California faces its own 'Great Depression"

[LongTomH]

An article on the Telegraph UK site paints a grim picture of life in California: Failing Dreams: California faces its own Great Depression

In Skid Row, a grimy pocket of downtown Los Angeles, the prostrate forms of homeless people lie strewn across the pavements.

The lucky ones have tents for shelter but others make do with a sliver of cardboard for a bed and a supermarket trolley to carry their rags.

At the last police count 1,662 people live on these streets, twice as many as a year ago.

And now amid the drug addicts and the drunks there are families who not so long ago had homes and ordinary suburban lives.

“Los Angeles is re-experiencing the Great Depression,” said Rev Andy Bales, who runs the nearby Union Rescue Mission shelter. “This is the worst I have ever seen it and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. This is all these people have as a last resort and I think there’s going to be over 2,000 by Christmas.

There are some more really, really frightening statistics in the article:

• In San Bernardino, east of LA, 34.6% of the population live below the poverty line; in nearby small towns, the poverty rate is around 40%.
  
• 2.2 million children in California, nearly 1 in 4, live in poverty.
  
• Inland California towns regularly show up on lists of place in America where residents are most likely to lose their homes.
  
• There are only 50,000 job openings a year for people with college degrees; yet 150,000 young people a year graduate from California colleges.
  
• According to the California Budget Project, the state has only regained about 1 out of every 6 jobs lost during the recession.
  
• Job growth for the month of August was ZERO; if that's revised downward, it will mean a net loss of jobs for August 2011.

Some more excerpts:

“California is fast becoming a post-industrial hell for almost everyone except the gentry class, their best servants and the public sector,” he said. “The future is pretty grim. If you live in a beautiful area like Ventura County on the coast it’s not hellish in any way, but not everyone is living that dream in California.

<snip>

At Rev Bales’ shelter 100 families who have had their homes foreclosed are now taking refuge. Perhaps the starkest example of how far some people have fallen in the economic downturn is a man in his 50s, who once earned a six figure salary as a producer on television studio sitcoms and small budget Hollywood movies.

How could this happen to the state that once represented the American Dream to so many? Oh, Yeah! Now I remember: Ronnie Raygun (as California Governor and as President) and two Bushes. Plus a lot of economic jiggery-pokery by Wall Street.