The NYT specializes in articles promoting subsidies to encourage Americans to have children (paid parental leave, tax credits, free pre-K day care, free day care for older children (“K-12”), etc.) and articles promoting expanding U.S. population via immigration (by one Boston+Seattle every year from immigrants (1.5 million in 2016) and one Austin, Texas every year from children of immigrants (roughly 1 million per year).
Mixed into this daily soup, however, is an outlier: “California Housing Problems Are Spilling Across Its Borders”:
A growing homelessness crisis. Complaints about traffic congestion. Worries that the economy is becoming dominated by a wealthy elite.
Those sound like California’s problems in a nutshell. But now they are also among California’s leading exports.
Just ask the citizens of this city, where growing numbers of Californians and companies like Tesla have migrated to take advantage of cheap land and comparatively low home prices. A four-hour drive from Silicon Valley, across a mountain range and a state line, Reno is finding that imported growth is accompanied by imported problems.
As a result, the Reno housing market has gone from moribund to scorching. As of February, the median home price in the metropolitan area was about $340,000, more than double its recessionary trough of about $150,000, according to Zillow.
Today the typical Reno rent is just under $1,700 a month, up about 30 percent from five years ago, according to Zillow. One result has been a surge in Reno’s homeless population. The city’s shelter, just a few blocks past a bus station, is overflowing with residents and recently added a propane-heated tent to accommodate all the extra people.
It is not that interesting that a country that is comparatively bad at building infrastructure can’t handle population growth (more than 3X over the past 100 years). What’s interesting, though, is that the readers, who have been fed a constant diet of pro-population growth articles, are beginning to sound like zero-population growth zealots:
“Overpopulation” the term that must NEVER be mentioned. It has to always, be something else.
When I was a kid, US population was 160k. Now it is 320k. California and a lot of other places were a lot cooler back then. And we didn’t have to fight over water.
At a certain point you can’t blame Californians. Blame the overall out of control overpopulation of this planet, the concentration of knowledge and wealth in certain corners of the country and world, and not enough arable/desirable land to house the 8 billion miracles.
It is called overpopulation. How this escapes our national political conversation is beyond me, and urgently needs to be discussed.
California would not be so terribly overcrowded, and housing cost would not be nearly as high, if we did not have many millions of illegal immigrants in our sanctuary state.
We must consider immigration, both illegal and legal, as having an impact.
Where do we keep putting the millions of people who come into our country annually? We’re most certainly not building enough new housing anywhere. Another huge issue is water. Not an endless resource.Dear nyts, lefties, open border types, etc. do you STILL not see the connection between the most generous, liberal, near open borders immigration policies in the world and the crowding that is going on in this country?? Sorry, but common sense tells us, that to continue to pack ever more people into a finite space is going to lead to exactly what is happening pretty much everywhere in this country that is anywhere desirable to live. Btw, Idaho is now the fastest growing state in the country. The u.s. is the third most populous country on earth. Most of the people coming here are from rediculously over populated countries. Anybody care to make any obvious connections and see where this is leading us?
Ah yes, “intelligent growth”, another PC term that simply means more of the same with a nod towards at least acting like something approaching rational thought is guiding the insanity that is driving the country forward. Give us examples of places where “intelligent growth” has been implemented.
Overpopulation used to be an issue supported by the left. Since it is mostly driven by third world growth, the PC police put an end to it. They decided it was prejudicial against those people.
Just remember capitalism’s biggest lie: Growth pays for itself.
And start considering that the planet has too many people and that we must do something about it.
The quest for constant growth of population and GDP is killing all non-human life on Earth and is the fundamental reason for every environmental problem. In addition, every immigrant from a developing country to an industrialized country increases their carbon footprint, resource use, and negative impact on the ecosystem worldwide.
If NYT readers won’t support government policies to further accelerate U.S. population growth, who will?
They don’t want to say “overpopulation” because it leads to saying that all the wrong people are immigrating and breeding.
The U.S. population density is #185 out of 245 countries on a Wikipedia list, in between Mozambique and Kyrgyzstan. If California were a country it looks like it would be about #116. I’m currently in Italy, ranked #68, about double the population density of California. Italy is very nice IMHO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population_density
Isn’t the real problem increasing income inequality? There is near infinite land available; space isn’t the problem. As the article points out, growth will find it’s way to places which can accommodate it. The percentage of the population that can’t afford housing is increasing rapidly due to flat or decreasing disposable incomes. Our capitalist society continues to devise new ways, through gamification, to extract a larger market share per person for existing services, especially health and education. Who would have thought that college grads who’s debt consumes a quarter to half or more of their total income wouldn’t be buying homes? When the cost to build additional housing exceeds peoples ability to pay for it, the amount of available space is irrelevant.
Also in the New York Times a couple of days ago, there are apparently quite nice regions of the United States where the population trend has recently reversed: “Why Outer Suburbs in the East and Midwest Have Stopped Booming” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/21/upshot/the-population-slowdown-in-the-outer-suburbs-of-the-east-and-midwest.html.
“If California were a country it looks like it would be about #116”
One has to look at the urban areas — that’s where jobs are.
In this respect, population density in say Los Angeles county (2,500 /sq.km), Orange county (4,000) exceeds Rome pop density (2,300). San Fransisco county (18,600) is about 8 times more densely populated than Rome.
Similar picture can be observed inside I-95 in MA.
Newcomers tend to settle where jobs are, naturally. They do not build houses and offices in Death Valley, so appealing to the average pop density is rather misguided.
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist” (or a politician?)
Ivan not sure where you got your numbers. Wikipedia has Los Angeles county at 800/km^2, Orange County 1,200/km^2, San Francisco at 7,282/km^2, while it agrees with you on Rome 2,236/km^2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_County,_California
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome
I agree that it’s hard to compare. California has deserts and mountains which are sparsely populated, but Italy is largely mountainous itself, including a big chunk of the Alps.
But my point is that most people would agree that countries in Europe like Italy seem quite densely populated relative to most of North America and while Europe certainly has it’s share of problems, the quality of life here is overall very high. I don’t think visitors or residents of Italy are saying to themselves, “gee this would be such a better country if only there were half as many people here”.
“not sure where you got your numbers.”
http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/california-population/
“residents of Italy are saying to themselves, “gee this would be such a better country if only there were half as many people here””
Do you have opinion poll stats on that subject ? La Repubblica editorials do not count.
I have a couple of co-workers in Irvine, CA, originally from Italy, who are pretty unhappy about over-crowdedness both in Rome and the LA area. They mentioned, though, that traffic is more manageable in Irvine to my surprise.
Re. quality of life, they keep complaining that it’s pretty hard to find a decent job in hi-tech in Italy, and that many young people live with theirnparents because they cannot afford to even rent an an apartment. They do miss their country.
One woman, one baby, one hundred years—–problem solved.
I have been watching Japan with great interest for a long time in dealing with a shrinking population and a shrinking stock market. They seem to be doing OK overall in managing things. People are mostly happy. The only major issue seems to be limited good jobs for the next generation of workers. But so far most of those are getting along by doing part time jobs and different careers than their parents. So maybe there is a future if we do shrink.
Thinking…….
Phil, what types of policies are you willing to tolerate in order to reduce overpopulation? I realize, based on an earlier discussion, that your preference would be to limit financial incentives for parents without being overly cruel to pool children. But if you don’t get exactly what you want, what would you be willing to tolerate? There are obviously lots of ways of dealing with overpopulation: genocide, one child policy, forced abortions, deportations, taxes on people who have kids, involuntary sterilization, paying people to get sterilized, etc. Do some of these strategies have too many undesireable side effects to be worth it? If so, how do you decide which ones?
Yz,
I think free xboxes with VR headsets are McDonald’s vouchers will both stimulate American economy and solve overpopulation problem.
Yz: I think I answered this before. Start by eliminating tax subsidies to people who choose to have kids (so I would pay the same tax rates as a childless person). Then change welfare so that benefits were delivered directly to children. Turn low skill immigration over to states and sanctuary cities. They can have as many immigrants as they want so long as they build housing to accommodate (so that immigrants don’t generate real estate inflation) and guarantee to cover all welfare benefits consumed by the immigrants and their children.
@Yz asks a very good question, and Phil has answered.
I’ll add a few ideas more to Phil’s excellent answer, above.
Public policy in support of female education. From what I’ve heard, this is proven to reduce birth rates.
We could also look for reasons for lower birthrate in countries like Japan and Italy.
I think it’s a fluke on the Pravda’s part — perhaps, some right-wing leaning intern wrote it. Our betters on the left (The Economist) are worried about the pop decline in Italy, inter alia, and see immigration/migration as the solution to the problem:
“But decades of falling birth rates have resulted in slower population growth in Europe than in other regions. By 2017, Europe’s most populous country, Germany, ranked just 16th globally. The continent’s birth rate is now so low that the total population in many European countries has begun to decline.”
“Germany and Italy need migrants badly: without newcomers, they would face declines of 18% and 16%.”
Federica Mogherini, an Italian/Euro bureaucrat: “I believe Europeans should understand that we need migration for our economies and for our welfare systems, with the current demographic trend we have to be sustainable”.
They know better …
@ G C: Do you think Italy and Japan have low birth rates on purpose?
I’m pretty skeptical that governments are capable of reducing their population on purpose in a humane/optimal way. My question wasn’t so much “what policies would an intelligent ethical person implement as dictator”. It was “what policies will we tolerate, even if we find them immoral, if they result in achievement of this goal.”
The usual discredited canard. MENA [Middle East and North Africa] migrants won’t pay our pensions. They are, as it turns out, just another burden on the system.
And just getting better at building infrastructure is not an option? Seems to me that the people blaming population growth for their problems are the same people who are responsible for building infrastructure.
If the infrastructure in rural areas were better people would be more willing to move there instead of flocking to Californian cities.
christgod: Building infrastructure has gotten more expensive every year for us, not just in NYC (see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-construction-costs.html ) but all over the country. With human population approaching 10 billion and a global market for cement and other construction materials, I think it would make more sense to assume that building costs will increase.
[Also, as many dieters have realized, simply planning to lose weight, become smarter, and/or become more self-disciplined is not usually effective.]
Bill: Japan has a comparable per-capita GDP growth to the U.S. See http://www.rstreet.org/2016/08/29/japan-versus-the-united-states-in-per-capita-gdp/
Americans feel good about economic growth rates mostly because the government and the media don’t subtract out population growth.
Yz: The best way seems to be to stop immigration. Europe (and even the USA*) has shown that once you reach a certain level of development, fertility rates decrease to way below replacement rate without need for governmental intervention.
* from Wikipedia: “the fertility of the population of the United States is below replacement among those native born, and above replacement among immigrant families, most of whom come to the U.S. from countries with higher fertility than that of the U.S. However, the fertility rates of immigrants to the U.S. have been found to decrease sharply in the second generation, correlating with improved education and income”