Boom, Echo, Echo
The number of babies born in Washington State has barely budged for the last 15 years. But if I had to guess, I'd say we're going to see a slight rise in the number of newborns in the next few years.
The cause isn't rising fertility rates, but quirks of the population structure: the grandchildren of the baby boomers are ready to come online.
The animated chart below should make the point. The horizontal axis shows 5-year age groups; the height of the blue line shows how many Washington residents were in that age group in any year. The big hump in the middle represents the baby boomers. Over time, you see a second, smaller bump emerge on the left-side of the graph -- the echo boomers, who are just now entering their most fertile years.
Just wait a bit for it to cycle through if you miss it the first time.
[Update: Some people are having problems seeing the animated .gif image below. Try clicking on the "more" link below. ]
Giant Sucking Sound: The Energy Counter
A point that bears repeating: Washington, Oregon, and Idaho produce virtually no natural gas, and absolutely no petroleum. So virtually every dollar the region spends on oil and gas gets immediately siphoned out of the region's economy -- which leaves less money circulating locally, among the region's residents and businesses.
The recent energy price spikes made me wonder: how much money is that, exactly? It's hard to say, exactly, since prices and imports are in constant flux. But in round numbers, it's about $17 billion per year: $9.6 billion in Washington, $5.2 in Oregon, and $2.1 billion in Idaho.
That's about $1,500 per person per year; and about $537 each second.
And if you have javascript enabled on your computer, you can see the numbers rack up below:
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