As usual, Steven P has got the goods.

Some people are beginning to notice what I discussed thirty years ago, a stated in “The Populist Forum” below: 

California (as usual) presents a portrait of where the nation is heading:

“Californication”—Increasing Inequality—Surprisingly Good For Democratic Pols

By Steve Sailer

The blue state-red state IQ hoax with which so many millions of disappointed Democrats have consoled themselves since the election can seem initially plausible. Blue states tend to have more prestigious universities, famous research centers, and sophisticated cities than red states.

But in reality, as I’ve shown, there is little overall difference between the average educational attainments between Democrats and Republicans.

Democrats, however, tend to be more inegalitarian, with higher highs and lower lows than the more middling Republicans.

This is clearly visible in the biggest blue state of them all, California.

Census Bureau figures show that California, traditionally America’s trendsetter, is pioneering a new kind of class structure—ominously like that of highly unequal Latin American countries like Brazil or Mexico.

California, long viewed as the promised land of the American middle class, is slowly developing a novel U-shaped social system. Relatively large numbers of both the well-educated and the badly-educated are sandwiching a shrinking middle.

This trend toward greater inequality might seem at odds with the ideals of the Democratic Party. But, in fact, it could bode well for them. The party is ceasing to represent blue collar workers. Instead, it has morphed into an alliance between the elite and the underclass.

According to a Census Bureau Supplementary Survey of 700,000 households across the country, California boasts 2 million recipients of graduate degrees (master’s or Ph.D. or professional diplomas such as M.D. or J.D.).

Yet this sophisticated state also is home to 2.2 million adults who never even attended high school. Their ranks were up 7 percent during the 1990s. By contrast, in the rest of America, the number of adults who had never seen the inside of a high school dropped by 30 percent over that decade.

The Golden State is now one of only three states with above average percentages both of people who never got past elementary school and of holders of graduate degrees. (The other two are New Mexico and Rhode Island.) In California, 10.7 percent of grownups have no more than elementary schooling, compared to only 6.4 percent in the other 49 states.

Of all the states in the Union, California now has the lowest percentage of its population with a midlevel education consisting of at least a high school diploma or some college, but not a bachelor’s degree from a four-year college.

Continued at http://www.vdare.com/sailer/041121_ca.htm