Higher cost jurisdictions experience a hollowing out of their economies over time.
Last mile, geographically constrained jobs like transport and retail remain, but higher skill jobs that are mobile leave, either because it was more cost effective for the employer or because the employer couldn't compete and failed.
Australia experienced this and its economy now is little more than primary resource extraction, all shipped overseas for processing and value adding. Some basic service industry jobs, like retail, but none of them go anywhere because the companies don't have any real presence here except a shopfront.
California has been extreme cost since the early 2000s and it's been on a non-stop boom (almost 50% higher GDP growth than the US average - keep in mind that's with CA's outsized weight lifting up the rest of the nation - https://united-states.reaproject.org/analysis/comparative-tr...)
Yes, the middle class is being hollowed out - but is it really significantly more so than anywhere else in the US?
> Higher cost jurisdictions experience a hollowing out of their economies over time.
That doesn't seem to be true of Norway. But Norway retains control of much of its primary resources. Australia could do the same; it's a political problem not a directly economic one.
Last mile, geographically constrained jobs like transport and retail remain, but higher skill jobs that are mobile leave, either because it was more cost effective for the employer or because the employer couldn't compete and failed.
Australia experienced this and its economy now is little more than primary resource extraction, all shipped overseas for processing and value adding. Some basic service industry jobs, like retail, but none of them go anywhere because the companies don't have any real presence here except a shopfront.