California needs fewer, not more people. The immense air pollution in Southern California and the recent severe droughts that historically moist Northern California experienced are indications that the population of California already exceeds what is healthy and can be sustained. A steep reduction of immigration levels would halt U.S. population growth given that U.S. fertility is already sub-replacement. On top of that, perhaps a water tax in arid places like Southern California would discourage further growth from internal U.S. migration.
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California is expensive. High costs of living and high taxes
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If California was its own country it would have the world’s largest economy, largest population behind only China and the world’s highest average IQ. Red States are strangling California.
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Politicians, developers and business people are always hyping growth. The bottle we live on is a finite size, it can only support a finite number of humans. There is no hope for the human race but the earth will heal itself after we are soon gone. I doubt that there will be any humans of consequence in a thousand years. The dinosaurs will have had a much longer presence on the earth than humans.
We are a aberration that will soon pass.
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The Sierra snowpack upon which we depend for our drinking water doesn't care about relative growth. It's still 186,807 new people making demands on the water supply.
"The anemic increase isn't great" - indeed, *any* increase isn't great.
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The Democratic People's Republic of California should threaten to secede from the Union unless and until it has political power in our republic that corresponds to it's socioeconomic educational demography.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court of the United States and all federal courts, California should count and matter way more than Wyoming.
Hillary Clinton won California by 4 million votes over Donald Trump in 2016. But those votes did not count nor matter in any other state in terms of allocating meaningful Electoral College vote majorities.
That is because America is not and never was meant to be a democracy. America is and always has been a divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states.
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@Blackmamba The South lasted four years when they tried to secede. California wouldn't last four days. All the Federal Government would have to do would be to shut the valves that send Colorado River water to Southern California off. Good luck building enough de-salinization plants to replace that water in four days!
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California is the most advanced state, but we do have limited resources including potable water. The future of our economy can not be based on population growth, because their will be fewer jobs for people to do in the future as the age of Artificial intelligence takes hold.
California can continue to lead by developing a strategy that grows wealth for all of its citizens and not just the top 1%.
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Texas and Florida are growing much more quickly than California. It’s possible that after the next census, some of California’s Electoral College votes will be redistributed to Texas and Florida. The major difference in growth is the result of California having the nation’s highest state income tax, and Texas and Florida having no state income tax.
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@Rick TX and FL may not have "income" tax but they certainly collect in other taxes, don't be fooled. And speaking personally I will leave CA when I have stopped contributing to society, that is, when I retire...like most people who leave the state.
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"The anemic increase isn’t great; economists will tell you that a stagnant or declining work force makes it tough to sustain economic growth."
What economists won't tell you is that the consequences of growth include pressure on existing communities and infrastructure; increased competition for choice locations; crowding out of California's remarkable flora and fauna, sometimes to the point of extinction; and climate change, leading among many other things to drought and fire.
The steady degradation of the quality of life for everyone, including humans, that results from growth does not register a blip on the GDP radar screen. Or, rather, it does -- by contributing to GDP, disaster relief, for example, registers as a positive contribution to society!
I wait impatiently for California Today to alert me to the story on how California, the nation's most forward-looking state, is preparing for a future of zero or negative growth while still providing for its citizens and shouldering the enormous environmental responsibilities that attend its enormous economic footprint. Two out of three isn't good enough.
Somewhere in the California Desert lie the remains of Edward Abbey, who wrote "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
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