Austin, 2049
Immediately, state officers celebrated new federal information confirming that Texas is America’s best and most necessary state.
The U.S. Census Bureau launched estimates displaying that the Lone Star State, with greater than 40.3 million folks, had surpassed California, caught at 40 million folks for 30 years.
As Texans boasted about their new standing — “We’re the best civilization of the best nation on earth,” declared 79-year-old U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, now in his seventh time period — Golden State leaders issued well-practiced denials.
“Inhabitants isn’t a real measure of greatness,” protested California Gov. Meghan Markle. “California continues to be the land of the grandest desires, of probably the most embarrassing celebrities, of $10 million two-bedroom starter properties.”
However longtime observers of the Golden State shrugged at Texas’ triumph.
Some famous that, as early as 2023, estimates from demographers predicted that Texas would surpass California in inhabitants by 2050.
On reflection, 2023 was additionally the 12 months it grew to become apparent that California would willingly cede nationwide management to Texas. California signaled its give up by failing to reply to a startling drop in inhabitants.
California’s inhabitants, which had been rising since statehood till the COVID-19 pandemic, misplaced greater than a half-million folks between 2020 and 2022. Many pinned the trigger on COVID deaths, and Californians leaving the state. However deaths and departures had been solely a part of the inhabitants decline. The larger drawback was the dearth of latest Californians. The start fee fell quickly. Immigration plummeted too. Individuals all however stopped transferring to California, with its rampant homelessness and costly housing.
In a saner time, such a fast reversal of inhabitants in a state synonymous with arrival — “California Right here I Come” — would have been a disaster. State and native governments would have launched applications to encourage start and entice new Californians. Price range surpluses might have been dedicated to tax bonuses for beginning households, mortgage forgiveness for California college graduates who settled within the state, and much-more-affordable housing.
However 2023 was an unsettled time. Individuals had been depressed and anxious. Society was divided and in battle. The general public dialog, diminished by the decline of unbiased media, was dominated by debates in regards to the previous, and provided few visions of the longer term.
So, as an alternative of seizing on inhabitants decline as a purpose to remake the state, Californians used it as an excuse to keep away from doing onerous issues.
The denial was best in housing. Communities, to flee state strain to construct housing, argued that it wouldn’t be needed as a result of there can be fewer folks. This was a cynical little bit of illogic — there couldn’t be extra Californians with out extra housing. But it surely labored. Politicians backed off pro-housing stances. State courts embraced an argument that folks themselves had been air pollution underneath the state’s principal environmental legislation. And housing manufacturing, which had dropped by almost half between the early 2000s and the early 2020s, continued its fall.
Inhabitants decline froze California in different methods. When the variety of kids dropped, college districts shut down colleges, as an alternative of increasing academic choices and constructing new colleges to attract extra youngsters. The state’s college methods, consumed by tradition conflict controversies, did too little to counter declines in enrollment. Highly effective environmental and labor teams stored combating efforts to construct new, climate-resilient infrastructure in water, vitality and transportation.
California’s message to the world was clear: If we don’t construct it, you received’t come.
And also you didn’t.
It wasn’t onerous to see this coming. Texas had been the nation’s chief in exports and renewable vitality because the early 21st century. In 2023, the state’s governor bragged about California being the world’s fourth largest financial system. The state is in 14th place as we speak.
Which begs a query. If California had centered extra on inhabitants progress and the longer term again within the 2020s, might it have remained America’s greatest and richest state?
We’ll by no means know, as a result of California by no means actually tried.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Sq..
