“California is in trouble. It is growing too fast, and its problems are becoming too big to handle. The state is overcrowded, polluted, and running out of water. And its population is becoming increasingly diverse, which is creating social tensions.”
Was that from the Los Angeles Times this week? No. It was from Collier’s magazine on Aug. 17, 1954, in a cover story called “The Troubled Future of California.” The state had 12 million people then and has 39 million now.
As a 12-year-old, I remember seeing the article on newsstands, the first bad thing I had heard about the high-flying state I lived in. I was amazed to find this article summarized through a search on Bard, Google’s AI chatbot.
The article went on to say: “If California does not take steps to address its problems, it could become a major liability to the nation. The state is already a major economic powerhouse, but it could become a drain on the federal treasury if it cannot solve its problems.”
Well, with its high incomes and relatively young population, California has donated more in federal taxes than it has received in benefits for a long time. Rather than being a drain on the U.S., the state has the fifth largest economy in the world, behind Germany and ahead of the United Kingdom and India.
People often think of California as wall-to-wall people, but a recent map book of the state showed about 30 pages of mountains, deserts and rural areas. Only three or four showed the packed Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco Bay regions, and parts of the Central Valley.
Easterners love to complain about California, but I know a lot of young people who have moved there from the East. There is a reason the place is so crowded, salaries are high and everything is expensive. People just want to live there. Though its growth has stalled, it’s a bigger draw for bright minds than Austin, Tex., and other newer tech hubs.
When I was editor of the Kiplinger California Letter in 2007, I received a distraught phone call from a man visiting San Clemente, Calif., just north of San Diego. “I sold my home in Buffalo for $200,000 to move out here, but I can’t find even a condo for less than $1 million.” It’s amazing what some sunshine and a beach will do to make a home more valuable.
Well, I guess my family missed our big chance.We should have owned California by now. Like Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford and the other rich titans of the 1800s, my ancestors settled early and made the right investments. They went to the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1851, just after gold was discovered, and opened a hardware store and a bank in the booming town of Placerville.
But while the big guns were getting rich, the family gave numerous bad loans and somehow frittered away its bank in the next generation. They stayed and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. Growing up, I had “a view to die for” on the hills overlooking the San Francisco Bay. But then the…well…downside of California appeared, when a storm caused our house to slide just enough in 1958 to make it nearly unlivable. We moved into a new house—under an earthen dam on a major earthquake fault.
We thought we had another opportunity when we discovered some cereal boxtops my grandfather had saved in the 1920s or 1930s They actually gave him California property north of the Russian River. My father drove us there once…and the land was on the side of a very steep hill, virtually worthless. Eventually I gave the land away (maybe a mistake?)
I left the state for great job opportunities in Washington D.C. and elsewhere and lost track of California. Amazingly, my boss at the Kiplinger Letter came up to me in 2000 when she needed to replace the editor of the Kiplinger California Letter. “I’m asking you,…uh…ordering you, to take over the California Letter,” she said.
“I’d love to,” I said. “You’re kidding,” she responded, aware of its small circulation. “No, I’m ecstatic.’ For one thing, I could spend more time with my aging mother in Placerville.
So I rediscovered the state after being gone for 40 years and liked what I found. Service industries were booming. Smog had diminished remarkably. The scenery hadn’t changed. The Collier’s forecast might still come true, but it hasn’t yet 69 years later.
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