Indeed, just 100 miles inland, in California’s Central Valley, unemployment rates remain in the double digits (11.2% in Fresno and 10.4% in Modesto), with average family income amounting to less than half of that in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley. If the venture capitalist Tim Draper had succeeded in his misguided initiative to divide California into six states, Silicon Valley would have become the richest state in the US, and the Central Valley the poorest.