When Gavin Newsom announces his run for the presidency, he’s going to  have to explain how the Golden State has become “a tale of two economies,” where great wealth coexists with the highest unemployment rate in the nation, job growth is stagnant and the cost of living has driven much of the middle class to flee the state.

Michael Berwick, a former director of California’s Employment Development Department, says the state now has a two-tier economy, which has magnified inequality due to the progressive policies the state’s left-wing leadership has championed.

“The state Legislature has imposed an empire of rules and costs that has undercut the ability of California employers to create stable, decently-paid jobs,” he writes in Forbes. “In the place of a jobs strategy, an expansive benefits system has been assembled…. It is one thing to serve others and another to serve others in a position of low pay, status, and authority.”

Bernick says it’s important that liberals ponder how their purported concern for “social justice” has instead created many Californians a vicious cycle of less equality, failing public schools and low wage jobs with little mobility.

What’s ironic about all of this is that progressives love to bloviate about the gap between rich and poor. Nowhere is that more evident than in the once-Golden State.