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In its race against rapidly aging Europe and East Asia, America’s relatively vibrant nurseries have provided some welcome demographic dynamism. Yet, in recent years, notably since the Great Recession and the weak recovery that followed, America’s birthrate has continued to drop, and is now at a record low.

Nowhere is this decline more marked than here in California. Once a state known for rapid population growth, and above-average fecundity, the state’s birthrate is also at a historic low. The results are particularly dismal in coastal Southern California. Los Angeles’ population of people under 17 already has dropped a precipitous 13.6 percent, with drops even among Latinos and Asians, while Orange County has fallen by 6 percent since 2000. The national growth, in contrast, was up 2.2 percent. Despite claims that people leaving California are old and poor, the two most recent years of data from the IRS show larger net losses from people in the 35 to 54 age group. Net out-migration is also larger among those making between $100,000 and $200,000 annually. This is your basic child-bearing middle class.

Why are we eating our seed corn?

Why is this shift to an increasingly child-free population occurring more in Southern California than elsewhere? One logical source may be housing prices, particularly near the coast, which present a particular problem for middle-class, middle-aged families. In contrast, the growth in the number of children under 17 is much higher in more affordable metropolitan areas such as Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina.

Housing affordability certainly drives migration. Major metropolitan areas where the cost of housing is at least four times that of annual incomes have seen a net out-migration of 900,000 since 2010. This compares to a net gain of 1.1 million in the more affordable areas.

Hardest hit of all are the groups who will dominate our future — young people, minorities and immigrants. California boomers, as we discussed in a recent Chapman University report, have a homeownership rate around the national average, but for people aged 25 to 34 the rate is the third-lowest in the nation, behind just New York and Washington, D.C. The drops among this demographic in the San Jose and Los Angeles areas since 1990 are roughly twice the national average.

It is no surprise, then, that places like Southern California have also seen a decline in the next demographic group: people between 35 and 49, who are generally the age of parents, and also tend to be at their peak earning years. The one population group on the upswing is seniors, particularly in Orange County, who bought their homes when they were much less expensive.

Hurting economic growth

These changes will define, and perhaps undermine, our economy by creating a dearth of new workers. Between 2013 and 2025, the number of high school graduates in our state is expected to drop by 5 percent, compared to a 19 percent increase in Texas, 10 percent growth in Florida and a 9 percent rise in North Carolina.

Some, of course, may hail these trends. Environmental activists and their allies in the density lobby generally prefer a childless population, both to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to expand their influence. Some tech-oriented futurists may even suggest that robots will replace all but the most skilled of workers, making additional children more a burden than a blessing.

Yet, for California employers — at least until the technological nirvana — a labor shortage, particularly in skilled trades, could prove troubling in the near-term, and even medium-term, future. Historically, California could count on migration from both the rest of the nation and abroad. But this seems to have changed dramatically. The state has lost more domestic migrants than it has gained since at least 2000. Net immigration, the other lodestone of our labor force growth, has also slowed.

California needs a pro-family agenda

In the immediate future, California businesses will have to rely on people who already live here. Though it was once a state of outsiders, California is increasingly made up of people born here, particularly in the southern part of the state. In contrast, the percentage of people born outside has risen dramatically in cities with dynamic economies, such as Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, Texas; Charlotte, N.C., and Nashville, Tenn.

This suggests the need for a dramatic change in priorities. To date, the state’s policy has been to push high-density development, which seems likely to attract younger people without children more than families. An increased supply of more affordable, family-friendly housing — whether on the periphery or infill in redundant urban spaces such as retail and abandoned industrial buildings — would constitute a good first step. The state also needs to consider reversing its fiscal policies by reducing taxes on income, which hit upwardly mobile families hardest, as well as on sales, something that beggars the working class.

All too many Californians, particularly along the coast, must make a choice between having a family and staying in the place so many have learned to love. This is not worthy of either our state’s vibrant heritage or a supposed commitment to social justice.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm, and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.

It shouldn’t be difficult for U.S. presidents to get their tone and content right when it comes to Poland and Russia: Poles are brave and good — and loyal friends to America. Russia’s leaders, not so much.

Yet a string of U.S. commanders-in-chief have flubbed their lines over the years. In a 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter, President Gerald R. Ford intended to proclaim that Soviet occupation of Poland could never conquer the spirit of the Polish people. Inexplicably, it came out this way: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

Once Carter reached the Oval Office — and Jerry Ford’s premature liberation of Poland was reason he got there — Carter went Ford one better, thanks to a rusty State Department-hired translator.

“When I left the United States this morning” became “When I abandoned the United States.” Carter’s translator also nearly doubled the number of Polish-Americans in this country and inadvertently ridiculed Poland’s 1701 constitution instead of praising it as a beacon of human rights. The best-remembered glitch came when Carter said he’d come to Warsaw “to learn your opinions and understand your desires for the future,” a sentiment the translator rendered as “I desire the Poles carnally.”

Worst of all from Poland’s perspective, at one point the translator used a Russian word instead of the Polish one. Ah, yes, Russia. After World War II, they weren’t even supposed to stay in Poland at all. So how did that happen?

To make a long story short, while serving as vice president under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman hadn’t been kept in the loop. He knew little about the intricacies of what FDR had promised Josef Stalin at the February 1945 Yalta summit. It might not have mattered: the accord was vague. It called in general language for a Warsaw government elected in free elections. Truman took that to mean a western-style democracy, while the Soviets figured it meant a pro-Moscow regime. When Truman saw that the United States had been played, he summoned Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to the White House and chewed him out.

“I have never been talked to like that in my life,” Molotov complained. Not that it did Poland much good. “Force is the only thing the Russians understand,” Truman concluded, yet he never quite fathomed Stalin’s full depravity. “I liked him a lot,” Truman said after meeting the Soviet dictator in July of 1945 at Potsdam. Privately, Truman called Stalin “Uncle Joe.”

Vladimir Putin is no Stalin, but U.S. presidents haven’t done much better in relating to Uncle Vlad. “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy,” George W. Bush explained in an observation he later rued. “I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Barack Obama misread the man, too. Obama’s “lead from behind” strategy in Libya and ephemeral “red line” in Syria was viewed by Putin as an invitation to re-involve Russia in the Middle East. Putin RSVP’d to this invite. And when a stray microphone picked up Obama assuring Putin that he’d “more flexible” after his 2012 election, Uncle Vlad licked his chops and thought about dismembering Ukraine.

This is where Donald Trump came in. Setting aside Russian hackers’ adventurism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, where was Trump on the geopolitics of Russian military expansion in the region? The answer, at least until last week, was that he was out to lunch. A year ago, Trump propounded a few unsettling theories about what Putin was planning. “He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right?” Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “You can mark it down and you can put it down …”

When Stephanopoulos gently pointed out that Putin had already annexed Crimea, which was part of Ukraine, Trump blithely replied he’d heard that residents of Crimea “would rather be with Russia than where they were.”

We can stipulate that Crimea is complicated. The most worrisome aspect of those comments, however, was the fear that if Trump became president and mused aloud about whether Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians “would rather be with Russia” — and Putin took it to heart — one possible result was World War III. After Trump did, in fact, become president, he alarmed residents of the Baltic with ill-considered and off-the-cuff blathering about NATO.

So that was the backdrop to Trump’s visit to Poland, where he made an ambitious speech, and Germany, where he met Uncle Vlad for the first time. It was an uneven performance.

In Warsaw, Trump extensively lauded the Polish people for their bravery and resilience in the face of a century of Nazism and Soviet totalitarianism. He didn’t spare the Russians, either, calling out their recent incursions as well as their murderous 20th century ways. He warned, as always, about the need to confront Islamic terrorism, and extolled western values with Reaganesque gusto.

Although liberal commentators didn’t notice, Trump’s speech included echoes of John F. Kennedy’s 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. JFK’s defiant challenge — “Let them come to Berlin” — became, in Trump’s telling, “Let them come to Warsaw.”

Sadly, if predictably, progressive commentators immediately began dog whistling one another. Somehow, they heard “western values” as “white nationalism,” which is unsettling. To these liberal critics it was sinister that the word “democracy” wasn’t in Trump’s speech. Poland was derided as a venue whiter than rural Pennsylvania, and Trump’s call to man the battle stations against the forces of darkness was portrayed as itself quite dark — and in rhetorical lockstep with Putin.

“It’s not the critic who counts,” Theodore Roosevelt once said. Then again, TR never saw Donald Trump’s press.

But Trump wasn’t done yet. In Hamburg, he fired off an ill-considered and inaccurate tweet attacking former Democratic Party official John Podesta, and seemed to bad-mouth the U.S. press corps to Putin. Trump also questioned the competence or integrity of U.S. intelligence services over their finding that Russians had fooled around in the 2016 U.S. elections. He did this even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pressed Putin on the point.

The Russians denied everything and then Vlad and The Donald started the real negotiations: over trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria. While all this was going on, the anarchists and anti-capitalists who bedevil every G-20 summit engaged in their usual tactics of arson and disruption. The theme this year was “Welcome to Hell,” a reminder that irony is alive and well in the 21st century.

Welcome to Hell? No. Hell would be the death camps operated by the Nazis, or the epic sieges on the Eastern Front that took millions of Russian and German lives and broke the back of the Wehrmacht. In Hamburg itself, Hell arrived 74 years ago this July when American and British bomber pilots turned the northern German industrial city into a fiery inferno, reducing it to rubble, while claiming as many civilian lives as were lost in Hiroshima.

Is it even odd, in today’s inchoate politics, that the Hamburg mob is protesting the same phenomenon — globalism — that got Trump elected president in the American heartland?

Carl M. Cannon is executive editor and Washington Bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.

For the years that Supervisor Todd Spitzer has eyed the Orange County district attorney post, I’ve heard from political observers who say something to this effect: “Spitzer is smart, savvy and energetic, but it wouldn’t be wise to trust him with subpoena power.” Few worry about his skills, but many worry about the judgment he might show at the helm of an office with vast powers to prosecute people.

After the court forced the county to release emails related to Spitzer’s citizen’s arrest of a preacher in a Wahoo’s Fish Taco on Good Friday in 2015, it’s clear these critics are right. Spitzer doesn’t have the right temperament to serve as district attorney. The bizarre incident, and his handling of the public relations blowback, portray a man with tendencies that are the direct opposite of what we should expect from the county’s top prosecutor.

Prosecutors are obliged to pursue justice, not be punitive or vengeful. They need to be calm and professional. They need to focus on issues of public concern, not personal matters. They need to value transparency and respect the role of the media. They should be willing to admit mistakes, take advice and shrug off criticism. Sometimes a good prosecutor just needs to let things go.

Now consider what transpired at the taco restaurant in Foothill Ranch, according to various news reports. Spitzer said he was having lunch when a man approached him to talk about the Bible. Spitzer said he told him to go away, but the man persisted. The man reportedly went to another table after an employee asked him to do so. Spitzer claims the man kept staring at a knife on the table.

So the supervisor, who was a reserve police officer in the 1990s, left Wahoo’s and called 911, then went to his car and grabbed a loaded gun and handcuffs, according to reports. “He’s like harassing me. … I’m concerned for my safety,” Spitzer said, according to the recording of the 911 call. Spitzer reportedly handcuffed the compliant man and waited for police. Spitzer alleges the man came toward him again after the supervisor returned from his car, but VoiceofOC found no corroboration for that part of Spitzer’s account. No one was hurt or arrested.

We all occasionally are approached by strangers, but few use force in these uncomfortable situations. If there were a pressing danger, why leave the restaurant and come back? But Spitzer’s reaction afterward arguably was worse than the initial event. VoiceofOC filed a public records lawsuit attempting to access emails between Spitzer and the county’s spokesperson.

The county fought their release and tried to depose the news site’s publisher, Norberto Santana, regarding his reporting. That’s problematic treatment of a reporter doing his job. Fortunately, the court sided with the news site, leading to the recent publication of the email correspondence and Spitzer’s proposed statement. The correspondence makes Spitzer seem overwrought, self-aggrandizing, oblivious to sound advice and willing to use county resources on what’s essentially a personal matter.

Let’s start with overwrought. After detailing his “hours of training on edged weapons,” Spitzer concludes that “police officers are trained not to allow anyone either armed with a knife or ready access to a knife to come within 10 feet. Use of deadly force is justified under those circumstances.” Well, the man was sitting near Spitzer at a restaurant, where knives are used as utensils. That’s hardly the same thing as an armed man approaching an officer, yet Spitzer seems to be suggesting it would have been within his right to have used deadly force. He lists some violent crime incidents in the county. Violent crime certainly is a scary thing, but it doesn’t shed much light on what happened at Wahoo’s.

Then there’s self-aggrandizing. His proposed statement headline was, “I WILL NEVER TURN MY BACK ON THE PUBLIC OR ITS SAFETY.” This incident seemed mostly about Spitzer himself, yet he is depicting his reaction as that of a man selflessly protecting the public.

Regarding sound advice, the spokesperson suggested, “Why don’t you invite the gentleman to lunch at Wahoo’s to show how much the incident is behind you?” She recommended “against making any other statements regarding this incident.” The statement never was sent out, but Spitzer released one on June 30 regarding the records lawsuit. He apparently couldn’t help himself.

In that new statement, Spitzer depicted government transparency as one of his “paramount concerns.” Then why, as Santana asked, did he fight “viciously against the release of these records for more than a year” and “[waste] countless hours for county counsel … as well as taxpayer money to keep these records shielded”?

There’s no question the current scandals embroiling the district attorney’s office are deeply troubling. But something bad ought not to be followed with something worse. After learning about Spitzer’s Wahoo’s incident and reading the released emails, it’s reasonable for county residents to wonder whether he should be trusted with so much power.

Steven Greenhut is a Sacramento-based journalist. He was a Register editorial writer from 1998-2009.

It wasn’t long ago when Santa Ana stood on the precipice of bankruptcy. But City Council members came together and made the tough decisions necessary to put the city on sounder footing. Now, they seem to be falling back on old habits and spending money the city doesn’t have.

On July 5, the council approved a $510.7 million budget, “as well as additions and modifications” and a “$3.8 million contract with the Santa Ana Police Officers Association that grants two 2.75 percent salary increases,” according to the Register.

Councilwoman Michele Martinez voted no on both items, noting that the budget relied on $9.3 million in one-time funds, and that the salary increases will contribute to the city’s unfunded pension liabilities.

Martinez is right. Stockton, Vallejo and, closer to home, San Bernardino prove that spending and debt have consequences. Yet, many, including her council colleagues, still seem to think government debt doesn’t matter.

This is evidenced by a number of add-ons to an already strained budget, which includes “$65,000 toward a legal defense fund for immigration resource,” $35,000 to explore options for a police review board and “$350,000 toward a special election for a revenue bond to increase the general fund.” That last one, thankfully, failed to secure enough votes, but we also find the legal defense fund problematic.

While the need for immigration reform is clear, and it is easy to sympathize with individuals caught up in deportation proceedings and unable to afford to defend themselves, the right to an attorney in criminal prosecutions is guaranteed to them by the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

However, many immigration offenses are not crimes. For instance, someone who overstays a visa commits a civil offense, to be dealt with in immigration court — not criminal court — and America does not guarantee a right to an attorney in a civil case.

Using public money to help people with civil immigration cases favors them over others facing legal obstacles. A city shouldn’t discriminate against immigrants — but it also shouldn’t guarantee them special rights not enjoyed by citizens.

A city also shouldn’t spend more than it takes in.

When one finds themselves buckling under unaffordable credit card debt, most financial planners would recommend against using another credit card to pay off those debts. Yet that is exactly what Gov. Jerry Brown did when he signed California’s new budget into law last month.

Contained within the budget is a plan worked up by Gov. Brown and State Treasurer John Chiang that greenlights the state to borrow reserve cash from state government accounts and to plow the proceeds into the California’s pension investment fund.

The idea is that the higher yielding pension fund will earn more than enough to cover both interest on the new debt and pay down some of the state’s pension obligations. Over the past two decades, several states and localities tried very similar schemes to deal with their own pension problems, but the practice is fraught with risk, and it has backfired spectacularly on more than a few occasions.

The city of Oakland, for instance, lost $250 million on a similar borrow-and-invest pension funding scheme when projected returns did not pan out. When New Jersey tried borrowing to cover pension obligations, it ended up being charged with securities fraud.

These risks do not seem to bother Gov. Brown, whose pension proposal — released as part of his “May Revision” budget and signed into law on June 27 — calls for borrowing $6 billion from a state savings account at 1.5 to 3.5 percent interest rates and investing that money in CalPERS, the state’s pension investment fund, which Brown is counting on to make 7 percent returns.

If all goes according to the governor’s plan, that $6 billion investment will be enough to save $11 billion in pension costs and pay back the state savings account. But that’s a pretty big “if,” especially given CalPERS’ recent track record.

In 2014 CalPERS had a return target of 7.8 percent. Instead, it brought in just 2.4 percent. That was bad but better than 2015’s 0.61 percent return. Last year saw returns jump to 5.8 percent, which is much better, but still far below what Brown needs.

Meanwhile, an economic downturn could wreak havoc with CalPERS’ already depressed returns. Indeed, recessions are the main reason this approach to budgeting is so inherently risky.

A comprehensive study by Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research found that states and localities that borrowed funds to cover pension obligations in the years leading up to an economic contraction overwhelmingly witnessed negative returns. CalPERS itself saw a negative 24 percent return on investment during the worst of the Great Recession.

Brown is clearly aware of this recessionary risk, saying as he announced his pension proposal that “an economic recovery won’t last forever.” So why is he pushing a proposal that depends on an ongoing economic recovery? The answer, according to that Boston College study, is necessity: Financial pressure, not fiscal wisdom, plays the biggest role in which states and localities go for this option.

California currently faces a $5.8 billion budget shortfall, forcing the governor to scramble for any savings he can find. Needless to say, that’s not how Brown justified his move. He claims his proposal would “reduce unfunded liabilities and stabilize state contribution rates.” But the sheer size of California’s unfunded pension liabilities makes the claim that this borrow-and-invest scheme will make a real difference laughable.

Estimates range, but California is looking at anywhere from $242 billion to $767 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Even if Brown’s $11 billion in savings does materialize, that could be just .045 percent of California’s unfunded pension obligations — and that’s using the lower estimate of liabilities.

Indeed, given the scale of California’s long-term pension debt problems, Gov. Brown’s plan comes across as both desperate and ineffective, designed not as a reform to a broken system, but rather as a risky, short-term patch to keep everything afloat for one more day.

Christian Britschgi is an assistant editor at Reason.com and Reason magazine.

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