California

"The year 2008 offers a direct comparison between California’s speed and China’s speed. That year, California voters approved a state proposition to fund a high-speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles; also that year, China began construction of its high-speed rail line between Beijing and Shanghai. Both lines would be around eight hundred miles long upon completion. China opened the Beijing–Shanghai line in 2011 at [a cost of $36 billion](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor281). In its first decade of operation, it completed [1.35 billion passenger trips](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor282). California has built, seventeen years after the ballot proposition, a small stretch of rail to connect two cities in the Central Valley, neither of which are close to San Francisco or Los Angeles."

"The latest estimate for California’s rail line [is $128 billion](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor283). Why does it cost so much? Partly because some politicians have demanded that the train add a stop in their district, forcing the line to take a more tortuous route through [an extra mountain range](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor284). And partly because California’s rail authority prefers to [tout the number of high-paying jobs](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor285) it is creating rather than the amount of track it has been laying. The first segment of California’s train will start operating, according to official estimates, between 2030 and 2033. Which means that the *margin of error* for estimating when a partial leg of California’s high-speed rail will open is the same as the time it took China to build the entire Beijing–Shanghai line."

"Apple itself estimates that since 2008 it has trained at least 28 million workers—more people than the entire labor force of California. China brilliantly played its long-term interests against Apple’s short-term needs."

"off other machines like bullets.” Harrison and his brother Bob had made notes of the machines and freezers in use when they visited the plant in Maine. The problem was that money was short, so the McCains searched for machines that they could get second-hand. They were able, for example, to buy freez- ing equipment from a Quebec firm. They also acquired second-hand boilers from a plant in Ontario and machines to cut potatoes from California. They bought new machines only when they had no choice. Pierson went over the machines as they arrived and adapted them, when necessary, to operate a frozen french fries line.21 Since many of the machines had to be modified, they often had to be"

"One day early in its release, I got a call from Arnold asking to see me. He came bounding into my office saying, “I want a billboard on Sunset Boulevard.” I told him, “We don’t do that. I don’t believe in billboards. It’s a waste of money.” He said, “No, no, no. I *have* to have a billboard. It’s *very, very important* to me. I must have a billboard on Sunset Boulevard.” I said, “Well, you ain’t gonna get it from me.” He then proceeded to do an utterly impolitic and unactorish thing, which was to call me every week for the next two or three months, always saying the same thing: “I have to see you about my billboard!” And every time, I said no. What did I know? I thought, *Here’s this dumb-fuck oaf who wants a billboard, and I’m not giving him one.* I told him, “Look, the problem with stuff like billboards and full-page ads is that it becomes a precedent. The next person who wants one will just say, ‘But you gave it to Arnold—why aren’t you giving it to me?’ I don’t want to do any of that stuff. I don’t believe in it. I’m never giving a billboard to anyone.” Even though Arnold kept at it and at it and at it, I never gave in to him. But from the first, I knew he was someone with both real smarts and granite ambition to get his way. It was then no surprise to me that this thickly accented Austrian non-actor became Arnold Schwarzenegger the movie star, and later the governor of the state of California."

"The size of the restaurant also presented dilemmas. Keigetsu was started with the desire to provide detailed services that had not existed in Silicon Valley until then, and the staff consisted of 12 people, which was quite a crew. After actually running it, it became clear that in California, a store of this size is economically the most troublesome. The business was structurally problematic because it bore the same obligations for employee insurance and employment conditions as large companies, while revenues were meager. Despite many struggles, profits did not easily rise."

"Kaiser did, of course, choose not to enter all industries, but such exceptions some of which have become nuggets of corporate folklore appear to prove the rule. In the 1920s, for example, Kaiser was offered half-ownership of a cemetery in Berkeley, California. An associate presented the idea as "a business that keeps growing." Kaiser would have none of it: "I don't want to wait until somebody dies to make a profit.""

"Contracting in the early twentieth century was a booming business. From the inception of Henry Kaiser's paving business in 1914 to the eve of the Depression in 1929, America's population increased by nearly 25 percent, while manufacturing output and new construction nearly doubled. During the same period, construction of highways, roads, and streets Kaiser's segment of the business tripled.10 The growth of road building in California (Kaiser's future base) was fairly representative of this construction boom. As of November 1910, "there were 28 contracts and day labor jobs under way on the state highway system, involving 280 miles. On July 1, 1922, there were 152 contracts and day labor jobs with a total of 1,063 miles."11"

"By this time, we could see that developing large-scale retail prop¬ erties was a numbers game, a question of population (and popula¬ tion growth), income, distances, and roads. We had experienced and profited from this growth in Michigan, but we could see that other parts of the country were growing more rapidly, like California. I began to think about building there. But I faced a huge amount of threshold resistance. The logical place to expand for a company like ours would have been an adjacent area, such as northern Indiana or Chicago. We didn’t have much in the way of experience, contacts, or reputation in California, but it seemed like a natural move for me."

"Right now, everything feels far away, as he travels through the USA accompanied by his publicity man on a rather unplanned hunt for new business ideas. The journey has taken him from New York all the way down to New Orleans, then back up to Philadelphia and Washington, and finally across the continent heading towards California."

"Nicolas Berggruen makes the most of every minute. He phones, emails, faxes, and sends texts. At his headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, there's a flurry of activity. They are working under high pressure on a plan to save California. For the report, all basic data of the Californian economy, including income and employment structures, are collected and illustrated with diagrams and charts. A team of experts is working on the texts. The prognosis they make is daring: if the problems were approached according to Berggruen's method, the "Californian patient" should already be recovered by 2014."