Victor Davis Hanson is one of the two or three best interpreters of modern-day California. Here for RealClearPolitics he describes the state as two very different regions: the coastal nirvana and the interior of despair. It is somewhat oversimplified but I don't see much with which to argue.
True, there are agricultural areas along the coast - large citrus groves around Santa Paula, fields of flowers being raised for seed in the Lompoc area, and the broccoli fields of Salinas. Likewise, the interior has some non-desolate regions like the retirement communities in the Sierra foothills of the old Mother Lode.
However, on the whole, California is pretty much as Hanson describes it - bifurcated. The coast is affluent and the interior is not; the coast is La La Land and every bit as nice as he describes, the interior lags behind.
What is fascinating is that the coast pays no attention to the interior. The "big valley" is California's red-haired stepchild.
