Harold Meyerson: Reviving California's Economy: Meg Whitman Versus Jerry Brown
[Meyerson is editor-at-large of The American Prospect.]
For all their differences, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown agree on one thing: California needs an industrial policy.
For half a century, aerospace was California's dominant economic engine. But then the end of the Cold War led to a radical contraction of the aerospace industry. Since then, the state has subsisted on bubbles, and it has wilted each time they popped. Neither the dot-com industry nor housing — the two chief sources of economic activity in this state for the past 15 years — offered the kind of sustainable and broadly shared prosperity that Californians took for granted in the years between 1940 and 1990. The high-tech companies that have flourished in this state over the past 20 years have created great wealth, but with much of their manufacturing done offshore, that wealth has not been shared with California production workers....
Contrary to libertarian myth, California's economic ascent was largely funded and devised by its governments. To obtain the water that enabled the state to grow during the early 20th century, California historian Kevin Starr wrote, "Los Angeles, and, to a lesser extent, San Francisco, functioned more like entrepreneurial corporations … than passive municipalities concerned narrowly with public safety and the delivery of local governmental services." In the years following World War II, government spending on defense was the primary fuel for California's growth. And it was investments by Pat Brown, California's greatest governor, in the state's universities, roads and water systems that made the state's economy the marvel of the world for much of the second half of the 20th century....
Read entire article at LA Times
For all their differences, Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown agree on one thing: California needs an industrial policy.
For half a century, aerospace was California's dominant economic engine. But then the end of the Cold War led to a radical contraction of the aerospace industry. Since then, the state has subsisted on bubbles, and it has wilted each time they popped. Neither the dot-com industry nor housing — the two chief sources of economic activity in this state for the past 15 years — offered the kind of sustainable and broadly shared prosperity that Californians took for granted in the years between 1940 and 1990. The high-tech companies that have flourished in this state over the past 20 years have created great wealth, but with much of their manufacturing done offshore, that wealth has not been shared with California production workers....
Contrary to libertarian myth, California's economic ascent was largely funded and devised by its governments. To obtain the water that enabled the state to grow during the early 20th century, California historian Kevin Starr wrote, "Los Angeles, and, to a lesser extent, San Francisco, functioned more like entrepreneurial corporations … than passive municipalities concerned narrowly with public safety and the delivery of local governmental services." In the years following World War II, government spending on defense was the primary fuel for California's growth. And it was investments by Pat Brown, California's greatest governor, in the state's universities, roads and water systems that made the state's economy the marvel of the world for much of the second half of the 20th century....