Written by Richard Rider, Chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters
As the LA TIMES reported, if it were not for international immigration, California would be losing population. As it is, even with all the immigration — legal and illegal — the Golden State’s population has all but stopped growing — 2018 had the slowest CA annual population growth rate in recorded history.
The nation’s population is also growing at an ever slowing rate. But even so, the national population (which includes the huge CA population in its numbers) 2018 average growth rate is 50% higher than California.
In our supposedly booming CA economy, our state’s 2018 population growth rate was 31% lower than 2017. The CA interstate U-Haul traffic is more and more a one-way business.
The financial ramifications are huge. Our state and local governments ignore this trend. They are still in denial.
Government continues to predict a robust growth rate in education students — especially at the college level — insisting on more and more spending for outdated and unneeded university campuses and classrooms.
Transportation agencies (like my local dishonest SANDAG outfit) continue to claim that the population is exploding, making massive new public transit boondoggles a “necessity.”
The only REAL growth we are seeing in California is our burgeoning homeless population, thanks to our fine weather and CA governments’ misguided programs.
It also appears that we will have quite a surge (hopefully temporary) in “refugee” and illegal immigration from the south. Sacramento’s solution? Put ’em on the public dole. Provide free everything, at taxpayers’ expense.
From a taxpayer standpoint, the future of California is bleak. More and more productive people and businesses are heading across the California border. The many CA governments’ unfunded pension obligations continue to grow even with our robust stock market. CA is heavily depending on capital gains and a strong stock market. The next downturn will bring us face-to-face with an “unexpected” disaster.
In the future, more and more CA state and local government spending (free college, single-payer health care, massive public transit schemes, soaring public employee salaries, unfunded pension liabilities, bubble-headed “green” mandates, etc.) will be put on the shoulders of fewer and fewer CA taxpayers.
