“It’s no longer legal to say, ‘We don’t want African-Americans to live here,’ but you can say, ‘I’m going to make sure no one who makes less than two times the median income lives here,’” Jargowsky told me. The above quote is from an Atlantic article on the resurrection of American slums.  I recommend the… Read more

I saw this Kaufman Foundation article that argues that, by reducing the downside risks, an aggressive government-provided safety net promoted entrepreneurship, jobs, and economic growth.  If one follows the links, there is some empirical support for the argument. So, I figured that if I looked at data across countries, high-support countries would dominate new-business data.  When… Read more

Previously published on July 11, 2014 on NewGeography.com Part two of a two-part report. Read part 1. The problem with analyzing California’s economy — or with assessing its vigor — is that there is not one California economy. Instead, we have a group of regions that will see completely different economic outcomes. Then, those outcomes… Read more

Previously published on July 10, 2014 on NewGeography.com Part one of a two-part report. California is a place of extremes. It has beaches, mountains, valleys and deserts. It has glaciers and, just a few miles away, hot, dry deserts. Some years it doesn’t rain. Some years it rains all winter. Those extremes are part of… Read more