented households, notes a separate USC study, have consistently had the lowest median household income in L.A. — $46,500, compared to $75,000 among all Angelenos in 2024.

The grim statistics reflect a decline starting in the 1980s in blue-collar industries in California, which traditionally offered upward mobility to immigrants. Unionization in the immigrant-heavy hospitality industry has helped lift some families, but those gains may lead to fewer jobs as employers look to rein in costs, potentially by automating some services. And immigration itself, especially mass immigration, puts downward pressure on many of the jobs newcomers fill — in agriculture, for example, or construction.

The dearth of jobs that support families has pushed California toward a model that Michael Lind, a Texas-based historian and author, describes as the “low wage/high welfare model.”

Read the rest of this piece at: Los Angeles Times.

Photo: SEIU Local 99, via Flickr,underCC 2.0 License.

ICE Backlash is Pushing LA Towards New York Style Chaos

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Los Angeles politicians have long dreamt of their city overtaking New York as North America’s dominant economic centre. Yet if LA is now becoming more like New York, it is for entirely the wrong reasons.

Radical anti-ICE protests that began last month have continued into July in California. This fury has only been exacerbated by the death on Friday of a man who was injured during an ICE raid on a cannabis farm. With nearly a million undocumented migrants living in LA, the city has become a natural setting for these demonstrations, while Mayor Karen Bass is seemingly opposed to any efforts to enforce immigration laws. The largely youthful demonstrators have habitually broken laws, attacked police, and set fire to Waymo vehicles. Radicals hail what they call “a student intifada”. One local political leader has even suggested the city’s notorious gangs join the fight against ICE officers.

How did it come to this? The decline of the higher-end economy has left LA’s roughly 50% Latino population in a dire state. The city was once a beacon of opportunity for migrants, but Latino incomes, adjusted for cost of living, and homeownership rates are among the lowest in the nation. LA’s poverty rates are the highest of anywhere in California and among the worst in the country, and it’s the immigrants who suffer most. One study from last year found that 41% of undocumented migrants under the age of 26 live in poverty. Undocumented households have a median income of $46,500, compared to $75,000 among all Angelenos.

What’s more, LA now suffers from a low-wage/high-welfare model, dependent on poorly-paid immigrants who rely on government support. The Congressional Budget Office warned last year that the “massive surge in immigration” in recent years will impact the salaries of low-income US workers, who compete with newcomers for living space, jobs and social services.

All this is a tragedy for the city, but a boon for Left-wing politicians. The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Zohran Mamdani is a member, already hold four seats on LA’s 15-seat city council. Backed by the all-powerful public employee unions, they have been able to apply pressure on the hapless Bass.

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Photo: Luke Harold, via Flickr, Public Domain.

Inside America's Right-Wing Tech Armoury

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

At first glance, it doesn’t feel like the future will be made in El Segundo. A small city of 17,000, just south of Los Angeles International Airport, it’s the sort of place you glance at from your taxi as it whisks you on from arrivals to somewhere more exciting. But here, in a jumble of old industrial buildings under the shadow of a giant Chevron refinery, a group of entrepreneurs are embracing the country’s emerging “hard tech” revolution, something which could soon transform both America and the wider world.

Rather than simply growing the social media sinkhole, hard tech focuses on building real-world equipment. “We’re inventing the new factory town, and recovering the sense of what works in America,” says Cameron Schiller, whose Rangeview Corporation startup uses 3D technology to make castings for the metal parts used in aerospace. And if Schiller feels his team is fighting the right fight, he’s far from alone. El Segundo, after all, is home to around three dozen such firms, the biggest concentration in the region, together making everything from drones to engines, drilling systems to satellites.

As Schiller implies, all this could finally restore America to the kind of blue-collar prosperity it enjoyed after 1945. It could also protect the country against threats from overseas and even take the country to the stars — if, that is, El Segundo can fend off competition from both other states and the looming threat of China’s own high-tech space sector.

The emergence of El Segundo, known to locals as “Gundo”, comes after decades of struggle. With the end of the Cold War, America’s traditional aerospace industry stumbled. Big contractors like Lockheed and Boeing got fat and lazy, particularly given the lack of competition after the Soviet Union’s demise.

Over recent years, and especially with the end of the Pax Americana, the country’s aerospace sector is making a comeback, jumping by 7.1% in 2023. Yet this revival isn’t really focused on poorly managed primes — Lockheed Martin’s Artemis moon rocket has been plagued by delays and failures — but rather on the smaller firms snatching up their engineers. Scattered like lost pennies from LAX to coastal San Diego, a stretch of about 100 miles, these firms are concentrated in old industrial areas like El Segundo, where the daytime population reaches 50,000, or else Long Beach’s Douglas Park, with a million square feet of industrial space.

Around 40 of these new firms are spinoffs from SpaceX, which is now worth an estimated $350 billion and whose founding headquarters once sat just 11 miles east of Gundo. One good example here is Relativity Space, a Long Beach-based outfit that develops reusable rockets and raised $650 million in 2021. Another spinoff is Impulse Space, a satellite developer that lately secured $300 million of its own.

As the SpaceX connection suggests, this is something new. For if American tech was once dominated by coders and marketers, these jobs are increasingly disappearing off to Bangalore, with software firms from Salesforce to Google facing eye-watering job cuts. Not that it’s all bad. For if algorithms are on the way out, America’s virtual economy is being replaced by what Delian Asparouhov calls “harder tech”.

Read the rest of this piece at UnHerd.

Photo: NOAA's GOES-T weather tracking satellite is launched, via Flickr, in Public Domain.

What's the Matter with Los Angeles?

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Los Angeles is reeling once again from urban disturbances, as it did in 1965, 1992 and 2020. After each outbreak the city is widely seen as a hopeless disaster that epitomizes everything wrong with American cities.

That’s ironic because since its infancy Los Angeles sought to develop a new model of post-Dickensian urbanity – what the early 20th century minister and writer Dana Bartlett called “the better city” – one dominated by middle class single family homes. At the time, the city that was among the whitest, and most protestant in the nation. Bartlett predicted it would become “a place of inspiration for nobler living.”

The strategy, a combination of vaulting ambition and careful planning, worked brilliantly. Lured by the pleasant climate and a business-dominated political economy, industries and entrepreneurs flocked to the Los Angeles area. Initially, the growth came largely from oil and agriculture, but by the 1920s, the nascent movie industry had settled in Hollywood, putting Los Angeles on the world map. By 1940, the county’s population, barely 300,000 in 1900, had grown fivefold, bumping San Francisco off the top of the list of California’s biggest urban areas.

In the ensuring decades, the city and the surrounding region absorbed millions more migrants, both from overseas and across the country. LA thrived becoming in the words of author Carey McWilliams, “the first modernized decentralized industrial city in America.” Los Angeles became the leading manufacturing center of the country, with dominant positions in everything from aerospace to fashion and toys.

But by the early decades of this century, the city’s economic edge faded. Once a beacon for the upwardly mobile, it now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country. The worst poverty rates, poor income, and homeownership among minorities. Latino incomes, adjusted for cost of living, and homeownership rates are among the lowest in the nation. This has left the immigrant population – roughly one third of its total – largely stuck in the low wage economy. And now a section of that group is rioting and being arrested.

The riots fit a pattern a steep decline. Over the past 20 years, the LA region has lost 750,000 people under 30 – the biggest decline in youth among all large U.S. counties. Even the immigrants are leaving; between the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, the number of foreign-born residents actually dropped. Looking ahead, the state’s Department of Finance predicts no population growth and a reduction of well over a million people for L.A. County.

What went wrong? You can start with the political takeover of the city by ever more leftist leaders. Once dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats, the city has fallen ever more into the progressive mold, genuflecting to green, gender and racial ideology, which has left LA with an awful reputation among businesses and particularly developers. Indeed despite the city’s advocacy for more housing, it is among the least proficient in building them. There have been declines in everything from manufacturing to Hollywood.

Not everything is failing. There are pockets of success, particularly in the revived aerospace industry, located south and west of the city, but also in spots such as the Asian-dominated San Gabriel Valley or a host of largely successful Latino-dominated cities to its south.

But overall Los Angeles, particularly its central core, now suffers from all the plagues associated with older cities, such as Detroit, Cleveland, Manchester or Liverpool. Far from being “the better city”, Los Angeles is now best known for riots and failing to solve a massive homeless problem, the second worst in the country, despite billions in expenditures.

But the homeless are only the surface of a bigger problem. We’re seeing a huge emergent class of disaffected and disappointed youth. Asked whether in LA is a place where working hard pays off two-thirds of young people said no, which is far higher than older generations.

It’s not just impromptu streetside rioting. It’s “smash and grab” gangs making commerce impossible. It’s criminal crews stripping the city lights of their copper wire, leaving parts of the city in darkness.

And until the city again becomes a place of aspiration, the violence and alienation will only increase. As everyone can now see, life in “the better city” gets worse and worse.

This piece first appeared at The Spectator.

Photo: Los Angeles protest (2017) Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Los Angeles Has Fallen

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Los Angeles is burning again, and it is not the Olympic flame. After riots in 1965, 1992 and 2020, Angelenos are bearing witness once more to a rash of violent unrest. US president Donald Trump deployed the National Guard at the weekend and he has since called in the Marines, too. Trumpian lunatic-in-chief Steve Bannon even suggests these riots augur a domestic ‘World War 3’.

Reality may not be quite so grim, but it is understandable if the world feels less than enthused about flocking to LA for the Olympic Games in 2028 – or the World Cup in 2026. Yet come they will.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics last year, the French capital was similarly disrupted by sometimes violent protests. And as happened there, a huge security presence will be needed for LA. Indeed, the Paris games required 45,000 police officers, 10,000 soldiers and 22,000 private security staff. If Kamala Harris were in the White House, substantial aid would surely flow to LA to allow it to mount an operation on a similar scale. But now the city must petition the mercurial and spiteful Trump for security assurances.

LA28, the organisation responsible for organising the games, claims it has secured enough sponsorship and television deals to meet its needs – and that had better be true, given the city’s fiscal situation. LA today lacks the entrepreneurial dynamism that once defined its remarkable rise. Fortunately, the city’s sporting legacy – notably its two previous Olympics – has bequeathed it the stadia and much of the infrastructure needed to host the world, and even to protect it.

But unless vast sums are spent on a Potemkin-like makeover, the world will also witness what many of us residents have long suspected – that the city is slipping into an inexorable decline.

Things were very different in 1932, when LA first hosted the Olympics. With a population of 1.2million – a third of today’s population – LA was still fledgling. But the 1932 games served as a wake-up call to the world that LA was on its way to becoming one of the planet’s great cities.

I covered the run-up to the second LA Olympics, in 1984. It was arguably the most successful games in history, despite Russia’s Cold War-era boycott. This was LA at its peak – with native son Ronald Reagan in the White House, and the defence, aerospace, housing and entertainment sectors all booming. ‘LA’s the place’, as the promoters then put it, and few could deny the truth of it.

Some may hope the new games will rescue the city from its doldrums. But numerous studies show that hosting an Olympics offers, at best, fleeting economic benefits – and often leaves enormous burdens. It can provide an opportunity to make a statement, heralding the rise of cities such as Berlin under the Nazis in 1936 or Beijing under the CCP in 2008. But staging an Olympics in a city plainly in decline seems a fool’s errand.

Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.

Photo: Opening ceremonies at 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles Wikimedia in Public Domain.

Class Warfare LA Style

Joel Kotkin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

The most recent Los Angeles riots reflect, among other things, the response of immigrant activists to President Trump’s crackdown, and the latest resurgence of organized left-wing activism, which had been relatively quiet in the early months of the new administration. A less widely remarked factor, however, is the emerging and complex nature of class in contemporary America.

Historically, particularly in the Marxist canon, the belief was that the proletariat would demand change and overthrow the bourgeoisie. This is a very different story from what is happening in Los Angeles. The unrest here is not primarily a movement of organized working people, but the outgrowth of a heavily racialized politics pushed to the extreme by a small, but militant radical core. This structure has long characterized LA’s disorders. In the city’s past riots, notably the 1965 Watts conflagration and the Rodney King outbreak in 1992, the predominant color of protest was black. This year, it is brown, reflecting the salience of immigration and the fact that Latinos now represent roughly half the area’s population.

LA County, whose population approaches 10 million, is the epicenter of a nationwide demographic shift. Home to over three million immigrants, an estimated one million of whom are undocumented, hailing overwhelmingly from Mexico and Central America. This part of the county’s population is increasingly marginalized, poor, and economically disillusioned.

The economic situation reflects a collapse of opportunity. Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, Los Angeles now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state and among the worst among the country’s big cities.The city, once a manufacturing powerhouse, has lost industrial jobs over the past decade at a higher rate than ALmost ANY major metro areas. Latinos represent the vast majority of the labor force for California’s declining construction and manufacturing industries. In past decades, these industries have provided newcomers with opportunities to gain skills, buy a home, and even start their own business. Now, recent immigrants confront a landscape of failing schools and dilapidated parks. Things are particularly bleak for Latinos; Los Angeles ranks at number 105 out of 107 on the 2020 Latino Upward Mobility Index.

This all comes at a time when Los Angeles, as a recent Chapman University study reveals, severely underperforms the nation in terms of producing high wage jobs. Even Hollywood entertainment, one of the state’s high-end industries, has lost jobs due to technological changes and incentives offered by other states and countries, depriving young Angelenos as well as migrants of high-wage opportunities.

The increasingly multiracial middle class, families, and the upwardly mobile flee the city, leaving Los Angeles divided between the economic underclass, highly paid professionals, and what Harold Meyerson calls the “new middle class” of public employees. In this economic configuration, LA Latino incomes and home ownership rates (adjusted for cost of living) are among the lowest in the nation.

Read the rest of this piece at Compact.

Photo: by Jonathan McIntosh. Immigrant rights march for amnesty in downtown Los Angeles, California on May Day, 2006. Wikimedia under CC 2.5 License.

LA Riots Reflect Failure of Progressive Leadership

Joel Kotkin — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 20:28:38 -0400

Los Angeles has a long, combustible history — and it’s flaring up again. The current unrest, driven in part by political grievances, reflects a deeper dysfunction steadily eroding the city’s foundations. Once a cradle of conservatism and the political home of Ronald Reagan, LA has become a hub of resurgent radicalism, and, to many outside its borders, a symbol of why the country turned to a nativist strongman like Donald Trump.

Now, amid the chaos, there is talk that Trump might go beyond the National Guard and deploy the Marines. It’s a characteristically extreme move, but one that, for anyone familiar with LA’s history of protests spiralling into violence and tragedy (as I witnessed during my 40 years there), may not be entirely out of step with the city’s volatile reality.

Often migrants who come to LA find opportunity but also profound disappointment. African Americans who arrived in large numbers during the Thirties and Forties escaped the overt racism of the South, only to encounter a hostile police force and deeply discriminatory housing practices. Their disillusionment erupted in two of the most explosive racial uprisings in American history: the Watts riots in 1965 and the unrest following the Rodney King verdict in 1992.

For many of today’s immigrants, particularly the undocumented, assimilation into the broader society has been difficult. But unlike African Americans in the Sixties, they are also immigrating to a city that no longer provides a lot of opportunity. Latino incomes, adjusted for cost of living, and homeownership rates are among the lowest in the nation. They also remain largely confined to the low-wage economy, including those who ICE arrested the past two days. The violent conflagration that took place at the Paramount Home Depot, a common gathering spot for undocumented labourers, is something that could be repeated elsewhere in the city.

These people deserve our respect and concern, particularly as they work and do not commit street crimes. But there’s also a large criminal element engaging in impromptu streetside rioting by “smash and grab” gangs that involves crews stripping lights of their copper wire, leaving parts of the city in darkness. In addition, the expansion of the troubled transit system has been slowed by persistent violence and vandalism.

To the delight of people like Trump and his Right-wing supporters, LA reflects the failure of progressive governance. Despite pouring billions into public services, the city is facing a growing budget crisis — all while producing less new housing per capita than nearly every other major US metro. Downtown, once the focus of lavish investment in transit and convention infrastructure, has deteriorated into a cautionary tale: a half-finished skyscraper covered in graffiti, encircled by homeless encampments, and surrounded by hollowed-out buildings, some of which have been set on fire.

Read the rest of this piece at: UnHerd.

Photo: screenshot from ICE Out of LA protests live stream via YouTube.