Post: #1

If you want to know what the rest of America will be like in 20-30 years, just look at California now. Not looking too pretty...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdelbec...and-water/

It really is sad to see the decline. Half a century ago it was the land of opportunity. Now it's basically Greece on the Pacific. Just goes to show, whenever something is good, enjoy it to the max, because it won't be that way forever. Wherever your paradise is right now, it probably won't be in 25 years.

Post: #2

I was considering going there to start my business but I said screw it. Right now, I am considering Texas. They seem to have it together. A part of me feels that some of these states will end up looking like parts of South America too... Not good at all

Post: #3

Definitely a sad commentary and foreboding for the rest of the country.

Still my favorite state (in terms of natural beauty/vibe) even though it peaked in the 70s...don't see myself living there full time again unless I hit top of the food chain.

Anyone seen that silly "Elysium" flick? Their dystopic vision of the U.S. (CA specifically) is not too far off from what the article touches on.

Post: #4

California has great scenery. If you are rich enough to live on the beach, you can lead a pretty cool life.

Otherwise, it is pretty pointless to live Cali. I mean, why the fuck would someone live in Bakersfield or another shithole like that that is far away from the coast?

Post: #5

(08-20-2014 11:41 PM)___ Wrote:  Definitely a sad commentary and foreboding for the rest of the country.

Still my favorite state (in terms of natural beauty/vibe) even though it peaked in the 70s...don't see myself living there full time again unless I hit top of the food chain.

Anyone seen that silly "Elysium" flick? Their dystopic vision of the U.S. (CA specifically) is not too far off from what the article touches on.

Let's not get carried away. California is not heading for "Elysium."

Worst case: It turns into a giant Greece.

Most likely case: It just becomes a mega state with low to middling economic growth.

Edit: Although the water issue could be a serious problem. If it turns out to be a serious issue, then I could see California losing lots of people and only the coast being populated.

Post: #6

^ This point is very true.

I still do not understand why people without enough money choose to live in Inland Empire, The Valley, Bakersfield, Fresno and so on.

Even with the sunshine included I'd rather live in Vegas, Dallas, Austin, or Denver for much cheaper living.

California will never rot though.

Rich people love sunshine and sailboats too much.

Post: #7

(08-20-2014 11:52 PM)The Texas Prophet Wrote:  Let's not get carried away. California is not heading for "Elysium."

Worst case: It turns into a giant Greece.

Most likely case: It just becomes a mega state with low to middling economic growth.

Edit: Although the water issue could be a serious problem. If it turns out to be a serious issue, then I could see California losing lots of people and only the coast being populated.

Carried away? I said it's my favorite state and would live there again.

The Elysium reference (which I thought was a crap movie) was in regards to how they showed hypothetically "future" L.A.: a desert like, majority Spanish speaking wasteland...which was in the OP's linked article.

Post: #8

None of the whining posts here could possibly be visible without stuff engineered in California. We are the biggest state economy in the country.
So armchair critics, go ahead and do better.

I sat in a restaurant next to one of the professors who invented UNIX.
UNIX, without which the internet could not have evolved to its present state in anything like the time it has, was invented here.

We register more patents than any other state. Just come on out and try to compete with our big California brains.



Here are the companies with tons of people smarter than us. List of tech companies not necessarily headquartered in, but have offices in Silicon Valley. Doesn't even count Genentech.

Adobe Systems Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Agilent Technologies Apple Inc. Applied Materials Brocade Communications Systems Cisco Systems eBay Electronic Arts Facebook Google Pixar Hewlett-Packard Intel Intuit Juniper Networks KLA Tencor LSI Logic Marvell Semiconductors Maxim Integrated Products National Semiconductor NetApp Netflix Nvidia Oracle Corporation Salesforce.com SanDisk Sanmina-SCI Symantec Western Digital Corporation Xilinx Yahoo! Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed): 3Com (acquired by HP) Actel Actuate Corporation Adaptec Aeria Games and Entertainment Akamai Technologies (HQ in Cambridge, Massachusetts) Altera Amazon.com's A9.com Amazon.com's Lab126.com Amdahl Apple Aricent Asus Atari Atmel Broadcom (headquartered in Irvine, California) BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle Corporation) Cypress Semiconductor Dell (headquartered in Round Rock, Texas) EMC Corporation (headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts) Extreme Networks E*TRADE (headquartered in New York, NY) Fairchild Semiconductor Foundry Networks Fujitsu (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan) Groupon (headquartered in Chicago, IL) Hitachi Data Systems Hitachi Global Storage Technologies IBM Almaden Research Center (headquartered in Armonk, New York) IDEO Informatica Intuitive Surgical Kerio Technologies LinkedIn Logitech Maxtor (acquired by Seagate) McAfee (acquired by Intel) Memorex (acquired by Imation and moved to Cerritos, California) Micron Technology (headquartered in Boise, Idaho) Microsoft (headquartered in Redmond, Washington) Mozilla Foundation Move, Inc. Nokia (headquartered in Espoo, Finland) Nokia Solutions and Networks (headquartered in Espoo, Finland) NXP Semiconductors Nook (subsidiary of Barnes & Noble) Olivetti (headquartered in Ivrea, Italy) Opera Software (headquartered in Oslo, Norway) OPPO Palm, Inc. (acquired by HP) Panasonic (headquartered in Osaka, Japan) PayPal (now part of eBay) Philips Lumileds Lighting Company Playdom PlayPhone Qualcomm, Inc. (HQ in San Diego, CA) Quanta Computer Quantcast Quora Rambus RSA (acquired by EMC) Samsung Electronics (headquartered in Suwon, Korea) SAP AG (headquartered in Walldorf, Germany) Siemens (headquartered in Berlin and Munich, Germany) Sony (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan) Sony Ericsson SRI International Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle Corporation) SunPower SurveyMonkey Synopsys Inc. Tata Consultancy Services (headquartered in Mumbai, India) Tibco Software Tesla Motors TiVo TSMC Twitter VA Software (Slashdot) VeriSign Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec) VMware WebEx (acquired by Cisco Systems) YouTube (acquired by Google) Yelp, Inc.

Post: #9

(08-21-2014 12:30 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  Ha. We register more patents than any other state.

Patent Trolls Apple Computer probably registers more useless patents than any other state just by itself. They churn out patents hoping one of them will be useful some future day.

Patents aren't really a good benchmark of useful technological advancement.

Post: #10

(08-21-2014 12:41 AM)Blackhawk Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 12:30 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  Ha. We register more patents than any other state.

Patent Trolls Apple Computer probably registers more useless patents than any other state just by itself. They churn out patents hoping one of them will be useful some future day.

Patents aren't really a good benchmark of useful technological advancement.

And YOU have accomplished......?

Post: #11

Many of those names are of companies 100+ years old. Not really an indication of how the place is currently doing.

What I saw when I was there in this spring that concerned me the most was the hazard of low groundwater threatening to snowball. Fires everywhere and people are more concerned with having their golf course looking green than actively battling the environmental disaster that's creeping up on them.

Ironic considering how environmentalistic the State sees itself as.

Post: #12

Even if became Elysium (will never happen - you have more billionaires & millionaires than any other state), would still be the coolest state in the US by landslide.

Post: #13

(08-21-2014 12:46 AM)Vicious Wrote:  Many of those names are of companies 100+ years old. Not really an indication of how the place is currently doing.

What I saw when I was there in this spring that concerned me the most was the hazard of low groundwater threatening to snowball. Fires everywhere and people are more concerned with having their golf course looking green than actively battling the environmental disaster that's creeping up on them.

Ironic considering how environmentalistic the State sees itself as.

All golf courses in the state have long been watered with reclaimed water. Just like all shopping center vegetation and foliage along freeways etc. So, this statement doesn't reflect reality.

Post: #14

They still have the best weather in the country. Not worried.

Post: #15

Time to get the fuck out.

I've been out of the US for a month already and it really makes me see how shitty my life is in LA. At least for now but I don't see myself living in LA for the long run.

Post: #16

Q:

(08-21-2014 12:26 AM)___ Wrote:  They showed hypothetically "future" L.A.: a desert like, majority Spanish speaking wasteland...which was in the OP's linked article.

A: Tijuana

Post: #17

(08-21-2014 01:03 AM)HeyPete Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 12:46 AM)Vicious Wrote:  Many of those names are of companies 100+ years old. Not really an indication of how the place is currently doing.

What I saw when I was there in this spring that concerned me the most was the hazard of low groundwater threatening to snowball. Fires everywhere and people are more concerned with having their golf course looking green than actively battling the environmental disaster that's creeping up on them.

Ironic considering how environmentalistic the State sees itself as.

All golf courses in the state have long been watered with reclaimed water. Just like all shopping center vegetation and foliage along freeways etc. So, this statement doesn't reflect reality.

Reclaimed water that could otherwise go to recharge basins and back to groundwater. You haven't changed a thing, merely slowed a problem that requires systemwide change.

Post: #18

(08-21-2014 01:55 AM)Vicious Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 01:03 AM)HeyPete Wrote:  

(08-21-2014 12:46 AM)Vicious Wrote:  Many of those names are of companies 100+ years old. Not really an indication of how the place is currently doing.

What I saw when I was there in this spring that concerned me the most was the hazard of low groundwater threatening to snowball. Fires everywhere and people are more concerned with having their golf course looking green than actively battling the environmental disaster that's creeping up on them.

Ironic considering how environmentalistic the State sees itself as.

All golf courses in the state have long been watered with reclaimed water. Just like all shopping center vegetation and foliage along freeways etc. So, this statement doesn't reflect reality.

Reclaimed water that could otherwise go to recharge basins and back to groundwater. You haven't changed a thing, merely slowed a problem that requires systemwide change.

Actually, the water problem isn't that difficult to solve. The OCWD (Orange County) is already using the toilet-to-tap model. It doesn't have capacity worries like the rest of the state, but is reducing use nonetheless.

Although the technology purifies the water to being cleaner than it is in reservoirs it sounds unsavory.

Once this is implemented statewide water will be used over and over and over again.

Furthermore, in 2016 the first of several planned desalinization plants comes on-line in Carlsbad (The Agua Hendonia plant, north of San Diego). It will supply 8% of San Diego's water in its first year. As the technology advances to deal with the "brine" that is a by-product of desalinization the use of ocean water will increase to estimates of 50%. In good years, it will fill reservoirs to capacity and fill future planned reservoirs. In bad years, it will allow wine producers and agriculture etc. to carry on as normal.

Post: #19

Looks like if I wanna live in LA I better get a move on and then get back out.

Post: #20

Forbes is headquartered in New York City (moving to Jersey soon).

My guess is that this is just some east coast intellectuals doing some high brow hating on the west coast. If they were rappers it would be like Biggie and Tupac.

Post: #21

CA may be dying but SF, LA, OC and SD are booming!

Post: #22

Desalination plants are not cheap. Neither is the infrastructure built to take advantage of it. Clean water is the #1 priority of every human being on Earth and yet it is ignored.

The people in California may be some of the smartest but the guys at the top aren't firing on all cylinders.

Post: #23

The fact we have a freshwater problem blows my mind. Youd think they would create a nuclear power station that would also double as a desalination plant. Neccessity is the mother of invention.

Post: #24

Seems like Texas is the new land of opportunity. Keep on hearing about people and businesses moving there.

Post: #25

(08-20-2014 10:23 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  If you want to know what the rest of America will be like in 20-30 years, just look at California now. Not looking too pretty...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdelbec...and-water/

It really is sad to see the decline. Half a century ago it was the land of opportunity. Now it's basically Greece on the Pacific. Just goes to show, whenever something is good, enjoy it to the max, because it won't be that way forever. Wherever your paradise is right now, it probably won't be in 25 years.

I love California, it's an incredibly beautiful state, but it's a shame what the state politicians and bureaucrats have let it become. The high end tax rates are insane especially since you get very little in terms of services for what you pay. The top end state tax is something like 13.3%, plus you pay state capital gains & dividend taxes + all sorts of other local sales and city taxes as well on top. Not worth it IMO. You're paying off all these repressively liberal policy makers to continue to run the state into the ground ad infinitum while they live high on the hog with their big fat pensions.

Large swathes of the urban part of the state resemble second or even third world slums. Talking around LA mostly but certainly in other parts as well.
Public works departments skimp all the time and the roads sure aren't all that great absent certain parts at least from what I've driven. In the southwestern part near the Nevada/Arizona border the back roads are a mess really - but once you get into another state they get much nicer immediately.

I've read all sorts of horror stories about how much property crime goes unreported throughout the state too. Many rural towns have their copper wires stolen all the time by thieves, and home break-ins are really common so you gotta look out. There is now even a bit ring of people robbing the Hollywood star's homes while they are away.

Love visiting Cali but don't think I could live there for tax reasons alone - unless I was making bank and could afford it. But if you were making good money and could live with the high taxes due to a large income it would be amazing to live in places like Santa Monica, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Laguna Beach, Coronado etc. But man RE in those areas is usually through the roof.