Posted on 08/04/2004 10:12:53 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES -- Californians are increasingly pessimistic about the state's growth, believing a rising population during the next 20 years mostly means more air pollution, higher home prices for their children and ever-worsening traffic snarls, says a new statewide opinion poll.
A survey of 2,500 residents reveals that 59 percent believe more people will be bad for them and their families, while only 14 percent say growth will benefit California.
But most have little idea that California has 36 million people and may grow to nearly 48 million by 2025. Only 16 percent of those surveyed in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean knew the state's approximate population, while another 16 percent believed it was less than 10 million.
Most optimistic about the future are Hispanics and Asian-Americans, many of them recently arrived immigrants who believe their family situations have improved, said Mark Baldassare, statewide survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California.
"Many have an optimism for themselves and future generations as immigrant populations often do," he said.
"On the flip side," Baldassare said. "Whites and African-Americans in the state are the most pessimistic. Many of them are feeling the state's best days are behind them."
Noting that whites and blacks are 80 percent of California's voters, Baldassare said the survey shows that the state's political choices on growth are increasingly driven by its most pessimistic residents.
The telephone survey, conducted between May 24 and June 8, reveals again Californians' long-held, but growing anxieties over millions more people, cars and houses in an already crowded state stumbling through a prolonged financial crisis. With a 2 percent margin of error, the results also show residents' widespread lack of confidence in state and local governments to properly manage growth, with many believing they can do better planning themselves through ballot initiatives.
In 1999, PPIC's last poll largely about growth and the future, showed Californians less concerned amid the state's economic boom, Baldassare said.
But the pollster said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has given many voters more hope in the future, as 60 percent of those polled said they approved of his performance in office.
The state's most optimistic region, according to the survey, is a vast suburbanizing swath of Riverside and San Bernardino counties known as the Inland Empire. Compared to 16 percent of Bay Area adults who believe their region will be better in 2025, and only 15 percent in Orange and San Diego counties, 24 percent of Inland Empire residents surveyed believe better days are ahead.
Fifty-two percent of residents there see more jobs and believe schools will get better.
"We have our problems like anyone else," said Temecula Mayor Mike Naggar, adding that many newcomers from more crowded and expensive areas feel good about owning a home and seeing less traffic congestion.
"It's still an affordable place to live," he said. "When you move here you're glad you're here ... There may be a little traffic problem, but they're working on it."
Central Valley residents witnessing a similar rural-to-suburban transformation, remain the most pessimistic, with 79 percent believing air pollution will increase, 80 percent saying affordable housing will diminish and 86 percent predicting traffic will become more like that in Los Angles and the Bay Area.
Bay Area residents, conversely, were the most likely to say their traffic would not worsen.
I'm pessamistic. We have a socialist government thus economic growth cannot keep pace with population growth. The quality of life in this State will continue to decline until the Marxists are run out of office.
Let's not forget our rotting infrastructure, ridiculously high tax rates, idiotic "environmental protection" regulations, our positively lackluster public schools that are little more than communist indoctrination centers, and the insane influx of illegals that will soon be getting driver's licenses.
California's going to tank in the next 5 years if this state doesn't get some solid Conservative leadership. Mark my words.
And, meanwhile, the taxers and regulators continue to do
their best to run employers out of the state.
Economists have been saying for at least two years now that the economy will recover slowly and that California's recovery will be behind the rest of the country. So much for our elected politicians' prayer for a painless solution to billions of dollars of deficit spending. Some serious squirming just months away.
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