CA ... A Place to Wait for God

CA political maven Dan Walters writes for the Sacramento Bee. He looks at recent California demographic trends and finds the prior boom is definitely gone. Some key thoughts from an Outline ‘echo’ of his column.

California added just 186,807 souls in 2018, the department’s demographers calculated, just a .47 percent gain, the slowest in recorded history and only a quarter of the state’s growth rate during the 1980s, which was its last great population boom period before a long-term slide began.

We lose more people to other states than we gain (Texas is the No. 1 destination for our expats), foreign immigration is close to nil, births have dropped to well under 500,000 a year, and deaths are increasing as members of the post-World War II baby boom generation become elderly.

CA’s future appears to be as a retirement home for affluent geezers, cared for by foreign-born medical professionals. Instead of being the place where our national future is invented, it will become the place our (successful) past goes to retire. Hat tip to the British sitcom for loan of its title.