No, those aren’t the issues of ‘large, successful cities’. Those are the issues of cities with crummy land use policies.

But this ‘sickness’ tale extends to a TON of rural red communities that have become burnt out, utter disaster zones of alcoholism, drugs, crime, and joblessness, but the right wing media effectively ‘shadowbans’ discussion of it.

This is largely a fantasy. What’s not a fantasy is that there are rural communities that are economically depressed and losing population. Yuu got the idea in your head that ‘right wing media’ ‘shadowbans’ discussion because you never consume any starboard media.

California is the most heavily urbanized state in the country. It’s employment-to-population ratio in 2021 stood at 0.566, below the national mean of 0.586 and ranking 35th among the 50 states. New York, another intensely urban state, ranked even lower. The highest ranking jurisdictions were as follows

Nebraska: 67.7
South Dakota: 66.4
Utah: 66.1
North Dakota: 66
District of Columbia: 65.2
Minnesota: 65
Colorado: 64.6
Kansas: 64.2
Iowa: 64.1
Wisconsin: 64

DC is a fragment of greater Washington, of course. About 2/3 of the population of Colorado and Utah live in core cities and suburban tracks with > 1,000 persons per square mile. Such development accounts for a slight majority in Minnesota. The other states are modally exurban, small town, and rural – 60% to 70% in each case.

The states with the lowest homicide rates in 2019 (between 30% and 45% of the national mean) were as follows:

 Idaho
 Maine
 South Dakota
 Vermont
 Utah
 Iowa
 Wyoming
 Massachusetts
 Nebraska
 Minnesota

Utah, Massachusetts, and (by a hair) Minnesota might be described as modally urbanized.

The states with the highest homicide rates (between 1.5 and 4.5x the national mean) are as follows:

 Alabama
 South Carolina
 New Mexico
 Maryland
 Missouri
 Alaska
 Mississippi
 Louisiana
 Puerto Rico
 District of Columbia

What’s salient here is a high population of racial minorities, especially blacks (Alaska the only exception). This vector is augmented by high levels of urbanization in DC, Puerto Rico, and Maryland.

California is the most successful state in the nation by far.

There are five states with a higher per capita income

And no, California’s net-migration is still net positive for highly educated, high income earning professionals ACCORDING TO A GOP FUNDED STUDY,

California’s population over the period running from 2010 to 2019 grew pari passu with the national population, at 6.2%, per the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. The growth rate of the 14 California counties enveloping your 1st and 2d tier cities was 6.3%. (The current population of the seven counties around San Francisco Bay sums to 7.1 million).

SF has about 8000 homeless people.

Your datum, not mine. At 0.9% of the population, that puts the vagrant fraction at more than 5x the national mean. Good show.

Shellenberger on other issues is an ignorant fraud.

You’re not very self-aware.

“The official line out of Sacramento and most city halls and county board rooms, adopted by much of the media and repeated by supporters of the blue state model, says there’s nothing to see here, California is doing just fine. But the many residents and businesses that have left, and those that realize they will eventually have to as well, recognize this is true only for the extraordinarily wealthy and the bulk of the political class, which seems as if it’s going to be the last to know that it’s created an enormous problem.””
https://www.pacificresearch.org/the-numbers-dont-lie-california-has-an-outmigration-problem/

Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.

But this ‘sickness’ tale extends to a TON of rural red communities that have become burnt out, utter disaster zones of alcoholism, drugs, crime, and joblessness, but the right wing media effectively ‘shadowbans’ discussion of it.

California is the most successful state in the nation by far. It has all of the most important industries in the world: tech, bio, green, agri, energy, media, you name it. It attracts the lion’s share of all venture investment. And no, California’s net-migration is still net positive for highly educated, high income earning professionals ACCORDING TO A GOP FUNDED STUDY, California brain drains the rest of the country. People leaving CA are mostly from red areas, or lower income ladders. And people leaving SF mostly go to other blue CA areas.

(Read the GOP Senate report https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/2019/4/losing-our-minds-brain-drain-across-the-united-states )

SF’s main blight is homelessness. But SF is only 800k people, the population of the entire Bay Area is about 8 million people, SF has about 8000 homeless people. If you happen to live in San Mateo, San Carlos, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, etc you never even run into this.

Shellenberger on other issues is an ignorant fraud. He focuses on nuclear power solving the climate crisis, as if CO2 is the only issue we need an environmental regulations for. He completely ignores massive algae blooms, fish die offs, the increasingly levels of plastic in the ocean, reduction of acquifiers threatening farming, and on and on.

The other thing Taibbi, Weiss and Shellenberger have in common is they are all independent journalists which I think is another reason Musk chose them.