While Joel Kotkin does correctly skewer the "progressive" eco-fiend leftists who have stifled development and parasitic unions that have bled public coffers dry, he skips over the immigration problem.
The changes Mr. Kotkin recommends, including abolishing the idiotic climate change laws, pension reform and deficit reduction are allnecessary conditions for recovery.
But necessary conditions are not sufficient. As another commenter noted, it is cowardice to ignore the tremendous social and economic cost of mass immigration from Latin America.
From the NR article "Catching Up to Mexico" by Alex Alexiev,
"In short, we are witnessing a highly advanced and prosperous state, long endowed with superior human capital, turning into the exact opposite in just one generation. What can be done to stop this race to the bottom? The answer is simple: California and Washington need to enforce existing immigration law. Unfortunately, it is difficult to convince the public that this is necessary, so deeply entrenched are myths about illegal immigration.
One myth is that because America is a country of immigrants and has successfully absorbed waves of immigration in the past, it can absorb this wave. But the argument neglects two key differences between past waves and the current influx. First, the immigrant population is more than double today what it was following the most massive previous immigration wave (that of the late 19th century). Second, and much more important, as scholars from the Manhattan Institute have shown, earlier immigrants were much more likely to bring with them useful skills. Some Hispanic immigrants certainly do integrate, but most do not. Research has shown that even after 20 years in the country, most illegal aliens (the overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic) and their children remain poor, unskilled, and culturally isolated — they constitute a new permanent underclass."
