[paxys]

It's all relative. No one is talking about poverty and drug problems in the Rust Belt or the Appalachians or the deep South or crimes/murder in inner cities all over the country or a hundred similar problems because they simply aren't newsworthy. Everyone knows it is happening, and no one sees themselves as affected by it.

California on the other hand is supposed to represent the economic might of America, and its decline, however small (1) makes great headlines, especially from a political angle and (2) scares people because the image of American supremacy they have grown up with their entire lives is under threat.