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California population declines for first time in more than a century

wsj.com

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Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#151

Post by BuyMyBitcoins »

dragonwriter wrote: post #146
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #139

I want to be sympathetic but this is a direct result of how Californians vote and of how they view the role of government.

Its a direct result of of the pandemic; particularly its effect on international migration. Prior, California was growing, small net internal outmigration offset by net internation immigration.

The problems California faces have been decades in the making.

But I am specifically commenting on “the state income tax on a prof's salary is 9-10%. CA is basically telling me (and millions of other millennials) that we are not wanted here.”, which the OP was lamenting. I see that as a direct result of how Californians vote and how they fund their state government.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#152

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

scottrogowski wrote: post #107
raldi wrote: post #18

Paradise on Earth and home to the world’s brightest-future industry; California could easily grow to 100M residents if it simply allowed housing to be built to accommodate all the people who want to live here. And it would be a net win for the climate, because most of them would be coming from much less eco-friendly places.

I agree so strongly with this sentiment. There is always such a defeatist attitude on these threads that assumes California is somehow full and unchangeable. Outside of the three metro areas, it's basically empty! Separately, in the metro areas, there's a lot of room for infill density. Three years back, I made the rational choice to leave because I could barely see a way to home ownership - not to mention having a f…

California needs to drastically ramp up water availability from new sources. Otherwise there isn't much point to the rest of this conversation.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#153

Post by epistasis »

hbfgjbbvcu wrote: post #108
epistasis wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I disagree, the people of California are probably one of the best parts of it, IMHO. If it's just the climate or the views, there are many other great places in the West coast that are cheaper and have the same natural amenities. But the people are irreplaceable, which is what make California so much more desirable than those other places that you aren't living. However if there was a system for limiting…

Yes the people were California’s greatest asset. Unfortunately many of them have been displaced by hordes of tech bros (and sis) who swooped in for those almighty dollars. Not that I am knocking the hustle, but in my experience they don’t really like living here, do not understand or respect the locals, and their contributions to the overall cultural atmosphere are subtraction by addition. I knew we were in trouble w…

I wish that we had a tenth of the contempt for the landlords and homeowners that causes this as we do for the tech bros who are the symptom of the artificial scarcity.

The tech bros were not the ones displacing people, it was entirely the fault of landlords who raised rents, and the homeowners who are selling for record profits. It is this landed class that has turned what should have been a boon for everyone into a zero sum game. Tech bros don't profit from the displacement, they pay for it too, it's the landlords and homeowners that profit. Tech bros didn't put in place the current system where there's no more construction, either, that was put in place by the landlords and homeowners so they could profit from the massive increase in land prices.

Tech bros brought fantastic wealth from around the world to California, and with our gloriously high income taxes, and our taxation of capital gains as income, and we should have been able to redistribute that wealth to bring tremendous prosperity to all, eliminating homelessness, maybe even eliminating good chunks of poverty.

The people who set and control this system are not the tech bros. Go ahead and hate them for good reasons, being greedy, or being ignorant, for having ugly personalities or interests, but don't blame them for displacements. The displacement it 100% on the Californians that profited from it and the class-unconscious culture warriors that did not profit, but unwittingly and stupidly supported the capitalist exploitation of labor and the displacement of those with lower incomes or who encountered hardship.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#154

Post by nemo44x »

cptskippy wrote: post #53
nemo44x wrote: post #27

So I assume it’s “people that can move” which means this 200k likely represents a whole lot more in tax base. Miami has really been exploding with ex-SV talent from my anecdotal social feeds. Might as well as you’ll save tens/hundreds of thousands each year in taxes and not have to live with the dysfunctional political system in much of CA.

I love someone from Florida calling California's political system dysfunctional.

I’m not from there or live there (FL or CA) but from the outside looking in, CA is in crisis whether it knows it or not. It’s sick right now but I hope it can get better. FL seems happy.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#155

Post by epistasis »

dragonwriter wrote: post #146
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #139

I want to be sympathetic but this is a direct result of how Californians vote and of how they view the role of government.

Its a direct result of of the pandemic; particularly its effect on international migration. Prior, California was growing, small net internal outmigration offset by net internation immigration.

Prior to this, California was already expected to lose a congressional seat because the rest of the nation was growing far faster:

https://lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/265

California was not not keeping pace with deaths minus deaths plus immigration nationwide, there was nowhere near enough construction. When you add in that California was seeing amazing economic growth during this period, and could have houses people and provided them good jobs, all with better environmental impact than elsewhere in the country, Californian has not only done itself a massive disservice to its own people by pushing them out, it's done a massive disservice to the environment and the rest of the country.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#156

Post by thaumaturgy »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #150
thaumaturgy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. Let's try this: raldi et al are talking about whether the state can support a 150% population increase, but I'm talking about whether 150% more people will want to live there. Let's walk through some of the numbers and issues in detail, together. As of 2019, San Francisco county has a population density of about 18,000 people per square mile. Let's say that San Francisco county is the ideal scenario for the Ral…

> I am extremely skeptical that, even if all the logistical problems could feasibly be solved, we'd find 70 million people in this country that would choose to live in that region once all the dust settled. Well they'll have to, because there are a limited number of areas in the US making jobs. And the US population is growing not shrinking, so even if jobs fan out to other, less-crowded population centers, we're jus…

Did San Francisco stop making jobs in 2000? Because its population growth has been flatlined or declining since then [1]. The numbers don't support the argument that jobs alone are enough of an incentive for people to move to San Francisco.

Guess which California cities are currently the fastest-growing. Ready? Bakersfield and Sacramento [2]. The numbers suggest that the role of jobs tends to be overestimated when it comes to the places that people choose to live.

No disagreement from me that denser population centers have net lower carbon emissions when compared to the same population over a larger area.

[1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/23130/san-francisco/popul...

[2]: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article243402621.html

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#157

Post by prepend »

cma wrote: post #40
prepend wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems very unlikely that this census is corrupted. It’s also a census so the margin of error is not within a plausible margin of error.

There were lots of news stories of how it was changing wrt to people here illegally. The supreme court even stopped some of the challenge of it, right? The article doesn't break that part down at least from what I could search in it. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/win-trump-sup...

What does that have to do with california having fewer people in the census. The ruling was to count non-citizen residents.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#158

Post by raldi »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #147
raldi wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the Tokyo we know didn’t exist because long ago they enacted single-family-houses-only zoning, I’m sure we’d see a comment like this explaining why it would be impossible to scale its metropolitan-area population to 14M people, or find 14M people who would want to live there.

I put about an hour of effort into gathering the numbers and citations for my comment. Flippant low-effort replies like yours really discourage putting any effort into commenting on HN. I suppose I should have instead just said, "if raldi were right, the whole world would be Tokyo by now, wouldn't it?" and left it at that.

I appreciate your enumeration of some of the things that have to happen to make a city grow, but I don’t understand how you bring it to conclude that any of these would be insurmountable or unprecedented.

Every major metropolitan area in the history of the world went through a process like this. Sometimes within a single generation.

If demand tapers off at some point, growth will stop too. That doesn’t seem like an argument against letting it happen.

As for “if raldi were right, then why isn’t the whole world Tokyo?”, the answer is that there are precious few places that people really want to live in (barring a state-created housing shortage making it unaffordable). Tokyo is one; California is another.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#159

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

Here in Florida, non-wealthy renters have become victims of a hostile takeover, by out of state home buyers.

The vast bulk of us simply can't compete with California cash on FL wages.

Rental properties are being sold to move-ins, causing rents here to triple or more. The number of available rentals has dropped to ~0.

Leases aren't being renewed and these people have nowhere to go. This is unprecedented.

Re: California population declines for first time in more than a century

#160

Post by john_moscow »

raldi wrote: post #142
john_moscow wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a high population density area with 3 generation sharing the same apartment because that was the way to go. It is far from being a bright future one would want. Constant conflicts in the family because the grandparents want to watch TV, parents need to rest after work, and the child wants to study. Constantly hearing your neighbors when they want to have a party, or do some renovation. Trashed up common…

It sounds like you’re mixing up density and crowding: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EwBYGX7VcAIwYXL.jpg

Density has a limit. It's easy to postpone the problem by replacing 2-storey houses with 20-storey high rises, but it won't work for long. Once enough people move in and demand catches up with the supply, you're back to square one, but with much less private space for everyone.

Decentralization, on the other hand, is limited by the supply of land, that is fairly plentiful in the U.S. And it incentivizes taking care of your property, saving and paying off your mortgage (other than just giving money to the landlord). It would also create local jobs for owner-operated businesses related to construction and infrastructure maintenance, instead of corporate drones maintaining corporate-owned apartment towers.

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