California is losing people, but this region wouldn’t know it

TO DRIVE AROUND Lathrop, a small town in California’s Central Valley, is to see a rural community in the throes of rapid development. Shelley Burcham is the town’s economic-development administrator. She takes your correspondent round in a silver Tesla, explains which fast-food joints are new (In-N-Out Burger), when new apartments were built (now leasing!) and where almond groves will be ploughed under to create an industrial park. “There’s goats there now,” she says, pointing to a field, “but if you come back again there will be something built there.”