It's harder to grow a large economy for all the same reasons it's harder to grow a large business (percentage-wise) than it is to grow a small one. Sure, there

It's harder to grow a large economy for all the same reasons it's harder to grow a large business (percentage-wise) than it is to grow a small one. Sure, there are some economies of scale. But in the end, there are always fixed components to growth that are less dependent on size, and those less elastic components are necessarily more significant for a smaller economy (or company) than for a larger one. Going back to the original point of my criticism, even if you regard California's growth as merely average, that doesn't explain how that modest growth has resulted in the middle class squeeze. Any loss incurred by the middle class as the result of tax or other government policies pales in comparison to the massive loss of the wage increases that should have accompanied even modest growth. The problem is clear: left to its own devices, the market doesn't distribute growth in anything like a fair (by value actually contributed) manner. Wealth, in and of itself, creates a huge advantage in capturing new growth, and that advantage is nowhere counterbalanced. Money naturally runs uphill until some kind of catastrophe interrupts it.