NYT readers beginning to consider overpopulation
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?
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