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| 1969 Ford Falcon |
I moved to California,
with my bride, in 1971. We crossed the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains in
a 1969 Ford Falcon (Metallic Green) towing a trailer full of marriage gifts and
hope. We bought a new tire in Flagstaff, Arizona because someone at a gas
station cut the sidewall. We saw Las Vegas when there were just a few
"BIG" casinos on the strip and, when we crossed into California on
I-15 in the Mojave Desert, there were 19,971,069 citizens in the Golden State.
Most arrived the way we did, now they arrive by plane from places we have never
heard of.
Now there are now
38,041,430 Californians, twice as many as in 1971. The game of demographics is
fun and leaves one scratching their collective head. The region that surrounds
San Francisco has grown exponentially. San Jose is now the second largest city
in the state, towns that were counted in thousands are now tens of thousands,
even hundreds, yet San Francisco has about 825,111 people (2% of the
population), in 1971 it had 720,000 (3.6%). It's now become an adult
Disneyland. Church's are closing, schools are closing, the streets are a mess,
and home and apartment prices are higher than anywhere except maybe London.
In the other
parts of the country Michigan's population in 1970 was 8,881,826; in 2010 it
was 9,883,701, a growth of 1 million. Illinois in 1970, the state I left, was
11,110,285 and by 2010 had added 1.7 million. Both with about 10% growth.
Overall the United States population in 1970 was 203,392,031, in 2010 in had grown
by 33% to 308,745,538.
Why California?
The post World War II growth of the state is unprecedented in America and most
probably the world as well. The reason, most undoubtedly, is it's weather. For
my readers in most of the rest of the US just look out your window – here,
today in Northern California it will be 65 degrees and sunny and even thought
there is a drought, this too will pass. Texas had one, the southeast had one, and
parts of the Midwest had one. Inconvenient yes, Dust Bowl, Grapes of Wrath
result – no. Weather is huge! It's attitude, it's convenience, and it's cost
savings. We whine when it rains (or used to), and heaven forbid it gets below 30.
Yes we are a state wimps and crybabies – with cancer prone tans.
This California
Attitude lead to excesses by the state and local governments with pensions and
salaries, but that is being corrected. It also led to a creative blast that
changed the world – Silicon Valley. My wife calls it Silicone Valley – she may
be more correct. I remember clearing prune orchards in the valleys west of San
Jose for housing neighborhoods twenty years before Apple's headquarters dropped
in across the street (and taking one of the last orchards). Millions of
everything has been built in the region, manufacturing, research, retail, and
office square footage. Southern California has grown to the east of LA so far
that Palm Springs seems like a suburb of Riverside. The same with Sacramento
and the south Central Valley – its growth has
been in spurts (some disastrous), but growth nonetheless.
But critical
issues remain as the state grows to 50 million people (and 15% of the country's
population). Water is without a doubt the most critical both for agriculture as
well as domestic use. Great strides in reuse (grey water) are helping
especially in newer communities. So has the ongoing management in agriculture's
usage with improved irrigation distribution and storage. But obviously more
need's to be done – a lot more. Costs will be high but grey water systems need
to be put into the older urban areas of LA, San Jose, and San Francisco. And
more reservoirs and damns need to be built – especially in the far north of the
state. Then again if Canada was smart they would plan, in addition to oil being
pipelined to New Orleans for processing, piping crystal clear and clean
drinking water from British Columbia, Canada at $100 a barrel (that's about $3.00
a gallon, in volume on par with oil). And how could you fight this kind of
pipeline, won’t explode or pollute – just water the flowers if it cracked?
The current big
battle of egos and dollars is the High Speed Rail – I've written extensively
about this. One note to think about – in the WSJ today there was a short article
that the airline industry may start flying their bigger jets with 300 plus
seats between high volume short-haul airports because of the paucity of landing
slots. One plane - almost twice as many people. This is how markets deal with
demand not by assuming a 100 billion dollar debacle will fix a transportation
problem. In future California, time will be an even more valuable commodity.
Another addendum
before closing: One of my favorite writers on all things economic is John
Mauldin GO HERE, his newsletter
is free and his advice and insight priceless. In today's missive he calls out
an article by Morgan Housel at Motley Fool titled "50 Reasons We're Living
Through the Greatest Period in World History." Here's a taste for you cynics:
4. In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine
made the bold prediction that someday a computer could weigh less than 1 ton. I
wrote this sentence on an iPad that weighs 0.73 pounds.
5. The average American now retires at age
62. One hundred years ago, the average American died at age 51. Enjoy your
golden years — your ancestors didn't get any of them.
6. In his 1770s book The Wealth of
Nations, Adam Smith wrote: "It is not uncommon in the highlands of
Scotland for a mother who has borne 20 children not to have 2
alive." Infant mortality in America has dropped from 58 per 1,000
births in 1933 to less than six per 1,000 births in 2010, according to the
World Health Organization. There are about 11,000 births in America each day,
so this improvement means more than 200,000 infants now survive each year who
wouldn't have 80 years ago. That's like adding a city the size of Boise, Idaho,
every year.
7. America averaged 20,919 murders per year in the
1990s, and 16,211 per year in the 2000s, according to the FBI. If the murder
rate had not fallen, 47,000 more Americans would have been killed in the last
decade than actually were. That's more than the population of Biloxi, Miss.
Get the rest HERE. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/29/50-reasons-were-living-through-the-greatest-period.aspx
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