Meanwhile, millions of people are without jobs in California and ghost towns are reappearing.

FORBES: The New Left Only Cares About Power, Not People

The Rocky Mountains are littered with ghost towns that were once thronged with men mining silver, lead or uranium.

ECONOMIST: Natural gas in Wyoming

She told the Today programme in May that the loss of shops was creating "practical ghost towns" in town centres.

BBC: News - Today - High street questionnaire

Many of the stores which dominated our town centres are fast approaching extinction, and the result has been to leave our high streets resembling ghost towns.

FORBES: The Religion of Apple

"It was just as if these communities were ghost towns, and for the most part there was nothing left, " said Wilson, who works for the Clackamas County emergency management department.

NPR: Report Makes Chilling Forecast On Northwest Quake

Some unfairly point out that the spotted owl protection effort killed logging and created ghost towns throughout the Pacific Northwest, only to later discover that the kindness campaign made little difference.

FORBES: Stop The Drilling! A Lizard Is Imperiled

Whole ghost towns were built.

BBC: Will Spain suffer an Irish bust?

Spain for example gave birth to the first modern ghost towns, whole mini-cities that were so under-populated their were incapable of supporting an infrastructure, created in part because its construction industry has been subsidised by European money for the past twenty five years.

FORBES: Europe's Disintegration: It's Not About the PIIGS or the Euro

It excuses bad behavior, makes redemption possible and enables construction of entire mock Old West ghost-towns.

FORBES: Mom Was Wrong: Money Does Buy Happiness. There's Research To Prove It