I Must Be Dense
Seems like there's been a rash of anti-density columns in Seattle of late. First there was last week's Mossback column in the Seattle Weekly (which I discussed here). Then, on Saturday, P-I columnist Joel Connelly got into the action with this chestnut in a piece about Seattle's struggling middle class:
Are working families going to move into the higher buildings and downtown condos championed by Mayor Nickels? Not likely. The new living space seems intended for affluent empty nesters.
Granting Connelly his due: that may well be right. But if so, it's exactly the sort of thing that would help middle-class families who are being squeezed by high housing prices.
Cloudy Forecasts
Washington State just issued revised population estimates--and they upped their forecast for population growth from 2000 through 2010 by 110,000. Just a year ago, the state was predicting that the state would add about 745,000 new residents over the decade, with just over half from net migration (more people moving into the state than out of it). But the new forcast predicts 855,000 new residents, with higher rates of in-migration as more people are attracted to the state by a strengthening economy.
What seems particularly interesting to me, though, is the way the population growth estimate has moved around over the past 7 years:
It's not as if the estimate got better and better, homing in on the right number as the decade went on. It's far more random than that -- perhaps a sign that forecasters recognized a little too late what the consequences of a recovering economy might be.
Now, this isn't meant as a critique of Washington's state demographers -- just as a reminder that the future is really, really difficult to predict, even if it's your job. Which is one more reason to take all sorts of predictions--from population to market prices to resource availability--with an appropriately-sized dose of salt.
Talking With Cars
This New York Times article from last Saturday echoed news that has been popping up all over recently. The headline sums it up: "America's Love Affair With S.U.V.'s Begins to Cool." Higher gas prices are apparently starting to shift people's car-buying patterns -- which seems to have caught most auto-industry execs by surprise, though it should hardly come as a shock to economists who (quite naturally) expect that price changes will eventually change people's behavior.
But what stuck out at me was this quote from a former SUV aficionado:
"I never wanted a car before - never," said Tamika Cooks, a science teacher at Bellaire High School in Houston, in an interview Friday as she was signing the paperwork for her Chrysler 300C. "But this car has captured my attention. It speaks to me. It calls my name."
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The Six-Billion-Dollar Salmon
Tear out the four dams on the Lower Snake River? The clearest and most succinct case for doing it (that I've ever read, anyway) can be found as a guest op-ed in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The federal government is proposing to spend $6 billion to implement its new salmon plan, even though the plan doesn't even pretend to actually recover the Snake's wild salmon stocks, all of which are listed as endangered species. Jim Bradford and Rob Masonis have a better idea:
It makes more sense to spend a portion of this $6 billion on measures that will let the inland Northwest reach its fullest potential. Instead of spending this money to save dams, why not invest it in people, agriculture, clean energy and improved rail transportation? Why not use this money in a way that revitalizes local businesses, and also restores the lower Snake River and its salmon?
That's the crux, but it's better to just read the article yourself. (And kudos to Bradford and Masonis on an exceptionally well-written piece.)
