Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is longtime writer for the magazine, Joel Cockin. Joel was the presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman

University in Orange County, California. He's the executive director of the Houston-based Urban Reform Institute,

and he's a contributing editor to City

Journal. And as I noted, he writes for us frequently. He's the author of many books, the newest

of which has just come out, and we'll talk a bit about that later. It's called The Coming of Neofutalism,

a warning to the global middle class.

Joel, thanks very much for joining us.

It's my pleasure.

First, you've been writing for years for us on your own state of California about its economic

and political conditions.

And it's been a while since we've talked about California on this podcast. about its economic and political conditions.

And it's been a while since we've talked about California on this podcast other than homelessness,

which we have brought up in L.A. and San Francisco.

That's been a focus of ours.

But your recent piece for us, Kamala's America, describes California as increasingly feudal, and that also is a theme that's picked up in the title of your new book. So perhaps you

could just start by giving us a breakdown of where, before we talk about Kamala, where you think California is right now,

you know, how the pandemic has affected its politics and economy. And what do you mean by a futile

backdrop or environment? Well, the first thing is in terms of the California and the pandemic,

even though we've been far from the worst hit state, the economic impact of the lockdown,

how it's been used has been really kind of catastrophic. I think we're have the sixth highest unemployment rate.

If you look at by metro regions, the California regions of LA, San Francisco's Silicon Valley,

...