East Against West in California's Economic Recovery?

As soon as I clicked the link, before scrolling down, I knew that was Newport Beach at the photo.

See: "In California, Economic Gap of East vs. West."

The Times overstates the economic recovery. The coastal areas are extremely affluent and less prone to the deep cycles of the economy, and the outer counties are perpetually underdeveloped. The housing boom naturally took off like wildfire in places like Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and so it's not surprising that the market crashes there pulled down the local economies like an anchor. And don't even get me going about the Central Valley. Drive an hour outside of Fresno and you'll think you're in the "Grapes of Wrath."

San Bernardino County, which with Riverside County makes up the Inland Empire, a sprawling area now scattered with vacant homes built in the last decade, posted an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent in March. Compared with Orange County, on the more prosperous, western side of California’s vertical divide with an unemployment rate of 8 percent, it can feel like another world.

The disparities have played out in all kinds of ways. The Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley, in the center of the state, have some of the highest rates of poverty in the country. El Centro, on the state’s southeast edge, has the highest unemployment rate for any metropolitan area in the country, nearly 27 percent. Stockton, 550 miles to the north and also on the eastern side of the divide, became the first city to test the state’s new process for possible bankruptcy.

At the same time, the gap between the per capita income in the San Francisco Bay Area compared with the Inland Empire grew to more than $40,000; it was $26,000 four decades ago. While suburbs in the eastern parts of the state were some of the fastest-growing areas in the nation in the last decade, that growth has slowed to a near halt.

Welcome to California.