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Bay Area Economics

[B]uilding in Southern California is a quick cash business, with homes slapped up in no time. No one is thinking about the long haul. Those buying and selling generally don’t have local roots and lack the understanding of a place’s rhythms that comes over time. Fire paths get built over and the brush is overgrown. Clusters of condos spring up in areas with shrinking water tables. Everyone makes money from the building boom, so there are scant regulations. For aside from perfect weather and access to the coast, San Diego sells itself on “lifestyle.” People are drawn by the promise of unfettered possibility: golf courses on desert land; pools and Jacuzzis; water when you want it. A notion like “limits” or “conservation” does not fly in a consumerist utopia. This ethos both contributes to global warming and thwarts attempts to limit climate change: there is no support or structure for sustainable living. A large-scale catastrophe like these wildfires raises the question: where are the first responders? The answer is that more than one quarter of California’s National Guard is in Iraq. States have expressed concern over the fact that so many firefighters and other emergency responders are abroad, and this crisis brings that reality home. There is no question that efforts to contain the fire have been hindered not just by a lack of personnel, but the absence of equipment. Helicopters are crucial in fighting fires by dowsing the flames and using chainsaws to cut breaks from above. Again, much of our key aircraft is in the Middle East. The Bush administration has told us that “protecting the homeland” means launching foreign wars and erecting fences against our neighbors. What about securing our citizens against natural disasters? What about preserving the integrity of our land and resources so that wildfires, floods, and hurricanes are less destructive? What about creating a culture of awareness that our choices about how people build and interact with our environment have consequences? That is a “homeland security” policy I would support.

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Even if the report overestimates the costs by a factor of two and underestimates the tax-benefit by a similar amount, the conclusion would be pretty much the same: destination resorts cost local government and taxpayers money.
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