JOEL KOTKIN: California’s Post-Corona Challenges: The Golden State faces some difficult choices ahead. “The pressure on California’s government resources is made much worse by a bifurcated economy that produces a disproportionate amount of poorly paid jobs. As manufacturing and middle-management jobs have fled the state, notes new research from Chapman University’s Marshall Toplansky, the vast majority of all new jobs—some 80 percent—pay less than the median income, and roughly half of those pay under $40,000 annually, virtually a poverty income in the expensive coastal areas. Critically, California has been among the worst states in producing middle-income jobs, while rivals such as Utah, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington have boosted these kinds of positions at five to ten times California’s rate.”

We shouldn’t bail out California. But if we do, it should be conditioned on the red parts splitting off and forming their own separate state. Likewise Illinois and New York State.