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California population declines for first time in more than a century

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

#361

Post by blagie »

prostoalex wrote: post #307
0x000000E2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of California's problems go back to lack of housing and opposition to building more. Everyone wants to live in Cali for nice weather and jobs. If you stop people from building more housing your property value just keeps rising. Property costs are high because NIMBY blocking denser housing. Traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Homelessness is bad because houses are too expensive.…

> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted Massive wildfires (vs small distributed fires) are the result of the policy framework that (a) prohibits preventative controlled burns (b) requires immediate containment of any new fire. The old (more flammable) undergrowth never has a chance to burn off and free up the space for (less flammable) new generation. As a result CA is one of the most pol…

Erm, no. There's a carbon cycle.

Trees trap carbon. When they die, trees release carbon. Unless you bury dead trees underground (e.g. as paper, furniture, etc., in deep landfills), in terms net amount of carbon capture, there's no difference between a massive forest fire, periodic controlled burns, decay, etc.

They differ in time cycles. Even a sequoia will eventually die and release its carbon back into the atmosphere.

There's this myth that forests somehow reduce carbon in the atmosphere. Left to themselves, they store carbon, but they can't capture carbon. They're carbon-neutral. If you cut them down and release the carbon, you have a one-time emission. If you plant new ones, you have a one-time carbon capture.

The only real net change to CO2 comes from:

1) Extracting dinosaur-era carbon, and releasing it.

2) How we handle our waste. Ironically, composting releases all the plant carbon eventually, while burying it underground stores some carbon away from the atmosphere.

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

#362

Post by specialist »

Lammy wrote: post #232
pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

To me it feels like that’s why it’s expensive. Either that or it just very coincidentally started getting extremely expensive at the same time housing segregation and home-loan discrimination were banned federally (1968 and 1974 respectively. People ask “WTF happened in 1971?” ( https://wtfhappenedin1971.com ) like they never took a high school “american history” class.

In my 20s, I was stunned to learn that my city's founding fathers got rich by developing land stolen from immigrant Japanese farmers. In my 30s, I learned about sunset laws, another large factor explaining segregation.

Growing up, it had been explained that racism was what other people did. Certainly not us.

Everyone's the hero of their own story.

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

#363

Post by sokoloff »

pharmakom wrote: post #331
codefreakxff wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I understand your statement that traffic is bad because housing density is too low for the population. Certainly just increasing density with no other controls just increases traffic congestion. The best approach would be increasing density while decreasing reliance on personal transportation. https://www.transformca.org/transform-blog-post/our-take-gre...

Increasing density will naturally decrease reliance on personal motor-vehicles because more journeys become walkable.

This is probably more true than any time in the last 30 years iff remote work takes hold. Previously, it wasn’t near as likely that all workers in a household could for a 40 year career live within an easy walk of their work.

Now it’s possible (maybe) for many more people (although they’ll need larger housing units).

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

#364

Post by jessaustin »

blagie wrote: post #361
prostoalex wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wildfires and earthquakes are the only problems not self inflicted Massive wildfires (vs small distributed fires) are the result of the policy framework that (a) prohibits preventative controlled burns (b) requires immediate containment of any new fire. The old (more flammable) undergrowth never has a chance to burn off and free up the space for (less flammable) new generation. As a result CA is one of the most pol…

Erm, no. There's a carbon cycle. Trees trap carbon. When they die, trees release carbon. Unless you bury dead trees underground (e.g. as paper, furniture, etc., in deep landfills), in terms net amount of carbon capture, there's no difference between a massive forest fire, periodic controlled burns, decay, etc. They differ in time cycles. Even a sequoia will eventually die and release its carbon back into the atmosphe…

This strikes me as a reasonable argument. I wonder why it doesn't work for agriculture, which is regularly criticized for e.g. the carbon in livestock feed?

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

#365

Post by failwhaleshark »

pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

Yep. Unless you have Prop 13 and can afford the cost-of-living and taxes, then GTFO. I was born there in the late 70's but left in 2020, mainly because most Californias were either out-of-touch (the 2% of the rich, sociopathic bastards who will hit-and-run anyone in their Bimmers) or angry-unfriendly ready to explode (90% of people). The middle-class in California is almost nothing but a slim segment of baby boomers and software developers. In addition, the SF Bay Area is, in a sense like Man Jose, full of dudes. Furthermore, the people who have migrated to the area pumped up real estate prices and displaced long-time residents. It's now (or was, pre-COVID) a place where people come to make tech money and leave, not put down roots; so most people come and go, and don't invest socially or in any community sense.

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

#366

Post by sokoloff »

andi999 wrote: post #298
strictnein wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

401ks are pretax money. In general, people put ~5% of their (pretax) money into 401ks because, on average, companies will match that ~5%, effectively doubling your retirement savings instantly. A common thing to utilize after that is a ROTH IRA, which is paid with after tax money, but the money grows tax free. The max ROTH IRA contribution per year is $6k, $12k if you're married.

Is the matching by the company also tax exempt?

It is tax-deferred, meaning you’ll pay tax on it later.

Tax-exempt would be never paying tax on it.

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

#367

Post by newsclues »

lsiebert wrote: post #278
pbuzbee wrote: post #178

I feel like it's only going to get worse. California has a good number of problems: housing costs, traffic, wildfires, homelessness, ... and the high tax rate you pay for the privilege of enjoying them. But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these. We're still in the stage of "problems are getting worse", and any solutions will take a long time to materialize. I grew up in California. It'…

"But I haven't seen California take meaningful steps to solve any of these" Yeah, the thing is there are political and regulatory efforts to deal with these, but most people don't hear/read about them, unless they are super wonky. So the people who tend to get involved are the wealthy people who benefit financially from the outcome, and the occasional non profit. The latter is where you can actually make an impact fo…

If you rely on nonprofits to solve homelessness, you are essentially allowing a nonprofit homelessness industry to exist and funding it with tax dollars.

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

#368

Post by raverbashing »

bobthepanda wrote: post #356
raverbashing wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the funny thing is, the California "countryside" is languishing because of a lack of people/jobs But instead of going there people prefer the big established cities elsewhere

A lack of jobs is usually not considered a positive thing when looking for a place to move to

True. And it's a bit of a catch 22 because even if you have your job, the city might not be good in terms of infrastructure, resources, schools, etc

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

#369

Post by newsclues »

mschuster91 wrote: post #354
ballenf wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think miles per person per day. More dense means everything is closer.

Dense housing is only dense housing, if people still need to commute half an hour or more to their workplaces dense housing is only creating traffic issues. Transport infrastructure (roads, buses, railroads, trams), housing, everyday service infrastructure (supermarkets, medical services, restaurants, haircutters) and employment infrastructure needs to be planned holistically or you're just shifting between problems…

Why can’t you have dense office, retail and housing space (can even be in the same building)?

Dense industrial areas are hard

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

#370

Post by sokoloff »

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…

To what extent does the third datapoint drive the other two?
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