No he's not lying. The quote in the article is "the folks at the top, doing pretty damn well." The folks at the top are the top management and major shareholders of Apple, Alphabet (meaning Google and a pack of smaller tech holdings), Oracle,... The new tech oligarchs based in California are doing fine as the rest of the state descends into squalor the descent accelerated by the pandemic and Newsom's reaction to it, but ongoing during decades of Democrat misrule. Read Victor David Hansen's pieces about neo-medieval California.