California's Central Valley Economy in Perspective

Last Tuesday's Investor's Business Daily ran a sensational editorial on the City of Fresno, in California's Central Valley, "Fresno, Zimbabwe." The piece argues that environmental policies are transforming Fresno, long the heart of the world's agricultural breadbasket, into another "Zimbabwe or 1930s Ukraine." That piece has been picked up by Ed Morrissey at Hot, in two consecutive essays: "California’s Central Valley: Zimbabwe West?", and "The Valley That Jobs Forgot." And Ed argues, at the latter essay, that "the decision by a federal judge to cut off water supplies to an area that literally fed the world turned the Central Valley from an agricultural export powerhouse to a center of starvation within two years."

Well, not exactly. I graduated from Fresno State in 1992. During my years there the region was devastated by high unemployment, especially following the 1990 recession. I also taught at Fresno State in 2000, my first job out of graduate school. I recall seeing a report on ABC World News Tonight from downtown Fresno, on New Year's Day 2000 (or the day before), describing the local economy like a throwback to the Great Depression. Indeed, the fact of double-digit unemployment and poverty are a way of life there, and have been so for decades:

Fresno's unemployment rate is 2.5 times greater than any other California city its size. But then again, high unemployment is nothing new to the Central Valley. Like summer days over the century mark, we have grown accustomed to double-digit unemployment. In the year 2004 alone, more than 12 percent of our fellow Fresnans were out of work. The impact on our quality of life and morale is virtually immeasurable. What is measurable, however, is unemployment's affect on crime.

The Central Valley water crisis is bad, and no doubt federal policy has exacerbated one of the worst anti-business climates in the country. But context requires qualification of sweeping arguments on the impact of environmental regulations. For example, following the links from Ed's second entry takes us to Verum Serum, "35 Worst Places to Find a Job in the U.S." And one of the links there goes to Victor Davis Hanson's, "Two Californias." Hanson is a former professor of classics at Fresno State who continues to run a family farm in Selma. At the link he speaks of the Central Valley's "once-thriving" agricultural economy. But the discussion there also notes the larger crisis of unemployment and the absence of the rule of law illustrated by the unmitigated disaster of illegal immigration. And I'd add further that government and public hospitals are the largest employers in the City of Fresno, followed by public education, with AT&T and Zacky Farms trailing the pack as the only high volume free-market enterprises. The employment picture points to the low levels of entrepreneurial business development in Fresno and the larger community --- and this is not new. That context is important to keep in mind, notwithstanding the devastating impact of the left's mindless environmental policies.

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