The deepening division of California into richer and poorer is a function of what Richard Walker (among others) identifies as three “central contradictions” (Walker 1995): (1) the changing mix of jobs and industrial and residential location; (2) Anglos’ fear of their demotion to minority status, coupled with capital’s differential exploitation of labor market segments defined by race, gender, locality, sector, and citizenship; and (3) the state’s failure to put idled capacities back to work through infrastructural, educational, employment, and other projects. As the multi- generational abandonment of California’s children to poverty shows, wealth does not circulate the way it used to. “Some power resources appear to be increasing within the system, while others appear to be declining” (Mike Davis 1986: 181). [...]