JOEL KOTKIN: California’s New Feudalism Benefits a Few at the Expense of the Multitude.

As late as the 80s, California was democratic in a fundamental sense, a place for outsiders and, increasingly, immigrants—roughly 60 percent of the population was considered middle class. Now, instead of a land of opportunity, California has become increasingly feudal. According to recent census estimates, the state suffers some of the highest levels of inequality in the country. By some estimates, the state’s level of inequality compares with that of such global models as the Dominican Republic, Gambia, and the Republic of the Congo.

At the same time, the Golden State now suffers the highest level of poverty in the country—23.5 percent compared to 16 percent nationally—worse than long-term hard luck cases like Mississippi. It is also now home to roughly one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients, almost three times its proportion of the nation’s population.

Like medieval serfs, increasing numbers of Californians are downwardly mobile, and doing worse than their parents: native born Latinos actually have shorter lifespans than their parents, according to one recent report. Nor are things expected to get better any time soon. According to a recent Hoover Institution survey, most Californians expect their incomes to stagnate in the coming six months, a sense widely shared among the young, whites, Latinos, females, and the less educated.

This is an inevitable outcome of the Blue Model, and yet. . . .

CORRECTING THE RECORD: Tim Worstall: It Is Not True That 15% Of Americans Live In Poverty. “The 15% number is not the number living in poverty. It is the number who would be living in poverty if it weren’t for all the money n’stuff we give to the poor. For when we calculate the poverty number we ignore almost all of what is done to alleviate poverty.”

Plus: “Everyone else measures poverty after all the things that are done to alleviate it. Thus any comparison across countries is going to leave the US looking very bad indeed: for others are talking about the residual poverty left after trying to do something about it and the US is talking about the poverty before alleviation. Very different things I hope you’ll agree.” It’s almost like we’re deliberately being fed bogus information in order to encourage more government spending.

WAPO: In Obama’s War On Leaks, Reporters Fight Back.

You want to really fight back? Just start covering Obama the way you’d cover a Republican President. He’ll be toast within a month.

ECONOMIC CONFIDENCE: Families hoard cash 5 yrs after crisis.

Five years after U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering a global financial crisis and shattering confidence worldwide, families in major countries around the world are still hunkered down, too spooked and distrustful to take chances with their money.

An Associated Press analysis of households in the 10 biggest economies shows that families continue to spend cautiously and have pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of stocks, cut borrowing for the first time in decades and poured money into savings and bonds that offer puny interest payments, often too low to keep up with inflation.

“It doesn’t take very much to destroy confidence, but it takes an awful lot to build it back,” says Ian Bright, senior economist at ING, a global bank based in Amsterdam. “The attitude toward risk is permanently reset.”

I would note that it’s also easy to destroy political confidence, and it’s hard to build that back, too.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 9% Have Considered Quitting Their U.S. Citizenship.