For the Right Price

The biggest reason that California is suffering economic depression is not the drought. That's hurt agriculture and tourism, but not our other kinds of manufacturing. Not our design companies. What's hurting business is that you can't downgrade from a big car payment and a long commute from an affordable house to a paying job in the city. Houses are too expensive there, and the cities in California, other than Sacramento, are too expensive or dangerous. Stockton is filled with a race war between Mexicans and Blacks and the daily murders fill my evening news. I wouldn't even consider working there. Neither would anyone sane. That leaves Sacramento as the only city in California with a local water supply and jobs. It even has a port, and local food supply. Sacramento makes sense, even if its miserable in the summer heat. But you can't tell LA fools or SF Bay nitwits that you're removing their water subsidy which pays 80% of their water bill based on the rest of the state's taxes. This can't go on forever. Eventually the tap will turn off and then those cities will empty because $1000 a month (per home!) for water, the actual current cost, is too much to pay. So don't buy a house in the Bay Area or LA. Eventually the musical chairs leaves someone seeing that bubble burst, and that day will come. Pumping the water isn't free. They use oil to power the pumps. And oil isn't free, and most of the state banned fracking so we won't get more locally until that ban is reversed. If there's a nuclear war in the Middle East, over Iran's nukes, the price of oil will shoot up due to supply cuts and that's a big hello to $200 oil. We had $147/bbl oil once. Remember that? So $200 is easy. At 3 times the current price, what do you think your water bill would be in LA, when you're paying $200/month for water now? That's $600/month, even with the subsidy. Can you justify finding another $400 from your wages when all the plants and gardens are dead and the LA freeways are packed and you are spending 3x more on gasoline as well? Is your 100 mile per day commute worth that job? Would you do better somewhere else, with cheaper houses? Yes you would. I advise people living in those places to sell their homes, now that the market is up and they can make a profit, and find somewhere sane to live, with a short commute and local water supply. No more leveraged stupidity.

Paying jobs need to get out of the cities. They need to get off the coast and into the Valley, where the water is cheap, or up North where it rains twice a week during the summer and every day the rest of the year. Californians need to live in places where an affordable house is CLOSE to work, close enough to bicycle there, or failing that, ride a scooter at 100 mpg. If I were a librarian I would totally buy a scooter for my daily commute. Even in the summer heat, a scooter is a real hoot.

A short commute is a hell of a lot cheaper on a scooter than a big 12 mpg SUV, which people use for their commutes from Tracy or Stockton to the Bay Area because the traffic makes them nervous, and their response is a fake armored car, an SUV. Those don't stop bullets, but they look like they do, and for ignorant people who use emotion to make their important decisions, this is the result.

Even downgrading to a bubble car doesn't help much because you still end up with 30 mpg (instead of 40-50 mpg thanks to "stress driving" and "stop and go") and a case of abject terror from the hooning SUVs through Altamont Pass, which I can tell you is NOT FUN. It isn't any safer in an SUV because the pass is up the side of a mountain and some of the wrecks... go OVER the edge, on fire, falling 400 feet, screaming all the way down. That's NOT just in movies. That's a frequent death on that pass. They have daily crashes on that pass, and a half million people go through there daily. Imagine those half million people had 12 mile commutes to jobs just down the road in the Valley? That's a HUGE amount of fuel saved. How much are they currently using?

If those vehicles (taken as a group) average 20 mpg, times half a million vehicles, times 150 miles a day (approximate average), that means that commute is taking 7.5 gallons per vehicle (average), or 3.75 million gallons of fuel per DAY. Think about how much of California's working poor is spending on fuel whose profits fund ISIS murderers in the Middle East. That's what your fuel money actually does, after all. So the higher your fuel economy, the fewer murders you pay for. It doesn't matter that you don't want to pay for murders, its just what happens when you buy gasoline. Try to remember that when you push down the throttle to pass the old lady on the mountain road.

My irritation comes from the fact that currently 2-stroke vehicles are illegal on California roads. The lightest and cheapest scooters, made in factories in China, can't be ridden on California roads. The really cheap ones retail for about $500. That's a couple car payments. And they get 90 mpg or so. You still have to add the 2-stroke oil every time you fill up, but on a short commute that's around once a month, and most scooters have a half gallon gas tank. So you ride for the cost of 20 oz. cola from a vending machine. Consider just how much money you save. Of course, without a job to pay your rent, that does you no good.

Sure, you could spend tens of thousands buying a Prius, which is slightly better fuel economy than a bubble car that costs half as much, though the Prius lets you use the commuter lane into San Jose and many other crowded cities. Or you can add hours to your commute and ride public transit, which most people I've met say is awful, and frequently both expensive AND dangerous.

A Nissan Leaf doesn't have the range to go 150 miles a day. Even half that, and a recharge while you work, is not going to happen. Most California businesses won't provide recharge, and even those who have the recharge posts weren't required to have them actually work. They're just meant for looks!

If you are poor you can't afford $90K for a Tesla S which has the battery range to make the round trip and recharge overnight. There are a few of those in this town. The red one tailgated me Saturday. What people can afford is a scooter for the price of about 6 tanks of gas. A scooter still uses fuel, but it gets 100 mpg. That's better than double the economy of a Prius, and you can buy a dozen for the price of a Prius. Of course, the Prius can carry you in summer clothes and traffic at freeway speed, though at freeway speed, a Prius is more like a 35 mpg car.

Poor people can check their tire pressure, remove spare seats out of the car as long as they're driving solo, since the seats are often heavy and less weight reduces demand on the engine, reducing the amount of fuel used. They can wax the car and reduce drag. And they can drive in the slow lane, since most drag is a direct result of speed, although a steady speed also reduces the need for acceleration, which uses more fuel. There's an entire type of driving called Hypermiling.

All of these strategies are expensive or uncomfortable. The only real solution is to give up the coastal cities, move to the water supply, and bring your businesses with you. And if you're moving, you may as well move to wherever there's water. It doesn't have to be Sacramento. There's half empty towns up and down the Sacramento Valley, with cheap houses and cheaper water. Bring your workers, buy the houses, renovate them, revitalize. The grocery stores and services will follow. They build based on population numbers. And once your population is on flat ground towns in the Sacramento Valley, 100 mpg scooters for $500 each and 10 minute commutes means you are saving 3.6 million gallons of fuel per day. Oh, and the Nissan Leaf makes sense again. Some might even legalize golf cart lanes or paved bike trails, since those work on the flatland too. Davis is proof of that, but Roseville also.

Emptying LA is expensive but necessary. Same with the Bay Area. Its NOT a coincidence that the wine industry is mostly in the north, where they have completely separate and cheap gravity fed water supply, off the Russian and Napa rivers. I know this will resolve itself, with a lot of pain and outrage and rioting and arson, but I can only hope that my warning, now, will tell people who care enough to read, to get out of LA and get out of the Bay Area. They are doomed! And its all because of the costs of pumping water.