Joel Kotkin

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described "California's rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy." As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future. But much has changed in recent years. And today our Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity. Since 2000, California's job growth rate - which in...