2022.
That's the year when the baby boomers start aging into mass retirement.
It will probably start going south before then, but yeah--that's probably the cut off date when the shit will hit the fan. One of the things that California needs to also take into account is their dependency upon imported oil. For one reason or another, California's policy makers decided they didn't want shale oil and just kept importing shit in from the Middle East.
That's the year when all of the cheap money that has been slushing around the international system goes away, maybe for generations maybe forever.
California is heavily in debt, we have tons of unfunded liabilities, when that investiment money goes away that's the moment when California runs out of other peoples money.
I think it will be worse than that.
I think the biggest economic power in California is Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
Silicon Valley is heavily invested in the international system. A shitload of the money that goes into modern technology such as smart phones and modern laptops is into R&D. A lot of the industrial stuff has been shipped overseas to take advantage of cheap labor, which has resulted in long supply chains across the developing world. Supply chains that include China either directly or indirectly. With the Trade War and the coming disorder, the cheap aspect of production is going to dissolve overnight.
Silicon Valley can fix a great deal of that by relocating its production facilities to Mexico and Central America and I fully expect them to do so, under the guise of "fuck Trump", but that's going to cost a shitload of money to start up in the short term. And when that money from the Boomers evaporates, Silicon Valley will have no choice but to cut the fat in their labor pool. Google may actually shrink in the future.
Or outright implode. Because this all assumes Google focuses on its bottom line and not its politics, which I tell you is not going to be possible. Google isn't going to want to fire all those beautiful people of color--they'll want to fire the most experienced and capable members of their team; the straight white males. And when people are fighting for their jobs, they'll get downright vicious. I expect for political and internal social reasons, the farther you are from the keywords "straight" and "white", the better your chances of keeping your job.
Instead of trimming the fat, Google will probably have a mix of tossing out the prime meat and medium cuts for the sake of social values. Now add in the high minimum wage California is implementing, then the high levels of social funding, the high spike in gasoline costs, the political hardening from an angry and defeated local DNC on the national stage, a probable growing of illegal immigrants seeking to avoid ICE, an out of touch political and social elite, and the withering of the California economy. Because as Silicon Valley shrinks, so will the businesses that grew off of that business; from restaurants to entertainment to transportation to construction.
Hollywood will probably face a similar problem. Already film companies such as Paramount have become heavily addicted to Chinese money, especially when Chinese businessmen were looking for any means of getting their money out of China and into the United States. Paramount is already bleeding from the loss of that investment money and the only chance for Hollywood to keep a hold onto that source is to get into the market, which is lucrative in its own right. Which is getting harder and harder with the escalating trade war.
The only thing that California would have going for it is Hollywood--and Hollywood has almost entirely focused on its own political and cultural norms instead of what the rest of the country will want to consume. The power, wealth, and resources of Hollywood is immense. There is no arguing that. But at the same time, they're pissing it all away. They're putting out more and more movies people don't like and when the Boomer and Chinese money dries up, there will probably be less productions and more infighting on who gets what.
The largest, most supported productions in the past ten years have focused on Left Coast, Chicago, and NYC politics and culture. Those are not popular outside of those areas, but within Hollywood they are deadset on those productions. And I expect, given how Hollywood has acted for the past three years, they will continue to fund those over more successful productions. In essence, Hollywood is about to go through a crunch at the same time they're alienating a large portion of their market.
With the coming decentralization I suspect is coming from a mixture of culture, politics, and technology--I think Hollywood may suffer a similar shrink as to what Silicon Valley will suffer. It may not be as severe, but if that happens around the same time as Silicon Valley, the damage to the state economy is going to tailspin. At some point, the elites are either going to wall off the poor and hungry or they're going to get on their planes and fly to another state. If we're lucky, they'll move to Mexico. If God is merciful, they'll move to Brazil.
2022 is when we run out of other peoples money, soon after we enter a bankruptcy crisis. My bet is that we default and our economy crashes, when that day happens there will be one group for every one to blame and it wont be the republicans.
Ouch, right. Bankruptcy crises.
So if your wondering why our polititions are so anti second amendment its because they know that the day of reconcking is coming. Some people are trying to put it off some want to party before It comes, and some are in a delusion that they can make all of their stupid utopian dreams come true but what Is factual is that its all coming to and end.
So all of you worried about texas turning blue, understand that there is a good chance of California going red after the bill comes due.
Well, they'll probably flee North too. The left coast is closer as a whole on a cultural level to California than California is to Arizona or Texas. Oddly enough, if the Blue runs to other states, they will actually adopt the cultural values of the indigenous state rather than significantly modify it. You might have a few holdout enclaves here and there, but overall, they will probably be devoured by the local culture.
The reason for that seems to be that humans adapt more to the host culture unless they simply overwhelm it. In actuality, the culture of the first 10 people in a newly settled area will have more of a cultural impact upon that area then the next several thousand over the course of decades.