Raise the minimum wage, the standard of living is too high for the current wages to be livable of off. Not everyone is capable of getting a livable job(mentally handicapped, migrants, dropouts, released prisoners). College is expensive, too bureaucratic, and full of stupid standards(general education).
Unions are a love hate thing. They do give the lowly worker a voice against powerful manage, however sometimes the unions become too powerful and demanding.
Farms: The price of crops are controlled by the government to point where it's not profitable. Let's face it though, who wants to pay 100 bucks for a gallon of milk when the government keep it affordable for the common man. While it's true that a lot of your grocery store products often come from other places in the world, there are plenty of crops that you wont find in bulk anywhere else or crops that can lost long enough to be shipped without spoiling.
I recall 90% of the world's almonds being grown in California. Almonds are a big industry for California Farmers. They are pretty popular in the Asian market for export. California also has a large grape industry, try finding that in some other part of the world. You also have livestock, meats what have yeah. Raw meat requires refrigeration to preserve and no way can it survive a trip oversees to the us.
In addition to that a lot of communities are dependent on agriculture for their local economies. My city has several agriculture based industry. For example we have a goat milk plant that bottles goat milk, we have a poultry plant that packages chickens and turkeys, the grocery stores have their own butchers for cattle and pork. There's a cheese factory near by that relies on local dairy and several grain and animal feed plants that run along the rail way lines.
If we just stopped subsidizing this, all those companies like the railway shipping companies like Santa Fe and Union Pacific would get forgeted over, trucking companies would also get screwed. Communities like Stockton, Modesto, Turlock, Merced, etc would end up dying as well. Most of the people that live in the valley work some job related to agriculture(many of which are immigrants too mind you). The irrigation companies that manage the cbrown towns for shipping water would also be out of business, they also run the hydroelectric dams.
Other than that, there are some other jobs like school district jobs, some government jobs like politician government worker, and police. There are also niche jobs like doctors, mechanics, lawyers, etc. If you work none of those field, you have to commute everyday to the bay area to work some white collar job. However look at Detroit, if you lose your main industry, your community will die and all those jobs unrelated to that industry will go with it. Plus this is just California I'm talking about, think about the damage to communities in other states. Lot of people will flock to other cities, that is for sure.
